Collaborative research 

As described in the section on interdisciplinarity, it is important that research is founded on the needs and experiences that exist in workplaces in different sectors and industries. Research conducted in close collaboration between researchers and practitioners contributes in interesting ways by embedding experiences from practice and developing a broader and more nuanced understanding of sexual harassment. This exchange of knowledge between partners in industry organisations, labour market partners and researchers has proved able to produce several synergies in building knowledge, both in and via research collaborations and directly linked to practice. The second call of the research initiative was therefore geared towards researchers and practitioners looking to initiate practice-based research activities in collaboration with industry actors. The funded projects focused on preventive initiatives and intervention methods through sectoral studies and comparisons.    

Studies conducted in collaboration have a unique opportunity to accurately bring on board several perspectives at the very start of the project. This also enables learning examples which are shared by and between the working life partners. In the funded projects, for example, collaboration has led to a clearer picture being gained of how widespread harassment is. In some of the projects it also became clear that exchanging learning examples is important for spreading knowledge between actors in similar sectors and in similar workplaces, because this opens up more perspectives when identifying problems and risks. This in turn provides an opportunity for researchers to see how the problem can be understood from more angles than might perhaps be common in their own field of research. Collaboration between research and practice also increases clarity regarding what is more general knowledge about sexual harassment at work and what is more local and site or industry-related knowledge that needs to be taken into account in preventive work. All in all, collaboration offers greater opportunities to develop more reliable strategies to prevent sexual harassment in different sectors and in different workplaces.   

Collaboration with the labour market partners can also provide important benefits for research by facilitating communication with key actors, as several of the projects show. This in turn enables the generation of improved local knowledge about the organisations studied and their context. As a researcher, being able to access key actors in the organisations in focus is naturally important if the research questions are to be answered with any accuracy.

At the same time, collaborative research perhaps makes extra high requirements in terms of research ethics, not least in terms of ensuring voluntary participation and the ability to protect the confidentiality of participants. It is also important that sufficient, comprehensible information about the purpose and opportunities of the research is provided, so that both parties are agreed on the premises and the positions of both parties in relation to the research carried out.     

There is the possibility that in research conducted in close collaboration between researchers and practitioners, the experience of research participants will affect local change work. This is important, not least because the development of preventive strategies and methods needs to be guided by experiences of the people who have suffered harassment. At the same time, it is important to point out that participant-based research must not be seen as a way of placing the responsibility for change on those who share their experience of harassment. Instead, it is a way of using research to take experiences from practice seriously.