Reflexive Journaling on Emotional Research Topics: Ethical Issues for Team Researchers

Abstract

Traditional epistemological concerns in qualitative research focus on the effects of researchers' values and emotions on choices of research topics, power relations with research participants, and the influence of researcher standpoints on data collection and analysis. However, the research process also affects the researchers' values, emotions, and standpoints. Drawing on reflexive journal entries of assistant researchers involved in emotionally demanding team research, this article explores issues of emotional fallout for research team members, the implications of hierarchical power imbalances on research teams, and the importance of providing ethical opportunities for reflexive writing about the challenges of doing emotional research. Such reflexive approaches ensure the emotional safety of research team members and foster opportunities for emancipatory consciousness among research team members.

Expanding on Notions of Ethical Risks to Qualitative Researchers

“…This broader perspective is present in the literature but is obscured by the more common approach of naming specific types of topics. Many researchers come to their research topics, questions, methods, and analytic frameworks based on their own social positioning (Malacrida, 2007) and often work on issues that resonate with their own lives (Dickson-Swift et al, 2009), thus making all research potentially sensitive and risky for the researcher. This realization makes room for surprises about which topics end up being difficult and ethically challenging for a researcher.…”

“…Mitigating the risk of psychological (distress) and social (discriminatory judgment) harm is a key consideration in research ethics (Resnik, 2018). Researchers and ethics committees are accustomed to assessing these aspects of proposed research and mitigating harms to potential research participants but the risks to researchers and other members of the research team are often not considered (Dickson-Swift, James, Malacrida, 2007). Researcher safety has, until recently, been largely ignored and researchers have been left to manage for themselves the issues and risks that arise in the field (Israel, 2015).…”

“…Cowles (1988) notes that, for researchers engaged in relational fieldwork with participants, observing the intense emotional, personal, and distressing responses and behaviors of others can be emotionally wrenching. The burden of this emotionality can lead to a range of physical and psychological consequences of their involvement in sensitive qualitative research such as guilt, sorrow, identity disruption, desensitization, hopelessness, anxiety, exhaustion, difficulty sleeping, nightmares, gastrointestinal upset, compassion stress, and burnout (Dickson-Swift et al, 2009;Dickson-Swift, James, Kippen, & Liamputtong, 2008;Malacrida, 2007;Rager, 2005;Wray, Markovic, & Manderson, 2007).…”

“…Although a wide range of topics could be considered sensitive, sensitive research is generally thought of as that which explores deeply personal or sacred experiences, topics related to social control and power, and topics that are taboo or associated with deviance (Dickson-Swift, James, Johnson & Clarke, 2003;Lee, 1993). When defined specifically, sensitive topics are seen to include addictions, violence and abuse, sex, death, bereavement, illness, loss, social injustice, or other "forbidden research terrains" (Lee, 1993, p. 21) that have moral or political components (Dickson-Swift et al, 2009;Johnson & Clarke, 2003;Malacrida, 2007;Shaw, 2011;Wray et al, 2007).…”

“…While the protection of participants is more familiar to researchers and ethics boards and more consistently attended to in research design, there is a growing attention given to the risks to researchers themselves. Some researchers are writing about their own experiences in the process of conducting qualitative research (such as Malacrida, 2007;Shaw, 2011;Wray et al, 2007) to illustrate how researchers face risks in their work. In the same way that research ethics is concerned with risks to participants, researcher well-being is increasingly acknowledged and linked to research ethics Israel, 2015;Liamputtong, 2007, Shaw, 2011.…”