‘I’ll sue you if you publish my wife’s interview’: ethical dilemmas in qualitative research based on life stories (original) (raw)
Related papers
Interviewers as Intruders? Ethical Explorations of Joint Family Interviews
Journal of Empirical Research on Human Research Ethics, 2019
This paper discusses a case vignette that captures an ethically challenging situation in qualitative research. The study was about families who had experienced a life-saving bone marrow transplantation between siblings, who were children at the time of transplantation. A difficult situation emerged during a joint family interview that took place a few years after the transplantation. Parents, donor and the recipient were present, both still children. This interview technique produced unique, rich, and nuanced data about the family dynamics, about how the family constructed relationships and identity (“doing family”). The difficulties included a confrontation of the 10-year old donor child with accusations and pejorative statements from the other family members and his sidelining from the conversation. The interviewers have been acutely aware that their presence in this situation in this moment was an intrusion into family dynamics. In his commentary, Simon Woods emphasizes a model o...
Qualitative Research, 2021
When conducting interviews about sensitive subject matter such as family life, powerful emotions may arise. The kinds of unexpected distress that can surface in interviews concerning topics laden with personal significance are different to the readily anticipated trauma that accompanies interviews in post-crisis or post-conflict situation. This article analyses the ethical considerations that accompany such research, drawing upon literature from oral history and qualitative sociology. The article traces ethical issues during the temporal phases of qualitative research-before, during and after an interview-before proposing three strategies that interviewers can adopt to help protect narrators from ongoing harm or distress after an interview. Such ethical safeguards include the self-interview, the post-interview follow-up with the narrator, and adopting an ethics of reciprocity that allows the narrator to feel that they are contributing to a larger purpose through involvement in research.
Home truths: ethical issues in family research
Qualitative Research, 2010
This article interrogates the shifting ethical contours of research on contemporary childhood and family living. I reflect on increases in ethical regulation and the role of ethics review panels. Drawing on original data from empirical research I examine some of the ethical issues that arise in studies of family life with particular attention to qualitative mixed methods research and the use of psychosocial approaches. I propose that multilayered in-depth approaches require us to consider carefully ethical standpoints, affecting how we thread together individual and/or family case studies. Unsettling stories in research on emotional—social worlds refine our understandings of ‘harm’ and ‘distress’ and reconfigure ideas of ‘responsible knowing’. Qualitative mixed methods research situates ‘messy’, conflicting and unfavourable data as part of ordinary parenthood, reformulating ethical and epistemological dilemmas for researchers of personal lives.
Ethical challenges embedded in qualitative research interviews with close relatives
Nursing Ethics, 2013
Nurse researchers engaged in qualitative interviews with patients and spouses in healthcare may often experience being in unforeseen ethical dilemmas. Researchers are guided by the bioethical principles of justice, beneficence, non-maleficence, respect for human rights and respect for autonomy through the entire research process. However, these principles are not sufficient to prepare researchers for unanticipated ethical dilemmas related to qualitative research interviews. We describe and discuss ethically challenging and difficult moments embedded in two cases from our own phenomenological interview studies. We argue that qualitative interviews involve navigation between being guided by bioethics as a researcher, being a therapist/nurse and being a fellow human being or even a friend. The researchers’ premises to react to unexpected situations and act in a sound ethical manner must be enhanced, and there is a need for an increased focus on the researchers’ ethical preparation and ...
Marjo Kuronen (marjo.l.a.kuronen@jyu.fi ) University of Jyväskylä, Finland Henna Pirskanen (henna.pirskanen@ulapland.fi) University of Lapland, Finland
Scandinavian Journal of Caring Sciences
Ethical considerations when conducting joint interviews with close relatives or family: an integrative review Background: Researchers are obligated to do no harm to participants of research. Conflicts in relationships can cause negative well-being; therefore, insight is needed into the particular ethical considerations that arise when conducting joint interviews with close relatives or family members simultaneously in the healthcare setting. Aim: To collect and share knowledge related to ethical considerations conducting joint interviews. Design and methods: A literature review inspired by the integrative review method was performed. Data were retrieved through a structured search in PubMed, CINAHL and the Philosopher's Index and Academic Search Premier for articles published in English from 1980 to 2016 and included 18 articles, of a possible 2153. Article content was assessed line-by-line, and ethical considerations were extracted and organized in three subgroups regarding: Planning joint interviews; Conduction joint interviews and Reporting on joint interviews Findings: Participants should be offered the best terms for a constructive, ongoing relationship after the joint interview has ended. This obligates the researcher to ensure a safe environment during the joint interview and create a delicate balance between the needs of the participants, using nonconfrontational techniques that foster equal and neutral but dedicated attention to all parties, before, during and after the joint interviews. Conclusion: Specific ethical considerations should be taken into account before, during and after joint interviewing. Further research is needed before a final conclusion can be drawn.
Ethics and the Practice of Qualitative Research
Qualitative Social Work, 2008
This article stems from a concern that relying only on codes of research ethics risks compartmentalizing ethical aspects of research, and shutting them off into a preamble to research. I explore ways in which the practice of qualitative research ethics is presented afresh -and contextualized in distinct forms -at every stage of research. I develop three linked arguments. First, the ethics of qualitative research design pose distinctive demands on principles of informed consent, confidentiality and privacy, social justice, and practitioner research. I focus on consent -for its topicality, not because it is more important or difficult -and social justice. Second, fieldwork ethics raise special considerations regarding power, reciprocity and contextual relevance. Third, ethical issues raised by the analysis and uses of qualitative inquiry evoke illustrative questions regarding the ethics of narrative research and the utilization of research.
Personal The Dark Side of Truth(s): Ethical Dilemmas in Researching the
2009
This article explores the sometimes problematic issue of truth when conducting qualitative research on people's lives. Four ethical dilemmas are presented relating to the potentially harmful consequences of truth encountered by the authors in their own research: a promise to share the analysis of a patient's medical record containing unflattering comments by her physicians; the unintended sharing of a traumatic event, held secret since its occurrence, by a woman inmate; a disagreement with the Institutional Review Board over what constitutes ethical practice in online research; and an interview with a recently released political dissident in a totalitarian country. The authors advocate for multiple venues in which qualitative researchers can discuss ethical dilemmas such as these to learn from one another's experience and together develop a more reflexive practice.
Encountering ethics in studying challenging family relations
Families, Relationships and Societies, 2013
This article focuses on ethical considerations in the study of challenging family relations. Our perspective derives from multidisciplinary family studies, including social sciences, psychology and educational science. Our concerns include why and how to apply a sensitive approach in studying challenging family relations, and what the ethical key issues are in studies of this kind. We examine questions of multiplicity in family relations, the particularity of vulnerable family relations and the roles of researchers and gatekeepers in the research process. The article is based on a research project where informants were both children and adults, and both qualitative and quantitative data was collected. We argue that doing ethically appropriate research requires much more than formal assessments or ethical board reviews. We claim that rigid ethical regulations may even prevent reaching hard-to-find families or impede the giving of a voice to those who would benefit most from being heard in family studies and in family politics.
Qualitative Inquiry, 2011
From early 1980s, a large body of feminist literature has been attempting to account for and explain the particular mix of fragmented speech and multiple silences characteristic of interviews with subaltern subjects. The authors offer an epistemological challenge to these orthodoxies on two levels. First, the authors challenge the very premise that views the accounts produced by marginalized research participants as failures that need to be overcome through methodological strategies, proposing instead to understand silence and fragmentation as part of the process through which they develop their sense of self and agency. Second, the authors insist that both the micro interview setting and the macro, sociohistorical contexts must be considered and analyzed within the same framework that positions the research participant at the center. The authors illustrate these arguments through the case study of multiply marginalized Jewish women who immigrated to Israel in the 1950s and 1960s from North Africa and Asia.