Academic Marginalization? The Journalistic Response to Social Work Research on Native Hawaiian Youths (Points & Viewpoints) (Report‪)‬

Mokuau, Garlock-Tuiali'i, and Lee (2008) recently conducted a review of studies that focused on Native Hawaiians and/or other Pacific Islanders (NHOPIs) and found a total of 32 articles in 23 social work journals published from 1995 to 2004 on these populations (reflecting 0.64 percent of all reviewed articles). Of these articles, only 15 focused on NHOPIs exclusively, with nine focusing on Native Hawaiians. The purpose of this article is to elucidate these findings by examining and analyzing the journalistic response to studies from a research project focused on Native Hawaiian youths. This project was funded by a five-year federal grant (K01 DA019884) and focused on the environmental and cultural context of drug use for Native Hawaiian youths. To date, the study has yielded two data sets (one qualitative and one quantitative) and seven different manuscripts. To supplement the findings of Mokuau et al., this article examines the comments from external reviewers on manuscripts from the project that were rejected for publication. Comments from 13 reviewers or editors from six different journals were included in this analysis. Social work (n = 2), psychology (n = 2), and interdisciplinary (n = 2) journals reviewed and rejected manuscripts from this project over a two-year period (2007 to 2009). Because all of the journals used a blind review process, demographic information on the external reviewers was not available. However, seven of the editors from the journals were male, and one was female. An analysis of the narrative critiques was made, establishing common themes evolving from the reviews.