Challenges and Strategies for Conducting Transdisciplinary Team Science Research

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Challenges and Strategies for Conducting
Transdisciplinary Team Science Research

• Michael A. Diefenbach, Ph.D.
• Mount Sinai School of Medicine
• New York, NY

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Why do Team Science?
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Team Science

• Often provides new ideas, methodologies,
  questions
• Expands ones own expertise
• Could add important component to a theory
• Provides access to research participants
• Its often required to obtain funding

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Challenges to Team Science

• All the potential pitfalls that come with dealing
  with a team
• Time to build relationships
• Manage personalities
• Politics
• Bureaucracy and red tape

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Challenges to Team Science

• All the potential pitfalls that come with dealing
  with a team
• Time to build relationships
• Manage personalities
• Politics
• Bureaucracy and red tape

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Challenges to Team Science

• All the potential pitfalls that come with dealing
  with a team
• Time to build relationships
• Manage personalities
• Politics
• Bureaucracy and red tape

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Challenges to Team Science

• All the potential pitfalls that come with dealing
  with a team
• Time to build relationships
• Manage personalities
• Politics
• Bureaucracy and red tape

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Strategy 1

• Follow your scientific interest and apply it to a
  relevant area in cancer prevention and control

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For example

• General Question
• What is the connection between cognitive
  representations of health and health behavior?
• Specific Question
• What is the connection between body image and
  sunscreen use?

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Strategy 2

• Expand or validate a health behavior theory using
  an interesting question

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For example

• General Question
• How does affect influence health behavior?
• Specific Question
• Are there specific affects that influence
  treatment decision making?

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Strategy 3

• The Laboratory Field Laboratory Strategy
• Validate findings from the lab in the field
• Test relationships found in the field in the lab

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For example

• Do patients use similar heuristics for treatment
  decision making when deciding for medical
  treatment as found in the lab?

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Establishing Relationships

• Building connections
• Acquire medical knowledge terminology
• State the research problem in a medically
  relevant context.
• Why should I subject my patients to this?

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Practical Aspects

• Be sensitive to constraints of conducting
  research in a medical setting
• Time, questionnaire lengths, patient burden

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Practical Aspects

• No extra work for your medical collaborators

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Practical Aspects

• Medical institutions IRB

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Practical Applications

• Think about practical applications of your
  research.
• How can your research be translated into
  interventions?