Research may have many meanings within the collaborative. While it may include the classical broad, inclusive categories above to be termed "scientific research", it may have other connotations. We are in the process of developing a full understanding of it and its dimensions. While it may have multiple meanings, some general understandings will assist in discussions. Without some precision, words can mean anything ...and thus nothing. Research probably means more than asking questions or gaining knowledge. It probably means more than collecting information. As we seek funds and ask people to subsidize the community with their time-equivalents, we need to express well together what we mean by research.

We are working on a research agenda. From that will emerge proposals around priority issues. The proposed research has to be highly relevant to the members of the Collaborative, stakeholders, and funding agencies.The proposals will need to articulate how the findings of the research, the conclusions, are applicable and important to individuals, groups, and communities. When well designed, the project's results are likely to be readily shared and used elsewhere.

Specific relevant research questions need to be carefully identified and then further discussed. Generally, most mainstream scientists and researchers feel more comfortable taking more ‘western’ approaches into research. Many local people may feel uncomfortable in mainstream science research. Realizing this, research questions need to be documented and written in a clear, concise, non-technical, and unambiguous fashion to avoid confusion. The work is very difficult and "people of few words" will be easily frustrated by the lengthy documents needed for great precision of ideas. The research questions should be discussed, and written so that they are easily interpreted by everyone involved. Text for these documents may not match well the brief documents required for funding proposals and for journal publications.

Research capabilities need to be evaluated realistically. A study requiring an expert should not be assigned (or allowed) to an non-expert. That assures waste of money and time. Good research matches well the expertise, confidence, equipment, and skills needed to carry it out. Other collaborating organizations or stakeholders should be involved. Human capacity as well as funds, space, equipment all need to be sufficient for the pre-determined sample sizes and work-loads or studies should not be conducted. We know now that more research should be done. After the project, certainly something more than this needs to be said. Inadequate resources only leads to this well-known and boring conclusion.

Community-Based Research Characteristics of the Clearfork Collaborative

The studies and research being developed within the Clearfork Collaborative seem to have the following desired characteristics (discussions are welcomed):

• They are based on a solid, on-going relationship among members of the community and the researchers (the researcher, in essence, becomes part of the community);
• They are based on long-term commitment by research collaborators;
• They include active work or some type of active involvement in any project;
• They are part of and found within a written document reflecting the people's vision, goals, and objectives; desired priorities may not be achieved because of funding, timing for required answers, or available expertise or equipment.
• Learning and instruction, usually hampering expert research, is a vital part of community-based or collaborative research. Feedback needs to be developed to assure that desired behavioral change occurs, given the costs, risks, and inefficiencies.
• When they are conducted by people not within the community at first, these are people who have read about and discussed with the people of the community their perspectives, issues, concerns, and, of course, objectives.
• They tend to be on projects readily termed "applied research" and wherever possible, seek to pay fair wages of quality work and built competence.
• They are rapidly integrated into practical uses and applications within the community, increasing efficiencies, reducing risks, improving quality of life, or enabling increased profits or reduced taxes.
• The collective effort tends to be sustained by team work, diversification, using seed-money, building a contingency account, and doing active work with granting foundations, state and federal agencies, and working with the private conglomerate activities of Rural System, Inc. Delivering successful projects and delivering more that the contract requires have been experienced to support such stabilization of a research program.

The work needs to stop if it does not:

• build some human capacity
• achieve the stated research objectives
• assist in Clearfork community stability and quality of life
• improve the socioeconomic conditions of the people of the community

• I am grateful for the insights of Garth Harmsworth (Landcare Research, Private Bag 11052, Palmerston North, New Zealand) in a 2001 paper of the Manaaki Whenua Landcare Research entitled "A Collaborative Research Model for Working with iwi: Discussion Paper" Contract report LC 2001/119. Landcare Research, New Zealand.

  help maintain cultural values
• increased active participation in community-based research
• provide a platform for economic research
• cost more than it delivers when evaluated for an estimated 20-year period
• improve the natural environment, its health and ecological services.

based on a lecture by R.H. Giles at Virginia Tech, March 2, 1990

Some new personal awareness:

Conventional Research and a Scientific Approach

A Scientific Approach

Dictionaries once defined science as: "knowledge coordinated, arranged and systematized with reference to general truths or laws; especially, classified knowledge, in reference to the physical world." Other definitions have been given, but this may guide our thinking related to scientific rural resource management

In problem solving, or gathering, coordinating, and systematizing informa-tion as it is related to a specific subject, we may employ either the inductive or deductive reasoning, or a combination of both. The deductive, approach would seek to draw specific conclusions from general information, whereas inductive reasoning would employ specific information in arriving at general conclusions.

For example, our field observations might constantly show that young gray squirrels appear first in April, and that very young squirrels are again seen in August. These observations might be substantiated by similar reports from reliable observers. We might deduce from these data, therefore, that the gray squirrel in the area in which we are working has two breeding periods each year. This method of reasoning … from the general to the specific … would be the deductive approach. The problem could be attacked by inductive reasoning should we systematically collect gray squirrels throughout the year and examine them for evidence breeding. Suppose that we assembled data on spermatogenesis in the male, size and development of the testes, embryo presence, and degree of development and similar data and, when plotted, those data demonstrated two breeding periods per year. Such specific information might lead us to the general principle that the gray squirrel breeds twice a year in our latitude. The possibility of employing both inductive and deductive reasoning to the same rural resource question relating to squirrel hunting seasons or pest population controls is apparent.

Regardless of what method, or methods, of reasoning we might undertake, in our scientific approach to the problem at hand, our course of action would be somewhat as follows:

1. Develop a question, idea, or problem
2. Formulate a null hypothesis
3. Gather all possible data and information that relate to the problem
4. Systematize and classify this data and information
5. Analyze and interpret it in an orderly manner
6. Carefully test your interpretations or hypothesis by controlled experiments if possible
7. Analyze your data and draw a conclusion (s)
8. Report upon your findings, presenting both the data and interpretation of it.

Only within recent times have people studied complex, inter-related rural problems scientifically, applying keen logic and unbiased interpretation to all which they can determine about them. Uncritical interpretation of forest, wildlife, watershed, cropland and other characteristics has resulted in a large number of fallacious attributes and failure to report the combined effects of changing factors, including human valuation. Biased reports are common. Observations colored by folklore are abundant. The possibilities for controlled experiments are few. Many (perhaps most) situations are unique. Identical conditions can result from many different related factors and sequences (the phenomenon of equifinality). Funds are not available to conclusively answer even a few questions, and there remain hundreds easily listed and more being discovered. Science and its methods are badly needed but they may not be appropriate for the struggling rural community and the planning horizons being faced. The time has come for a thoughtful approach, perhaps new, to developing a rural knowledge base. Such an approach may emerge from the Clearfork Institute.

1. The role of knowledge - it is only one part of the natural resource decision process. In wildlife management for example, 40% of state wildlife budgets is devoted to wildlife law enforcement and there are virtually no studies done there. The number of biologists is inadequate for the asserted tasks. It is silly to act like it is and to ignore the illogical reality.
2. The effects of a pesticide application - in my PhD study we discovered new species, we could not even name the parts of the ecosystem, much less describe the relations. We cannot estimate or predict the effects of a loss of any species. We rarely deal with concepts of consequences.Taxonomy remains important, even though downplayed by the biological sciences community and the financial support base. Describing ecosystems well is an essential, invaluable activity. Whether called studies or research makes no difference. It is essential!
3. A faunal database - We have a large database in Tennessee and in Virginia but the essential fields ("essential," itself based on a study) are half empty. There are empty cells for the best-known species. We will never have enough money ($5 billion estimated as needed) to fill the empty spaces in the data base.

We have to start with the definition to isolate and limit the studies needed. We cannot study everything, given our budgetary and time limits. Definition: Rural system management means making decisions and acting to manipulate the structure, dynamics and relations of resources, people and significant factors and services to stabilize achieving specified human benefits from the rural resource.

The need: heuristic convergence toward a tentative, pragmatic paradigm

Such a paradigm will likely include:

1. Clarify the questions, reducing them, then answer realistically "What will you do with the answer?" before the next move is made
2. Answer stated questions
3. Be predictive as in: "If this, then what...?" consequential as in taxon loss or major increase.
4. If "truth" was really available in a situation, then answer so what?
5. Develop solutions for "general" questions, as in universal (not as in vague) Examples: Nitrogen budgets; calcium utilization; energy budgeting ; Abiotic factor (knowledge for "control"; (see attached temperature map); general algorithms for points, lines, areas, and layers; transition matrices, with supportive geographic information systems.
6. Pay attention to functional taxonomy (cf. diversity indexes calculated with variable grouping of taxa)
7. Test basic words. Example: is "species" the best concept to use? Try life form (cf. there is greater managerial differences in life forms within some species than between some families)
8. Take new "expeditions," as the old jungle stories, i.e., coordinated floral and faunal surveys in the region
9. Give attention to benefit units, e.g., sightings, pelts, harvest, loss, loss reduction - be sure of the units of measure that you will use throughout your studies
10. Give attention to value, i.e., quantify the relative importance of benefit units to different people and groups
11. Give attention to "demand," i.e., units perceived to be needed
12. Give attention to "substitutability," i.e., how one faunal or floral event, one resource unit such as an experience, or benefit unit substitutes for another
13. Answer how managerial "treatments" influence all of the above
14. Give less effort toward parsimony in models; natural systems are too complex with too many relations for simple equations. Understand but make a retreat from the calculus to difference models
15. Develop geographic information systems suitable for use in optimization (e.g., locating powerline corridors) Generalize: there are only 4 things - points, lines, areas and volumes. Develop software for each...thus you have everything covered.
16. Use great reliance upon and capturing opinion and observation of experienced people (expert systems)
17. Choose greater statistical alpha, i.e.; 0.2 instead of 0.05 (i.e., 80% vs 95% confidence)
18. Give new attention to equifinality, multiple pathways to the same end-state (e.g., plenty of ways to the same climax forest stand)
19. Use a clinical paradigm, one that is sequential and adaptive ... but with good record keeping
20. Make general prescriptive systems, computer based, with reports or "plans" that are temporary and grounded in dynamic data bases, optimization programs, and report generators, progressively less-and-less of hard copy texts and maps
21. Pay attention to costs, especially the non-linear relationships of expected rural resource benefits produced per unit of expenditure over time
22. Increase permanence and utility of knowledge gained at high cost and often great risk and hardship by new institutional arrangements, data storage systems, hypertext, expert interviews, CD and video disk photo storage
23. Develop non-governmental strategies to assure stability of the research enterprise (e.g., Rural System, Inc.)

General Design Criteria: Improving the Written Plan of Study

Provide detail - Do not be lengthy, simply allow reviewers to think through and visualize the entire project. Do not leave out steps or essential parts.

Clarity - Clarity in writing helps tell the details but connotes the researcher's grasp of the area.

Review - Make literature reviews thorough but not exhaustive. Show up-to-date sources and ability to distinguish studies relevant to the proposed project.

Hypothesis - All studies do not have to have an hypothesis (although many uncritical reviewers tend to be insistent). State a proposed solution, an approach, a system to be created, a model to be explored. In the worst case, state the null hypothesis that a system to perform X cannot be created, then proceed to show how to reject it.

Objectives - The list of criteria provided in hold. They should be brief, few, singular (if possible), specific, without methodology, and form the basis for the "methods" to follow. Methods should address how each objective is to be achieved.

Methods - Be specific in stating sampling, experiments or other work, techniques, data expected, and analytical details.

Cooperation - Many formal studies require cooperation of various land owners, agencies, private groups, and governments. Logically, agreements need be gotten after a project is approved and funded but from the granter's point of view, it is needed before application since too much experience suggests failures in studies because expected or desired cooperation was not obtained.

Pilot Studies - Such studies are very convincing and show preliminary tests and verify that some results will be gotten and changes can be made which will increase the likelihood of others. Research reviewers need reduced risks.

Budgets - Budgets must match the methods. Excessive requests fare as well as those that cannot support the proposed work.A match is needed. Justify unusual or large items with footnotes.

Results - Increasingly faunal research system results must be brought into use (where the payoff is measured). "Publication in journal X" will no longer suffice. There need to be within the design itself the methods, means, and targets of the likely results. Into what system (and systems) will the results be made as direct inputs? Giles (1981) wrote of how faunal agency research results could be more readily and meaningfully transferred.

Giles developed a statement of research needs for the private land owner. That statement listed research needs, partially to show the magnitude of the problem before the land owner and the ease with which sub-optimum decisions can be made without having very complete information based on sound studies. The statement would appear within a dynamic plan for the land owner, a "document" made available by the Internet. It is called The Trevey. Students of Berea College and other places can actively participate to add to the list ... or decrease it by making the results of studies available and the research no longer as badly needed. Systems developed that can be shared on almost every topic would hasten building large computer systems for solving the environmental and social problems of the communities. (We have to conserve knowledge; we have to stop repeating studies; we have to generalize based on available knowledge; we have to increase availability. )

See the chapter on studies and research in Giles' Forest Faunal Systems - Chapter 6. Inputs and an Alternative Research Paradigm , an emphasis on effective research results becoming inputs to decisions.

Also research ideas within Lasting Forests.

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