This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: People who speak with an accent know it can lead to discrimination. It can cost them in job interviews, at work and in everyday exchanges.
But what they usually have to go on is anecdote: their own experiences and those of people they know. Research demonstrates that listeners can often understand accented speech well. Yet those findings rarely reach accented speakers themselves or the practitioners who make important decisions that affect their lives, such as hiring managers.
That disconnect served as motivation for our recent projects. They aim to help people better recognize, understand and combat accent bias. One promising way to address the gap between researchers and practitioners is citizen science, which treats members of the public as researchers.
It's typically used to collect local data on a large scale via activities like photographing wildlife or tracking plastic pollution. This approach is usually unidirectional, with citizen scientists handing data over to researchers. We wanted knowledge to flow both ways.
That led us to adopt a community-based participatory approach, in which community members are involved at every stage, from study design to publication. Our previous research culminated in an accent-bias workshop with human resources professionals and newcomers. This time, we advanced the work by integrating community members from the beginning.
We began with an informational workshop on accent bias for community members and HR students, whom we invited to join the research as citizen scientists. The resulting team has 12 community co-researchers and six academic ones. All are first- or second-generation immigrants to Canada, with diverse ethnic and linguistic backgrounds.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
