Leveraging the Untapped Potential of Research Conversations

Students participate in research conversations for complex reasons including the desire to advance knowledge and influence policy about issues that matter to them. Further, the opportunity to feel seen and heard is a benefit students receive from being asked to articulate their thoughts and feelings. In this article, we explore our experiences as qualitative researchers whose participants guided them into this new terrain of participant motivation. We found feedback provided during member-checking, advocacy, and opportunities for reflection to be the primary ways students experienced value in being research participants. We identify the implications of our findings about participants’ motivations and situate them within the context of our experiences navigating higher education institutions driven by industrial logic. We offer recommendations grounded in these experiences and the related interdisciplinary scholarship.