Best Practices for Interdisciplinary Team Research: Shaping a Team’s Social Environment

Abstract

This paper describes the factors that most influence collaborative environments in interdisciplinary team research. Strategies and practical ways to enhance the collaborations are provided. These include the importance of social interaction time and types of these are suggested as are good practices for use in establishing project shared goals, meeting agendas, and facilitated discussions. Further, engaging in reflexive discussions of how the teamwork is proceeding and the effectiveness of team interactions are important and ways to do this mentioned. Devoting time to share expertise of team members is also important as is team member diversification in terms of knowledge content and skills; and ways to do these along with references are described. Particularly helpful are the specific activities suggested to elicit divergent views among team members which moves teams forward toward integrative problem solving.