Abstract
Guillimin and Gillam’s concept of ethics in practice in qualitative research is a given in that unexpected ethical dilemmas emerge within qualitative research’s iterative frame reconfiguring how researchers manage potential harm to participants. Not so widely acknowledged is the threat the emergence of ethical dilemmas creates for researchers’ own physical and emotional safety, especially those who are PhD candidates. This chapter explores a PhD student’s emotional safety when her research design unfolded on her unexpectedly leaving her to ask the question, “What just happened?” Her two PhD supervisors, a bioethicist and a health professional, provide an answer and a solution that is generalizable to qualitative research PhD students in general. A review of the literature finds this situation remarkably commonplace yet academic supervisors are either oblivious to them or limited in what they can offer students. Professional supervision offered to this PhD student was an example of best practice, allowing her to reveal her vulnerabilities in a neutral setting and outside a normal academic supervision hierarchy that routinely inhibits these disclosures.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
References
Bosk CL, De Vries RG (2004) Bureaucracies of mass deception: institutional review boards and the ethics of ethnographic research. Ann Am Acad Pol Soc Sci 595(1):249–263
Choe L (2019, forthcoming) How contradictory friendships disrupted my study of working-class girls’ residential instability. In: Billett P, Humphry J, Hart M (eds) Complexities of researching with young people. Routledge, London
Craig G, Corden A, Thornton P (2000) Safety in social research. Social Res Update 29:68–72
Davison J (2004) Dilemmas in research: issues of vulnerability and disempowerment for the social worker/researcher. J Soc Work Pract 18(3):379–393
Desmond M (2016) Evicted: poverty and profit in the American city. Broadway Books, New York
Duncombe J, Jessop J (2002) ‘Doing Rapport’ and the ethics of ‘faking friendship’. Sage, London, pp 107–122
Granholm C, Svedmark E (2018) Research that hurts them and me: Ethical considerations when studying vulnerable populations online. In: Iphofen R, Tolich M (eds) The SAGE handbook of qualitative research ethics, Sage, London, pp 501–509
Greenhill P (2007) Epistemological Reflections on sex and fieldwork. Resources for Feminist Research 32:(3/4)87–99
Guillemin M, Gillam L (2004) Ethics, reflexivity, and “ethically important moments” in research. Qual Inq 10(2):261–280
Hanson R, Richards P (2017) Sexual harassment and the construction of ethnographic knowledge. Sociol Forum 32(3):587–609
Howe K, Gray I (2013) Effective supervision in social work. Sage, London
Hubbard G, Backett-Milburn K, Kemmer D (2001) Working with emotion: issues for the researcher in fieldwork and teamwork. Int J Soc Res Methodol 4(2):119–137
Israel M, Hay I (2006) Research ethics for social scientists. Sage, London
James R, Baldwin G (1999) Eleven practices of effective postgraduate supervisors. Centre for the Study of Higher Education and The School of Graduate Studies. University of Melbourne, Parkville
Lalor JG, Begley CM, Devane D (2006) Exploring painful experiences: impact of emotional narratives on members of a qualitative research team. J Adv Nurs 56(6):607–616
Law SF (2016) Unknowing researcher’s vulnerability: re-searching inequality on an uneven playing field. J Soc Polit Psychol 4(2):521–536
Lee RM (1993) Doing research on sensitive topics. Sage, London
Mills CW (1959/1976) The sociological imagination, Oxford University Press, New York, NY
Oakley A (1981) Interviewing women: a contradiction in terms. In: Roberts H (ed) Doing feminist research. Routledge, London, pp 30–62
Pollard A (2009) Field of screams: difficulty and ethnographic fieldwork. Anthropology Matters 11(2):1–23
Punch M (1994) Politics and ethics in qualitative research. Handbook of qualitative research
Stacey J (1988) Can there be a feminist ethnography? Women’s Stud Int Forum 11(1):21–27. Pergamon
Tillmann-Healy L (2003) Friendship as method. Qual Inq 9(5):729–749
Tolich M, Fitzgerald M (2006) If ethics committees were designed for ethnography. J Empir Res Hum Res Ethics 1(2):71–78
Woodby L, William B, Wittich A, Burgio K (2011) Expanding the notion of researcher distress: the cumulative effects of coding. Qual Health Res 21(6):830–838
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this entry
Cite this entry
Tolich, M., Tumilty, E., Choe, L., Hohmann-Marriott, B., Fahey, N. (2019). Researcher Emotional Safety as Ethics in Practice. In: Iphofen, R. (eds) Handbook of Research Ethics and Scientific Integrity. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76040-7_26-1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76040-7_26-1
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-76040-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-76040-7
eBook Packages: Springer Reference Religion and PhilosophyReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Humanities