Our Research Project with Pacific University
By Anna Debenham, July 23, 2021
My relationship with the world of research began in 2018 after a successful meeting at Coffee Creek with Leonard Dunn (former head of Corrections Counseling) and Chris Randall (Corrections Rehabilitation Manager). Susan Stoltenberg, the Executive Director of the YWCA, had introduced me to this team to talk about bringing our program to the adults in custody (AICs) on the medium security side of Coffee Creek. There seemed to be many programs on the minimum side, but very few on the medium side so we agreed to start there. Mr. Dunn suggested that if we wanted our program to be more than just a volunteer program, we would need to research Insight to Wellbeing so that it would be an evidence-based practice. At this point, researching our program hadn’t even occurred to me. It made perfect sense, so we set out to identify a partner who could help. Little did I know what a research project would entail!
Once Dr. Sarah Bowen, the head of the Psychology Department at Pacific University, had agreed to take this on, we wrote a proposal to the research board at the Department of Corrections. We then wrote an IRB to Pacific University. After a few refinements, they both said, “yes!” The preliminary study was with the men at Columbia River Correctional Institution and, the more robust study, was to follow at Coffee Creek. To make it as in-depth and thorough as possible, we established randomized control groups. For longevity and to really get a sense of how folks were doing after being in our program, we tested those who participated in Insight to Wellbeing at multiple points – at the conclusion of our 10-week group, after 3 months, after 6 months, and after 8 months. We also tested the control group using this schedule so that we could compare results.
At the beginning of every new group, we explained in detail that filling out the paperwork was not required, and participants didn’t have to participate. We reassured everyone that the paperwork they completed was all confidential, anonymous, and no one from the Department of Corrections would be looking at it. We also said that all those who were happy to do this were really helping us out and they’d be helping many other people in the future - when this program was offered more widely. With a couple exceptions, everyone supported our research efforts and participated; they were real troopers! The paperwork we had folks fill out was lengthy and a bit of a pain in the ass. And, as we are talking about mental health, a lot of the questions were hard to think about and not that easy to answer.
To date, we have measured 6 rounds of 10-week programs, measuring almost 100 program participants and 100 control group members. Although we were just about to complete our 7th and final round of testing in March 2020, the prisons closed (to all groups) on the night before we were scheduled to go in due to Covid. ONE DAY BEFORE WE WOULD HAVE FINISHED! We had all the donuts, snacks, and certificates ready to go in the car and had also reserved the visitor’s room at the prison where I had planned to spend the afternoon with all the previous groups and the control groups.
Even after not being able to go into prison, we continued to collect data through a series of parking lot drops. With the help of a couple amazing team members and AICs at Coffee Creek (thank you, Millard!!!) we did get a bunch of questionnaires filled out. Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough to fulfill the research guidelines defined at the beginning of the project. We still need to do ONE more round of testing to get our numbers over 100 and make the all the data worthwhile.
As I write this, we’re still waiting to hear back about when we can return, in-person, to Coffee Creek to complete this project. We have invested a lot of financial resources, time, and person power to this research project. Hopefully, we can get back in before the PhD students who have been working on this for 3 years graduate! We have a preliminary paper written and out for review to a few reputable mental health journals. Having a peer reviewed research paper is so important for so many reasons, including giving our program respect and creditably with funders, supporters, government agencies, etc. And we also need to get this last body of testing complete!
This project absolutely feels like a test of perseverance. The dictionary’s definition of persevere is: ‘to persist in anything undertaken; maintain a purpose in spite of difficulty, obstacles, or discouragement; continue steadfastly.’
I don’t really know how this is going to turn out. We can show up and give it everything we’ve got. And the rest is out of our hands. I like what Jacob A Riis has to say about perseverance:
“Look at a stone cutter hammering away at his rock, perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred-and-first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not the last blow that did it, but all that had gone before.”
A special thank you to - Ty Dingle and Debesh Malik (Pacific University PhD students), Ron McVety and the Three Principles Research and Consulting team, Dr. Bowen, and all the AICs who’ve taken part in this project. They all have persevered, not just in supporting this research, but also in the many ways they’ve had to over the past 18 months of the pandemic!