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MODULE 1

Research Framing Audit

How you frame your research question determines who benefits, who's centered, and whether your work reinforces or challenges existing power structures.

Example: Carceral policy and financial exclusion
Original research question
"Does state incarceration rate predict unbanked rate, controlling for income, race, and poverty?"

The same empirical question can be framed three ways. Each framing uses identical data and methods, but centers different stakeholders and implies different uses:

❌ Extractive framing
"Quantifying untapped banking markets in criminal justice reform states"
Who benefits:
Financial institutions seeking market expansion; investors evaluating state-level opportunities
What's problematic:
Commodifies suffering; treats mass incarceration as business opportunity; centers profit over people
⚠️ Neutral framing
"Estimating the relationship between state incarceration rates and financial exclusion outcomes"
Who benefits:
Academic researchers; policymakers seeking evidence
What's missing:
Doesn't name the harm; obscures who created the policy; treats structural violence as mere "relationship"
✅ Liberatory framing
"Measuring how state carceral policy blocks economic participation for people with conviction histories"
Who benefits:
Formerly incarcerated people; criminal justice reform advocates; communities targeted by mass incarceration
What's better:
Names the cause (policy); centers the harmed (people with records); implies solution (policy change)
Why this matters
Framing isn't just rhetoric—it shapes what counts as a "solution." Extractive framing suggests banks should target reform states. Liberatory framing suggests states should stop blocking financial access. Same data, opposite interventions.
🔧 Reflect on your own research question

Paste your research question below and consider how different framings would change who benefits:

Consider these three framings of your question:

Extractive: Who could profit from this knowledge? How might it be framed to serve commercial interests?

Neutral: How would this be written in standard academic language that obscures power dynamics?

Liberatory: How can you frame this to center the people most harmed and name structural causes?

Peer review checkpoint
Before finalizing your research question, ask: If someone with a conviction history read this title, would they see themselves as a subject to study or a person whose barriers you're documenting? If it's the former, revise toward liberatory framing.
Continue to Module 2: Stakeholder Impact Map →