Other Titles
Rapid Presentation Round
Abstract
Community engagement is increasingly recognized as a key research approach across disciplines with the goal of promoting health equity (Key et al., 2019), yet the benefits and best practices for incorporating this approach within doctoral dissertations remain understudied. Other health sciences, such as social work, have recorded student and community benefits in conducting community-engaged dissertations (Yan et al., 2021), but there remains a significant gap of considerations for nursing dissertations. This presentation seeks to discuss the benefits, challenges, and pathways of community-engaged dissertations informed by an ongoing doctoral dissertation in nursing focused on sexual health equity. This dissertation engages community members as peer researchers throughout the research process, meeting with an advisory board to develop an interview guide, training members as interviewers, and co-analyzing results for data integration and dissemination.
For future nurse scientists positioning themselves to advance health equity, a community-engaged dissertation can provide opportunities to conduct mutually beneficial research, engage in inter-institutional collaboration, and build capacity for navigating administrative and regulatory structures. Students may gain experience in training community members as peer researchers, with both learning skills relevant to research and dissemination back into communities. While developing relationships with communities to create meaningful engagement can seem daunting in the relatively short time frame of a PhD program, networks within a student’s committee, program, and university may be leveraged for the student to build trust within existing collaborations. Embracing this approach for a dissertation may come with other challenges related to needs for supplemental funds and time to establish formal agreements across institutions. However, these challenges pose unique learning opportunities of project management that many students do not obtain before they transition to independent scientists. Ultimately, a community-engaged approach for a dissertation in nursing draws on the holistic and trustworthy nature of the profession to strive for more contextualized and meaningful research processes and outcomes. Additionally, by promoting the skills vital to advancing health equity in a learning environment, students receive close mentorship and feedback that will help to strengthen the future of nursing science.
Notes
Reference list included in attached slide deck.
Sigma Membership
Beta Epsilon
Type
Presentation
Format Type
Text-based Document
Study Design/Type
Other
Research Approach
Other
Keywords:
Health Equity, Social Determinants of Health, Public and Community Health, DEI/BIPOC, Interprofessional and Global Collaboration, Community-Engaged Dissertations, Dissertations
Recommended Citation
Janek, Sarah Elise; Miller, Rahim Z.; Perry, Miles C.; Williams, Adrian; Gonzalez-Guarda, Rosa M.; Muessig, Kathryn E.; and Mulawa, Marta I., "Community Engagement within Doctoral Dissertations in Nursing" (2025). Biennial Convention (CONV). 116.
https://www.sigmarepository.org/convention/2025/presentations_2025/116
Conference Name
48th Biennial Convention
Conference Host
Sigma Theta Tau International
Conference Location
Indianapolis, Indiana, USA
Conference Year
2025
Rights Holder
All rights reserved by the author(s) and/or publisher(s) listed in this item record unless relinquished in whole or part by a rights notation or a Creative Commons License present in this item record. All permission requests should be directed accordingly and not to the Sigma Repository. All submitting authors or publishers have affirmed that when using material in their work where they do not own copyright, they have obtained permission of the copyright holder prior to submission and the rights holder has been acknowledged as necessary.
Review Type
Abstract Review Only: Reviewed by Event Host
Acquisition
Proxy-submission
Date of Issue
2025-11-27
Funder(s)
National Institute of Mental Health; Sigma Foundation for Nursing/Council for Advancement of Nursing Science
Community Engagement within Doctoral Dissertations in Nursing
Indianapolis, Indiana, USA
Community engagement is increasingly recognized as a key research approach across disciplines with the goal of promoting health equity (Key et al., 2019), yet the benefits and best practices for incorporating this approach within doctoral dissertations remain understudied. Other health sciences, such as social work, have recorded student and community benefits in conducting community-engaged dissertations (Yan et al., 2021), but there remains a significant gap of considerations for nursing dissertations. This presentation seeks to discuss the benefits, challenges, and pathways of community-engaged dissertations informed by an ongoing doctoral dissertation in nursing focused on sexual health equity. This dissertation engages community members as peer researchers throughout the research process, meeting with an advisory board to develop an interview guide, training members as interviewers, and co-analyzing results for data integration and dissemination.
For future nurse scientists positioning themselves to advance health equity, a community-engaged dissertation can provide opportunities to conduct mutually beneficial research, engage in inter-institutional collaboration, and build capacity for navigating administrative and regulatory structures. Students may gain experience in training community members as peer researchers, with both learning skills relevant to research and dissemination back into communities. While developing relationships with communities to create meaningful engagement can seem daunting in the relatively short time frame of a PhD program, networks within a student’s committee, program, and university may be leveraged for the student to build trust within existing collaborations. Embracing this approach for a dissertation may come with other challenges related to needs for supplemental funds and time to establish formal agreements across institutions. However, these challenges pose unique learning opportunities of project management that many students do not obtain before they transition to independent scientists. Ultimately, a community-engaged approach for a dissertation in nursing draws on the holistic and trustworthy nature of the profession to strive for more contextualized and meaningful research processes and outcomes. Additionally, by promoting the skills vital to advancing health equity in a learning environment, students receive close mentorship and feedback that will help to strengthen the future of nursing science.
Description
To become future independent nurse scientists leading health equity research, exposure to community engagement principles as part of a dissertation poses an important avenue for students in their PhD in Nursing programs. We present the pathways, benefits, and challenges to conducting a community-engaged dissertation as experienced through an exemplar of a PhD in Nursing dissertation focused on sexual health equity.