Blog Post #1 Introduction to a Topic
In my Master's program, my instructor is requesting that we show an interest in a topic concerning Technical Writing and Digital Rhetoric (TWDR). Thankfully, I am looking to publish an autoethnography concerning my experience performing IRB research with legal restrictions that limit DEI initiatives. In the state of Utah, lawmakers passed H.B. 261, Equal Opportunities Initiatives. Under this bill, lawmakers scrapped DEI initiatives under the guise that it would open opportunities to those justly qualified. However, as proponents of DEI initiatives have reiterated, DEI initiatives do not encourage workplaces to hire unqualified applicants because of their identity markers, but rather, DEI initiatives encourage workplaces to horizontally open their roles to consider diverse applicants who are equally qualified.
In addition to stripping those DEI initiatives, lawmakers have gutted and dismantled multicultural support offices such as the Women's Resource Center, LGBTQ+ center, and the Center for Inclusion and Belonging (CIB), formerly the Multicultural Inclusion Center, and with these offices, their coordinators. These offices would provide students with coordinators to assist students in maneuvering the institution's offices, such as the scholarship office, the Title IX office, and others.
As the previous director of REDACTED University stated in an interview with me, theoretically, institutional offices like the scholarship office should be equipped to serve all students; in his experience, that is not the case. International students need scholarship assistance catered to their statuses, LGBTQ+ students need assistance navigating name changes, and undocumented students need assistance to be in line with the law to avoid deportation. Even though the scholarship office should be able to help these students, they often fail to do so; thus, the prior cultural offices step in to assist students who often fail when taking traditional procedural routes.
The loss of the offices is devastating to diverse students of different identities, and due to H.B. 261, we as researchers cannot effectively measure the effects of this bill on students, as this bill prohibits targeting certain demographics for research. As an example, if a researcher wished to study Hispanic students at a Utah university, the researcher must open their requirements to all students regardless of their ethnicity. The researcher is barred from asking only Hispanic students. This requirement ultimately affects the researcher's results and makes recruiting more difficult.
Therefore, my key research question or takeaway is how does a researcher under these restrictions conduct this study? This question will allow me to build a replicable framework that can assist and guide other researchers looking to conduct studies that possibly violate their state anti-DEI bill.
Thankfully, with an approved IRB, I conducted this study in Spring of 2025 under the direction of a faculty PI. The results of the IRB study are irrelevant to my prior research question, and even if I would like to share, the IRB we submitted prohibits me from sharing. My primary methodology for is an autoethnography. I documented any note-worthy actions I took to make sure the research I led complied with State law. From my results (diary entries) I can extract any trends and mark them as essential to researching under H.B. 261.
With this in mind, I want to dive more in-depth under a qualitative methodology using autoethnographies as a method to understand this complex research question.
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Autoethnography for developing a framework for working in under restrictive bills | Conduct a research project and create an autoethnography to learn trends in successfully completing a study under restrictive bills | How can a researcher conduct and study under restrictive bills like Utah’s HB 261 | qualitative | Autoethnography
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This sounds like a puzzle to solve, as in what do you do when higher powers say you can't research in a certain way that you need to? How do you work around that? Or do you just do what you need to do and hope for the best (effectively ignoring potential consequences)? I think this topic would be super interesting to untangle because research needs to get done in order to learn more, no matter what restrictions are in place. In fact, I think we would both argue that the existence of restrictions prevents research from happening for both bad and maybe good reasons. Now I'm wondering if certain restrictions are good or if it all just falls under censorship (spoiler: I'm pretty positive it's all censorship regardless of topic). I would love to see what you do with this this semester.
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ReplyDeleteHi Mitski,
ReplyDeleteGreat initial blog here!! Thanks for sharing your research progress. This topic is indeed a worthy subject for exploration, especially as you examine how they affect fellow researchers, how gathered evidence gain traction, and so on. As it falls under qualitative research, autoethnography is powerful for this situated topic, especially as the focus of the discussion is geared towards a TWDR-specific audience (vs. sociology, political science, etc.). Keep it up!!
It might also be prudent to double-check the bill's prohibition about identity characteristics -- aside from targeting resource programs for DEI, identify how HB 261 restrict academic research and academic freedom? Once addressed, the findings may then be framed within technical communication relevant to TWDR publications, scholars, etc. =))
Awesome blog post, Mistki! Let's set up a quick zoom meeting soon to talk about your topic for 6401, ok? Am here...
Dr. B