Acknowledging complexity: Critically analyzing context to understand interdisciplinary research

It is timely to develop improved understandings about strengthening interdisciplinary contexts to guide effective and quality healthcare research; contexts in which health and social issues occur do not recognize disciplinary boundaries. Similar to the notion of “partnership”, the terms multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary are in danger of becoming conceptually indistinct and thus of limited usefulness for researchers, practitioners and teams. In this paper, we review basic concepts related to cross-disciplinary relationships as well as common arguments for and against interdisciplinary research. We then extend this critique by adding considerations of the influence of context, specifically social and spatial influences on interdisciplinarity. In doing so, we advocate the need for research that explicitly acknowledges complexity and considers context to advance understanding of effective interdisciplinary research.

[1]  J. Gilbert.  Interprofessional education for collaborative, patient-centred practice. , 2005, Nursing leadership.

[2]  Ludwig Huber,et al.  Towards a New Studium Generale: some conclusions* , 1992 .

[3]  E. Cowen.  Care The Use and Misuse of Some Positively Valenced Community Concepts , 2001, Community Mental Health Journal.

[4]  Julie Thompson Klein,et al.  Crossing Boundaries: Knowledge, Disciplinarities, and Interdisciplinarities , 1996 .

[5]  P. Wilcock,et al.  Interprofessional learning for the improvement of health care: why bother? , 2000 .

[6]  S. Shortell,et al.  Crossing the quality chasm: implications for health services administration education. , 2004, The Journal of health administration education.

[7]  Y. Kim-Godwin,et al.  A model for the delivery of culturally competent community care. , 2001, Journal of advanced nursing.

[8]  D. Stokols.  Establishing and maintaining healthy environments. Toward a social ecology of health promotion. , 1992, The American psychologist.

[9]  J. Horder.  Interprofessional education , 1992, Medical Education.

[10]  R. Gallimore,et al.  The social construction and subjective reality of activity settings: Implications for community psychology , 1993, American journal of community psychology.

[11]  S. Cowley,et al.  Interprofessional working in palliative care in the community: a review of the literature , 2000 .

[12]  Susan M. Fox-Wasylyshyn,et al.  Enhancing health-care research: an interdisciplinary collaborative approach. , 2005, The Canadian journal of nursing research = Revue canadienne de recherche en sciences infirmieres.

[13]  M. Clark,et al.  Evaluating transdisciplinary science. , 2003, Nicotine & tobacco research : official journal of the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco.

[14]  Mita Giacomini,et al.  Interdisciplinarity in health services research: dreams and nightmares, maladies and remedies , 2004, Journal of health services research & policy.

[15]  David J. Rapport,et al.  Transdisciplinarity: reCreating Integrated Knowledge , 2002 .

[16]  A. M. Nenci,et al.  Ecological Psychology , 2022 .

[17]  Anton Hart.  Getting to Maybe: How the World Is Changed , 2008 .

[18]  P. Rosenfield,et al.  The potential of transdisciplinary research for sustaining and extending linkages between the health and social sciences. , 1992, Social science & medicine.

[19]  J. Faber,et al.  Interdisciplinary social science: a methodological analysis , 1997 .

[20]  Elizabeth Ettorre.  Recognizing Diversity and Group Processes in International, Collaborative Research Work: A Case Study , 2000 .

[21]  P. Schoggen,et al.  Behavior Settings: A Revision and Extension of Roger G. Barker’s “Ecological Psychology” , 1989 .

[22]  Michael Quinn Patton,et al.  Getting to Maybe: How the World Is Changed , 2008 .

[23]  Kathleen Wilson,et al.  Activity settings as the unit of analysis: A theoretical basis for community intervention and development , 1993 .

[24]  E. Boyer.  Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate , 1990 .

[25]  Lisa R Lattuca,et al.  Creating Interdisciplinarity: Interdisciplinary Research and Teaching among College and University Faculty , 2001 .

[26]  Erich Jantsch.  Interdisciplinarity: Dreams and reality , 1980 .

[27]  Cathie Scott,et al.  Valuing the scholarship of integration and the scholarship of application in the academy for health sciences scholars: recommended methods , 2007, Health research policy and systems.

[28]  M. Sherif,et al.  Interdisciplinary relationships in the social sciences , 1970 .

[29]  H. Aveyard,et al.  Core topics of health care ethics. The identification of core topics for interprofessional education , 2005, Journal of interprofessional care.

[30]  W. Thurston,et al.  The Influence of Social Context on Partnerships in Canadian Health Systems , 2004 .

[31]  D. Luke,et al.  Setting phenotypes in a mutual help organization: Expanding behavior setting theory , 1991, American journal of community psychology.

[32]  I. Norman,et al.  Interprofessional perceptions of health care students , 2003, Journal of interprofessional care.

[33]  P. Mitchell,et al.  What's in a name? Multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, and transdisciplinary. , 2005, Journal of professional nursing : official journal of the American Association of Colleges of Nursing.