{"title":"Question cards: Putting your cards on the table in the interview process","authors":"Andrea Cornwall","doi":"10.1177/14687941241277749","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14687941241277749","url":null,"abstract":"This research note introduces the use of question cards as a technique that can aid the interviewing process. Question cards provide a dynamic checklist of themes and questions, affording interviewers and interviewees increased flexibility in shaping dialogue. This approach empowers interviewees by allowing them to influence the interview's direction, determine question order, and contribute their own questions. The transparency facilitated by question cards clarifies the interview's purpose and reduces ambiguity. Additionally, question cards act as visual aids, aiding navigation and enabling both interviewer and interviewee to have a clear sight of the topics for discussion. Importantly, this technique levels the information playing field, granting all parties access to the interview's structure, questions and themes. Post-interview, question cards prove invaluable as prompts for coding and analysis, streamlining data extraction. As such, the research note suggests, the use of question cards has many potential benefits for the qualitative researcher.","PeriodicalId":48265,"journal":{"name":"Qualitative Research","volume":"12 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2024-09-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142224147","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"On assistants and researchers: Power, positionality and vulnerability during fieldwork on the Colombian conflict","authors":"Laura Ramírez Rodríguez, Wolfgang Minatti","doi":"10.1177/14687941241277744","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14687941241277744","url":null,"abstract":"As field researchers have increasingly explored the methodological ‘backstage’ of their fieldwork, the relationship between researcher and assistant has come to the fore. While the literature has discussed gender, coloniality, and exploitation inherent to such work arrangements, less has been written about how the relation conditions and is conditioned by experiences of vulnerability. In this article, an assistant and a researcher address this gap analysing their relationship during a joint fieldwork experience in Colombia in 2021. We argue that the relation between researcher and research assistant should be conceived as being entangled in situations of vulnerability. We focus on vulnerability across and within the relation, highlighting the interactions of researchers and assistants’ positionalities and reflecting on how certain situations can heighten tensions of power and friendship. We show that a conceptualisation of the assistant–researcher relationship as conditioned by vulnerability allows us to consider the ethics arising from this relationship.","PeriodicalId":48265,"journal":{"name":"Qualitative Research","volume":"5 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2024-09-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142224146","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"On being a ‘passive observer’: The corporeal and affective dimensions of power in observational research on trafficked women in criminal proceedings","authors":"Sharron FitzGerald","doi":"10.1177/14687941241264487","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14687941241264487","url":null,"abstract":"In this article, I analyse the methodological issues that arise when I accept a judge's invitation to observe her hear women testify in criminal proceedings against their traffickers at the district courthouse in X, Germany. I develop a theoretical framework using Pierre Bourdieu's theory of embodied power and his methods of epistemic reflexivity and participant objectivation, and feminist engagements with affect theory. I use my fieldwork experience with a judicial gatekeeper and in conducting ethnographic observational research ‘behind the scenes of formal law’ to interrogate how bodies, emotions and affects inform power in the spaces of criminal law. Specifically, I approach bodies, emotions and affects as conceptual tools with which to interrogate how power transmits when I ‘enter’ and ‘read’ the field, and make claims to ‘know’ the subject under study. Core to my analysis is a critical process of self-reflection, through which I challenge the assumptions that underpin my assessment of my research participants’ ability to consent to participate in my study.","PeriodicalId":48265,"journal":{"name":"Qualitative Research","volume":"305 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2024-08-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142224148","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Embodied reflexivity in voice-only interviewing: Navigating gender in difficult-to-access contexts","authors":"Muhammad Salman Khan","doi":"10.1177/14687941241264672","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14687941241264672","url":null,"abstract":"This article reflects on my experiences as a male researcher using voice-only WhatsApp interviews to study women's affect and Taliban violence in Pakistan's Swat Valley. It considers the opportunities and constraints posed by doing research in supposedly disembodied online space. It also positions remote voice-only interviews as both embodied and embedded practices. This understanding situates the embodied reflexivity and gendered positionality of the researcher in relation to research participants—a relationship largely absent in online, qualitative voice-only interviewing literature. While internet-mediated settings do indeed offer some opportunities, their ability to circumvent gender boundaries is largely over-celebrated and has not received enough critical attention. I demonstrate why researcher feelings, positionality, and embodied reflexivity should be central concerns in post-COVID online, voice-only interviewing.","PeriodicalId":48265,"journal":{"name":"Qualitative Research","volume":"61 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2024-08-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142224151","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Told and untold stories: Finding new ways to represent the voices of culturally diverse learners through narrative vignettes","authors":"Justine Dakin, Frances Giampapa","doi":"10.1177/14687941241264481","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14687941241264481","url":null,"abstract":"This article considers the challenges of representing young, ethnically diverse learners via narrative vignettes. Aware of young learners’ underrepresentation in research reporting compared to adult teaching perspectives, we feel it important to review methodologies that claim to represent young learners’ stories. Looking back at a year-long critical ethnography, we return to the data, reflecting on old conversations while revisiting the motivations behind writing narrative vignettes. Our new conversations consider how this brought participants (and researchers) in from the ‘margins’ of research. We reflect through an embodied, emotional and affective lens, raising important questions around the ethics of representation and making socially just choices. We conclude that narrative vignettes are not giving voice to young learners, but that the methodology captures both told and untold stories which benefit from a reflexive approach to data at the time of the research as well as retrospectively.","PeriodicalId":48265,"journal":{"name":"Qualitative Research","volume":"41 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2024-08-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142224150","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Annalisa Bolin, Tatiana Carayannis, Gino Vlavonou, David Nkusi
{"title":"A day without Global North researchers: Making space for equitable collaboration after COVID-19","authors":"Annalisa Bolin, Tatiana Carayannis, Gino Vlavonou, David Nkusi","doi":"10.1177/14687941241264669","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14687941241264669","url":null,"abstract":"What happens when researchers based in the Global North are suddenly unable to access research sites, especially those in the Global South? In 2020, COVID-related public health measures and travel restrictions made clear how dependent certain categories of researchers in the North are on easy access to research sites in the South. The space opened up by their pandemic-imposed retreat and the solutions devised in response have provoked both challenges and opportunities. In this article, we reflect on this space, focusing on how forms of more just collaboration become possible when the inertia of Global North-controlled research is interrupted. Many scholars have argued for change in how Global North-South scholarly collaborations proceed, seeking to root out colonial practices and attend to power imbalances that disadvantage South-based scholars. COVID's disruptions offer a chance to reorient these collaborations toward more ethical forms of research. We examine the ethical and practical questions inherent in such collaborations and explore two case studies of attempts to reorient collaborative work, drawing primarily on examples of collaboration between African, European, and North American scholars. Cognizant that these efforts are only initial attempts toward reworking collaborative practice, we also trace the challenges they bring, from the duty of care and paternalistic approaches to funding and practical problems. We suggest that a careful consideration of these issues can help to establish more just ways to fully reengage North-South research and collaboration in the wake of the global pandemic.","PeriodicalId":48265,"journal":{"name":"Qualitative Research","volume":"32 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2024-08-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142185305","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Giving up the ‘Good Research Child’","authors":"Abi Hackett, Mel Hall, Kate Pahl, Peter Kraftl","doi":"10.1177/14687941241264490","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14687941241264490","url":null,"abstract":"Do you like apples? Do you want to plant trees? Do you love books? Qualitative research with children is peppered with vignettes of what we conceptualise as the ‘Good Research Child’. Good Research Children tell stories, plant trees, eat healthily, love reading and engage enthusiastically with researchers as co-playmates. They explore the world with drawings and oral stories and are enthusiastically portrayed by their adult researchers as unique, special and meaningful. Even when their actions are unexpected, this can provide rich material to be ‘used’. How are Good Research Children produced, what work do they do and how can we resist their pull?","PeriodicalId":48265,"journal":{"name":"Qualitative Research","volume":"58 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2024-08-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141941424","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Donna Baines, Susan Braedley, Tamara Daly, Gudmund Ågotnes, Albert Banerjee, Elias Chaccour, Karine Côté-Boucher, Stinne Glasdam, Sean Hillier, Martha MacDonald, Frode Fadnes Jacobsen, Christie Stilwell
{"title":"But where's the body? Bodies, time, money, and the political economy of post-pandemic field research","authors":"Donna Baines, Susan Braedley, Tamara Daly, Gudmund Ågotnes, Albert Banerjee, Elias Chaccour, Karine Côté-Boucher, Stinne Glasdam, Sean Hillier, Martha MacDonald, Frode Fadnes Jacobsen, Christie Stilwell","doi":"10.1177/14687941241264473","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14687941241264473","url":null,"abstract":"Since the pandemic, field work has been transformed by shifts in the political economy affecting the material conditions underpinning research. In this research note, a research team considers their challenges and learning in completing field studies conducted in 2022, including intensified strains on time, money, researchers’ bodies, and risks associated with illness and infection spread. We argue that a neoliberal “research super-hero” norm operates within the research community, rooted in a conception of high productivity that mingles uneasily, for many researchers, with feminist, anti-racist, and anti-colonial social justice aims and responsibilities. Our 2022 fieldwork experience led us to notice how this norm has circulated within our explicitly feminist research team and nudged us to challenge it, while raising questions about how a “research-worker” norm can best be supported.","PeriodicalId":48265,"journal":{"name":"Qualitative Research","volume":"34 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2024-08-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141941425","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Adriana Rudling, Mohamed Sesay, Eric Wiebelhaus-Brahm, Angelika Rettberg
{"title":"North-South research collaboration during complex global emergencies: Qualitative knowledge production and sharing during COVID-19","authors":"Adriana Rudling, Mohamed Sesay, Eric Wiebelhaus-Brahm, Angelika Rettberg","doi":"10.1177/14687941241264677","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14687941241264677","url":null,"abstract":"Large multinational teams of academics and activist-practitioners that span the Global North-South divide have become common in qualitative research because of the reliance of field of peace and conflict studies on “local” knowledge and expertise. Complex global emergencies, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, present the opportunity to (re)shape and (re)consider these endeavors in key some ways. This article focuses on the involvement of South-based activist-practitioners in three large North-South collaborations, one pre-pandemic (Beyond Words: Implementing Latin American Truth Commission Recommendations), one ongoing when the pandemic began (Gender, Justice, and Security Hub), and one launched during the pandemic (Truth Commissions and Sexual Violence: African and Latin American Experiences). Drawing on center-periphery framework, we adopt an autoethnographic approach, to reflect on how the pandemic has not only reinforced existing structural and institutional asymmetries through reduced funding, professional uncertainty, and personal loss and insecurity but also added some new ethical concerns. This reality has tested both our capacity and commitment to work toward the decolonization of knowledge in the field. In making this argument, we seek to contribute to the discussion on research ethics and the politics of knowledge production and sharing in qualitative peace and conflict research.","PeriodicalId":48265,"journal":{"name":"Qualitative Research","volume":"63 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2024-08-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141941426","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A social researcher researching social researchers – Lessons from feminist epistemologies","authors":"Lili Schwoerer","doi":"10.1177/14687941241259980","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14687941241259980","url":null,"abstract":"Qualitative research literature discusses how power shapes the interview process and the resulting data and explores the epistemic basis for interview research theoretically. However, processes of negotiating epistemic authority in the interview situation, and in data analysis, are investigated less frequently. This paper draws on 34 interviews with social science academics interested in gender, feminist and queer studies in four English universities to reflect on the epistemological challenges of researching social researchers about their work. Through this, it contributes to explorations of how, in qualitative interviewing and data analysis, we can combine a critical reading of interview data with a commitment to respondents’ accounts of their realities. I argue that Black, anti-colonial, queer, feminist epistemological approaches can be well suited to navigate this challenge. I advocate for an epistemic reflexivity that acknowledges the fluidity of speaker positions while taking structural power relations, and their effects on epistemology, seriously.","PeriodicalId":48265,"journal":{"name":"Qualitative Research","volume":"17 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2024-07-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141775153","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}