Through my educational background in urban studies, economics, and public administration, I learned that the places where we live, work, and play matter. I also developed a strong interest in the infrastructure and resources that support these communities, and the multiple cultures, people, and stories that make a place unique.
Today, in my role with the Research Integration Strategies Evaluation (RISE) for Boys and Men of Color team, I am fortunate to have opportunities to act on my education – to work with funders, researchers, evaluators, educators, and other stakeholders to identify field-advancing policy and practice interventions that can improve the lives of boys and men of color (BMOC).
RISE has leveraged over $8 million in grants from the Atlantic Philanthropies, W.K. Kellogg Foundation, the Annie E. Casey Foundation, and Marguerite Casey Foundation to build an understanding of what is known – and not known – about education, health, justice, and workforce development for boys and men of color. Began as a project of the Executives’ Alliance for Boys and Men of Color, research and evaluation collective action table, RISE’s purpose is to transform the practice of research and evaluation. Contemporary actions such as the killing of unarmed boys and men, the Standing Rock pipeline protests, and attacks on LGBTIQ policy progress, as well as by longer-term systemic racial and ethnic inequities in our communities, highlight the need for this work. Our aim is to identify policy and practice interventions grounded in research and evidence, to mitigate these persistent challenges.
As a central component of our program, we support the exploration of nontraditional and unpublished work that illustrate promising practices. In that vein, we are proud to announce the release of eight field scans authored leading social science scholars and researchers. Each report provides a comprehensive review of literature, including an exploration of interventions, and recommendations for RISE ethnic groups and discipline areas. The field scans incorporate “grey literature,” research that is not disseminated in traditional academic outlets, such as peer-review journals. Examples of grey literature include government reports, program evaluation reports, and unpublished dissertations.
To share additional insight into the field scans, and the importance of including grey literature in traditional research, I reached out to RISE funders Howard Walters, a Program and Evaluation Officer at the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and Martena Reed, Research Associate at the Annie E. Casey Foundation.
Martena Reed
AK: What excites you most about publishing the field scans?
MR: I am excited to have such important field-building documents available for the public. I keep hearing that there is limited information about boys and men of color, and I know that the field scans will help address this critical gap.
AK: With your support, RISE encouraged authors to considered unpublished evaluation reports and other grey literature. Why was that?
MR: If we leaned solely on published peer-reviewed articles, we would miss much research. In order to fill the gap, it is critical to include unpublished and grey reports and literature.
AK: RISE authors reported promising and challenging findings during their review of grey literature. What advice would you offer to funders and researchers interested in using these data sources to inform the field?
MR: Context, context, context. It’s important to include the context in which a program evaluation was conducted, and acknowledge limitations related to the evaluation design when interpreting the findings. If the limitations outweigh what could be learned from the grey literature, then I’d say consider excluding it.
Howard Walters
AK: With your support, RISE encouraged authors to considered unpublished evaluation reports and other grey literature. Why was that?
HW: Research has shown that there is racial bias in published academic literature. Relying exclusively on published literature to understand problems or solutions for boys and men of color would be a limiting and inherently biased approach. Scanning the literature to build a deeper understanding is essential to identify the voices rarely or never heard. This requires us to look at unpublished literature. This is important for indigenous populations, which are often considered too small in most samples to provide a large enough statistical result. Unpublished literature holds the opportunity – through meta-synthesis and meta-analysis – to pool numbers together and tell stories publishers often fail to include.
AK: What advice would you share with funders interested in using grey literature to expand research?
HW: Research and evaluation are powerful tools used to shape narratives about whole communities, including boys and men of color. These narratives can either paint the picture of problem people or people with problems. Our goal is the latter. As funders, we sit on mountains of data from our grantees and partners that often never see the light of day. Sharing those data and reports with scholars and communities, so they can better tell their stories, could be a transformative enterprise. This isn’t without challenges; but the question remains, do we have the will and commitment to change our practice in a way that leads to transformational change?
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I welcome you to review the field scans and recommendations to the BMOC field. Practitioners, researchers, evaluators, community members, and boys and men of color will consider the reports as valuable resources to learn more about what works and does not work. Let’s RISE!
RISE for Boys and Men of Color is a field advancement effort that aims to better understand and strategically improve the lives, experiences, and outcomes of boys and men of color in the United States. The program is supported by The Atlantic Philanthropies, The Annie E. Casey Foundation, Marguerite Casey Foundation, W.K. Kellogg Foundation, and members of the Executives’ Alliance to Expand Opportunities for Boys and Men of Color.