‘It's good to be able to talk’: An exploration of the complexities of participant and researcher relationships when conducting sensitive research

Newton, Victoria Louise (2017). ‘It's good to be able to talk’: An exploration of the complexities of participant and researcher relationships when conducting sensitive research. Women’s Studies International Forum, 61 pp. 93–99.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wsif.2016.11.011

URL: http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/1529990/

Abstract

Drawing on qualitative data from a project on young women’s experiences of abortion, this paper considers the dual exchange of the research interview. It considers the view that researcher and participant ‘collude’ in the research process to meet their individual and differing needs. The paper explores the researcher’s active role in stimulating participants to talk about and disclose highly personal, and potentially stigmatising, experiences and interrogates the ways in which participants may use, or re-frame, research in a quasi-therapeutic capacity as a process of catharsis. This raises questions around whether the participant and researcher share common research goals, and the implications of this for informed consent. The paper concludes with a discussion of the problems of balancing the need of the researcher to ‘get the job done’ and to generate meaningful rich data, and the need to prioritise participant and researcher wellbeing throughout the research, suggesting that further consideration needs to be given to the post-consent process.