Doing sensitive research: what challenges do qualitative researchers face?

By Virginia Dickson-Swift, E. James, S. Kippen, Pranee Liamputtong. 2007

918 citations recorded by the source corpus.

As health researchers we need to investigate a wide range of topics to enhance our understanding of the many issues that affect health and well-being in today's society. Much of the health research undertaken today involves face-to-face encounters with participants using qualitative methodologies. There is a growing recognition that undertaking qualitative research can pose many difficulties for researchers. However, very little research has focused directly on the experiences of researchers while undertaking qualitative research and the issues that their involvement in the research raises for them. To explore these issues, one-to-one interviews were conducted with 30 qualitative health researchers. A grounded theory analysis revealed that researchers can face a number of challenges while undertaking qualitative research. These include issues relating to rapport development, use of researcher self-disclosure, listening to untold stories, feelings of guilt and vulnerability, leaving the research relationship and researcher exhaustion. These results are discussed and recommendations for researchers involved in qualitative research are made.

Subfields: Education, General Health Professions, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/14c7b71f754669cf370a4adb1a7653621fb6db53

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In Education

In General Health Professions

In Sociology and Political Science

Citations in the corpus

On ‘being researched’: why do people engage with qualitative research? (2010, background): “This lack of any obvious benefit has even led some researchers to express their surprise at the amount of personal information DOI: 10.1177/1468794110366796 400 people are prepared to disclose during a research encounter (see Dickson-Swift et al., 2007).”
Researching sensitive topics: qualitative research as emotion work (2009, background): “It has been acknowledged thatmany researchers become involved in a reciprocal processwhichmay involve giving something to research participants in return (see, for example, Brannen, 1988; Dickson-Swift et al., 2007; Liamputtong, 2007 for a discussion).”
What Is Qualitative Interviewing (2013, background): “Women researchers are seen as more vulnerable for example to the emotional demands of fi eldwork, and are required to undertake considerable emotional labour and emotion management (Bloor et al. 2007 , 2010 ; Dickson-Swift et al. 2007 ; Sampson et al. 2008 ).”
Emotion, empathy and exit: reflections on doing ethnographic qualitative research on sensitive topics (2008, background): “…(Fox, 2006: 944) is either realistic or necessary for the effective conduct of sensitive research has been widely debated (Fox, 2006; Rager, 2005; Dickson-Swift et al, 2007) and it is the contention of this piece that emotion work may constitute what Katz and Mishler (2003: 35) describe as…”
Qualitative social research: a risky business when it comes to collecting ‘sensitive’ data (2013, background): “Lee and Renzetti (1990) write that probing into participants’ personal experiences has a higher probability of causing distress to the interviewee, and numerous authors have published research on the issues of collecting sensitive data as a researcher, including psychological harm and emotional dist”
Ethical Issues in the Use of In-Depth Interviews: Literature Review and Discussion (2009, background): “The third were empirical studies that focussed on ethical issues related to in-depth interviews [82-88].”
CHE Principles: facilitating authentic and dialogical semi-structured interviews in educational research (2017, background): “…to be approached from a perspective of humility, and that includes expressing consciousness of the privilege of being invited into a participant’s context, valuing the potentiality in participants’ stories, contributions and positions, and listening without judgment (Dickson-Swift et al. 2007).”