Significant challenges to conducting research on violent extremism (VE) occur when funders and researchers have different expectations, particularly when this leads to requests to modify projects after they already commenced. This can happen when the funder restricts available methods and project resources or requests to omit undesirable findings if they are politically sensitive. Although conditions may make it impossible to produce the deliverables originally agreed upon, researchers should be prepared to adapt their studies to collect different data and to promote policy-relevant findings outside of the original scope of the project. In this chapter, we detail our experiences with improvising methods as needed while remaining within an approved research design. Despite our challenges, we ultimately published peer-reviewed articles and generated potentially life-saving findings to share with participant agencies.

 

Suggested citation:

Malet, David, and Mark Korbitz. Resilience is for Research Designs Too: Funders, Researchers, & Navigating Study Constraints. Washington, D.C.: RESOLVE Network, 2019. https://doi.org/10.37805/rve2019.7.