Building Trust

Doing Research to Understand Ethnic Communities

This book studies five ethnic communities_South Asian Americans, African Americans, Japanese Americans, Mexican Americans, and Somoan Americans_to understand how their members feel about being studied by researchers. American society has always had tension between and among ethnic groups, and yet our researchers are given limited training, if any, on how to approach various ethnic communities, all of which see their problems and needs differently than those outside their communities. This book bridges that gap by focusing on trust-building as a necessary process in doing good community research. The building of trust requires gaining knowledge of a group's culture and history, their perspective on social problems and issues, and the proper way of interviewing its members, going well beyond the mere building of rapport. This book offers the reader culturally sensitive methods to approach interacting and interviewing members of each of these unique, multifaceted ethnic communities.