Miryam Rivera-Holguín, Sofie de Smet, Victoria Cavero Huapaya, Jozef Corveleyn, Lucia De Haene
{"title":"Remote qualitative research after the COVID-19 pandemic: Ethical reflections from a prepandemic study with families of the enforced disappeared in Perú","authors":"Miryam Rivera-Holguín, Sofie de Smet, Victoria Cavero Huapaya, Jozef Corveleyn, Lucia De Haene","doi":"10.1177/14687941241264666","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14687941241264666","url":null,"abstract":"This article considers the ethical complexities of remote research practices in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. It draws on an analysis of prepandemic in-person fieldwork with survivors of collective violence and families of the enforced disappeared in Perú. We shed light on the specific challenges of using remote research processes with victims of human rights abuses. We propose a reflective research practice that is oriented on closely aligning the remote research process to the relational and social context of the research participants. Our main contribution is to reflect on the potential implications and challenges of conducting remote qualitative research with survivors of political violence, and on remote qualitative research more broadly. We outline three challenges and propose key recommendations.","PeriodicalId":509994,"journal":{"name":"Qualitative Research","volume":"12 7","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-08-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141926045","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
David Mwambari, Andrea Purdeková, Aymar Nyenyezi Bisoka
{"title":"Global crisis and research production: COVID-19 as shaper and shaker or micro-interruption?","authors":"David Mwambari, Andrea Purdeková, Aymar Nyenyezi Bisoka","doi":"10.1177/14687941241264676","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14687941241264676","url":null,"abstract":"This special issue asks what happens to international research and collaboration when the research community becomes temporarily immobilized. The COVID-19 global pandemic powerfully disrupted normal ways of doing research and, therefore, created a perfect natural experiment of the “otherwise” for digital qualitative research in sensitive contexts. The collected papers argue that the lessons extracted from this recent global health crisis should shape our thinking on qualitative research amid crisis and research on the crisis. The authors speak to core themes like the digital platforming of research, continued inequality in research relations, and the concept of compounding crises. The special issue reflects on the authors’ own experiences with international collaborations during COVID-19 in a multiplicity of contexts from Peru, to Pakistan, Mexico and the Great Lakes Region of Africa. This introductory essay argues that the uniquely rapid and global context of COVID-19 offered a glimpse into one possible alterity of research production. It extracts lessons for the present and future, not only for other global crises, but for willed disruptions of research relations so that these are marked by less inequality and more balanced power relations.","PeriodicalId":509994,"journal":{"name":"Qualitative Research","volume":"11 8","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-08-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141926374","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Johanne Jean-Pierre, Alicia Boatswain-Kyte, Tya Collins, Emmanuela N Ojukwu
{"title":"Designing afro-emancipatory qualitative research with and for Black people","authors":"Johanne Jean-Pierre, Alicia Boatswain-Kyte, Tya Collins, Emmanuela N Ojukwu","doi":"10.1177/14687941241264458","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14687941241264458","url":null,"abstract":"Since the tragic death of George Floyd in May 2020, there has been increased interest in anti-racist research. Consequently, several scholars are instigating qualitative inquiries in Black communities with limited preparation or expertise. This article presents a reflection regarding essential principles that can guide general and afro-emancipatory health and social sciences qualitative inquiries in Black diasporas. We contend that it is essential that researchers engage in reflexivity and consider Black ontologies, axiology and epistemologies. Furthermore, we propose the application of the following deontological principles to fulfil an ethical afro-emancipatory research framework: (a) include critical theories, (b) target the liberation of Afro-descendant peoples to enable their full participation as their whole selves in society; (c) ensure their leadership and meaningful involvement throughout the research process; (d) implement accountability mechanisms towards community members; (e) embrace intersectionality, an asset-based lens, and aspirational stance and; (f) foster healing, growth and joy.","PeriodicalId":509994,"journal":{"name":"Qualitative Research","volume":"8 4","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-08-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141926327","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"(Un) exceptional times: Compounding crises and local stakeholders in field work during COVID-19","authors":"Cecilia Farfán-Méndez, Marcos Vizcarra","doi":"10.1177/14687941241264667","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14687941241264667","url":null,"abstract":"From the positionality of a Mexican scholar in security studies who identifies as female and an investigative journalist born and working in Sinaloa, Mexico, this article builds on existing scholarship examining the positionality of local stakeholders who are integral to the production of knowledge in conflict settings. In early 2021, Mexico had the world's third-highest number of deaths caused by Covid-19. Additionally, close to 80,000 people were officially missing and 52,000 remains in state custody lacked identification. In this context, civil society groups raised concerns about the proper handling of bodies, fearing cremation prior to identification of the remains. The article highlights two phenomena as evidence of a reflexivity process followed by the authors: first, for mothers searching for their children, Covid-19 was an additional life-threatening risk (not the main health risk, as in the general population). Second, we consider how global pandemics produce compounding crises in contexts of chronic violence and vulnerability, while simultaneously bolstering advantages for scholars in the Global North. The article is a call to action for more ethical qualitative research methodologies within the emerging social science community working on illicit economies and extralegal actors.","PeriodicalId":509994,"journal":{"name":"Qualitative Research","volume":"110 4","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-08-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141926627","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"For an ethics of generosity: Values for ethnography in a time of regulatory ethics","authors":"Paul Atkinson, Silvia Cataldi, David Wästerfors","doi":"10.1177/14687941241259978","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14687941241259978","url":null,"abstract":"The paper recommends a values-driven regeneration of research ethics for ethnography. In contrast to the current regulatory version of research ethics we propose a more subtle, field-oriented and traditional version, grounded in ethnographic experience. The paper is in three parts. The first part highlights the tacit assumptions of current systems of ethical approval for social research and their unintended and even perverse effects. Ethnography is the focus of the second part, where we highlight the distinctive issues for ethnographic research of current practice. In the final part we argue for a culture of ethnographic work grounded in an ethnographic understanding of social conduct and an ethic of generosity. Defined as a key-value for social sensitivity, this implies abandoning a procedural logic in favour of a values-based research culture faithful to the spirit of ethnographic and qualitative inquiry.","PeriodicalId":509994,"journal":{"name":"Qualitative Research","volume":"28 2","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-06-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141360248","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Chasing scorpions across North Africa: Ethical reflections on life story research with Sub-Saharan migrants","authors":"Stacey Wilson-Forsberg, Abderrahman Beggar","doi":"10.1177/14687941241259965","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14687941241259965","url":null,"abstract":"In this Research Note, two researchers present their reflections on the ethical challenges they encountered while collecting life stories of sub-Saharan migrants in Morocco and the Disputed Territory of Western Sahara. The reflections are based on field notes and excerpts from unedited transcripts of daily debriefing sessions that the researchers undertook together. The sessions were audio-recorded and transcribed into written notes. The materials reveal their thoughts and feelings as they grappled with the ethics of keeping their research participants (“Narrators”) safe, working with community organizations on the ground, attempting to conduct interviews as humanely as possible, while also managing and concealing their own emotions.","PeriodicalId":509994,"journal":{"name":"Qualitative Research","volume":"93 5","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-06-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141359155","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Exploring client-therapist relationships through joint interviews","authors":"Marie Strand Skånland, Gisle Fuhr","doi":"10.1177/14687941241255245","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14687941241255245","url":null,"abstract":"In the last few years, there has been an increase of literature on the use of interviews with two participants, otherwise known as joint interviews. Researchers who employ this methodology describe challenges and potential advantages inherent to this approach, distinguishing it from individual and group interviews. In this article, we present and discuss results from two studies on therapeutic relationships in music therapy that include joint interviews with clients and their music therapists. Combining the data from the two studies, we identify and reflect on how the method of data collection shaped the interview situations and the findings that can be drawn from the empirical material. We found that the joint interview setting offered safety and support for the clients. Further, the joint interview setting allowed the music therapists and clients to address each other, build on each other's statements, and develop and negotiate shared understandings. Specifically, in joint interviews, as opposed to separate interviews, interactions within the dyad can be observed. This observation offers valuable information about the relationship within the dyad. The therapeutic relationship is key to therapeutic effect, but the client and therapist have been found to perceive their relationship differently. It is, therefore, essential to include both client and therapist when researching their relationship, and we argue that the joint interview holds a specific potential of producing rich data.","PeriodicalId":509994,"journal":{"name":"Qualitative Research","volume":"7 11","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-06-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141273424","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"From Interpretation to Interruption: Embracing disruptive analysis","authors":"Timothy Clark","doi":"10.1177/14687941241230240","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14687941241230240","url":null,"abstract":"Qualitative analysis is, inherently, a complex, messy and nuanced process. In the context of contested notions of validity, for novice researchers there is therefore an attraction in adopting established, systematic and formulaic approaches. Yet, in prioritising methodical processes, over critical engagement and methodologically coherent quality criteria, these approaches can risk limiting research to a process of cataloguing and reporting face value readings. This research note reflects on an attempt to address and examine this risk in a doctoral research project by progressing from an initial thematic interpretative approach to data analysis to a secondary stage informed by ideas of interruptive analysis. The paper introduces a conceptualisation of interruption as prioritising interrogation of aspects of presentation, over a focus on the interpretation of content or a shift from analysing what is said, to how it is said. Empirical data from research exploring doctoral students’ methodological decision-making is utilised to illustrate the approach and to provoke consideration of the value of embracing disruption. Analysis of two narrative accounts from the study is presented, providing a snapshot of the different understandings and an insight into the learning it generated. The learning in this research note is intended to act as an illustration and provocation for thinking rather than any form of procedural guide.","PeriodicalId":509994,"journal":{"name":"Qualitative Research","volume":"49 5","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-02-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139782402","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"From Interpretation to Interruption: Embracing disruptive analysis","authors":"Timothy Clark","doi":"10.1177/14687941241230240","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14687941241230240","url":null,"abstract":"Qualitative analysis is, inherently, a complex, messy and nuanced process. In the context of contested notions of validity, for novice researchers there is therefore an attraction in adopting established, systematic and formulaic approaches. Yet, in prioritising methodical processes, over critical engagement and methodologically coherent quality criteria, these approaches can risk limiting research to a process of cataloguing and reporting face value readings. This research note reflects on an attempt to address and examine this risk in a doctoral research project by progressing from an initial thematic interpretative approach to data analysis to a secondary stage informed by ideas of interruptive analysis. The paper introduces a conceptualisation of interruption as prioritising interrogation of aspects of presentation, over a focus on the interpretation of content or a shift from analysing what is said, to how it is said. Empirical data from research exploring doctoral students’ methodological decision-making is utilised to illustrate the approach and to provoke consideration of the value of embracing disruption. Analysis of two narrative accounts from the study is presented, providing a snapshot of the different understandings and an insight into the learning it generated. The learning in this research note is intended to act as an illustration and provocation for thinking rather than any form of procedural guide.","PeriodicalId":509994,"journal":{"name":"Qualitative Research","volume":"206 ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-02-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139842287","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Pandemic ethnography: Fieldwork in transformed social space","authors":"Tadeo Weiner Davis, Hannah Obertino-Norwood","doi":"10.1177/14687941241230230","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14687941241230230","url":null,"abstract":"This methodological analysis traces the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak on two ethnographic studies in Chicago: a neighborhood fight for affordable housing, and an effort to increase local participation in the 2020 U.S. Census. We attend to the relationship between space and visibility after the onset of the pandemic as methodological and political challenges. Drawing on Haraway's seminal description of situated knowledge, this article explores the changes that the pandemic brought to our situated and partial perspective as ethnographers of political process. To do so, we present fieldwork from both studies before and after they became fully virtual. Finally, we discuss shared emergent methodological implications with a focus on embodiment in fieldwork, the dynamics of access, and the formalization of participation in online venues.","PeriodicalId":509994,"journal":{"name":"Qualitative Research","volume":"10 4","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-02-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139853706","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}