Introducing the READY Study to Churches

This weekend, we visited two of the four randomly selected churches for the intervention trial. We first reviewed the benefits we hope the program will provide for participants and then explained the purpose of the research study. In the video, you can see part of my explanation. I think the most illuminating part of the video is the number of people, mostly women, on the right side of the church who had never heard of "research" before. It is difficult to explain the ways that a research design effects participants in a way that qualifies as actual informed consent when some potential participants have never been exposed to the ideas of testing a hypothesis through research. For example, it is a bit complicated to understand the purpose of random selection - that randomly choosing participants increases the probability of a representative sample. While complicated, it was important for everyone in these churches s to understand the rationale since we were planning to draw names out of a bag to participate if more than 25 families, or 120 people, were interested. Otherwise the process could be confusing and may seem exclusive and unfair. I haven't devised the perfect explanation yet, but the strategy that seemed most effective was to allow my research assistant, John Ombajo, who is translating in the video, to explain the process in the local language as often as possible - instead of asking him to translate directly. He emphasized that the random selection process protects against unfairness and bias and that it makes sure we have a variety of types of families and individuals in the program. We also emphasized throughout the ways that participating in research can be beneficial to your own community, as well as other communities.