In an essay for Socius, Dean Elizabeth Moje outlines seven ways to make equity research matter more

Researchers who study inequities often hope to help reduce them. But can they? 

In a recent essay published in Socius: Sociological Research for a Dynamic World, Dean Elizabeth Moje lays out seven steps that social scientists should take if they want to maximize the chances that their work will decrease inequity rather than merely describing it.

However, Moje notes, if they are to do so, some important things must change: “I believe that research can make a systems-level difference but that social scientists must take a step back and reconsider the methods used, the voices privileged, and the practices for teaching (or learning from) a new generation of scholars.”

Moje acknowledges that her recommendations—including avoiding assumptions, integrating methods, and collaborating across disciplines—are not easy to implement, but she urges researchers to try:

“What is the work of social scientists who want to make the world a more equitable and just place? Should we seek to understand, to shift frames, to test the feasibility of interventions, or to radically reconstruct the social world as we know it? I argue that social scientists need to do all of these things, and to do that, we need to change our discourse to focus on transforming the systems of power and oppression that allow inequalities to exist. If we change our aim and adjust our research practices to focus our aim, then we might hit the target we seek.”