Unpacking Sensitive Research

Epistemological and Methodological Implications

Erica Borgstrom, Sharon Mallon, Sam Murphy

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781000573541
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psicología
• Subtopic: Investigación y metodología en psicología

The term 'sensitive research' is applied to a wide range of issues and settings. It is used to denote projects that may involve risk to people, stigmatising topics, and/or require a degree of sensitivity on behalf of the researcher. Rather than take the notion of 'sensitive research' for granted, this collection unpacks and challenges what the term means.

This book is a collective endeavour to reflect on research practices around 'sensitive research', providing in-depth explorations about what this label means to different researchers, how it is done – including the need to be sensitive as a researcher – and what impacts this has on methods and knowledge creation. The book includes chapters from researchers who have explored a diverse range of research topics, including sex and sexuality, death, abortion, and learning disabilities, from several disciplinary perspectives, including sociology, anthropology, health services research and interdisciplinary work. The researchers included here collectively argue that current approaches fail to adequately account for the complex mix of emotions, experiences, and ethical dilemmas at the heart of many 'sensitive' research encounters. Overall, this book moves the field of 'sensitive research' beyond the genericity of this label, showing ways in which researchers have in practice addressed the methodological threats that are triggered when we uncritically embark on 'sensitive research'.

The chapters in this book were originally published in the International Journal of Social Research Methodology and the journal Mortality.

INTRODUCTION Unpacking sensitive research: a stimulating exploration of an established concept

Sharon Mallon, Erica Borgstrom and Sam Murphy

We are living in turbulent times. The hashtag #MeToo went viral in 2017; the death of George Floyd propelled the Black Lives Matter movement back into international headlines; and the emergence of COVID-19 has brought to the fore issues around illness, death, dying and bereavement, it seems that emotions and sensitivities are running high for many people, if not for everyone.

In 2018, when we conceived this special issue, we noted in our proposal that since the term ‘sensitive research’ first emerged, there has been a growing acceptance that many research topics are ‘sensitive’ in nature (De Laine, 2000; Lee, 1993; Lee & Renzetti, 1990). Writing this, in late 2020, it now feels as if all topics are ‘sensitive’ in ways we have only begun to consider, and the emergence and ongoing debate about ‘cancel culture’ has added a new and highly controversial element to these sensitivities. It seems therefore that this special issue is more important than ever, given our overarching objective was to critique and challenge some of the presuppositions that have emerged around ‘sensitive’ topics of research.

This special issue emerges from a perspective that proposes that affording the moniker of ‘sensitive’ to a research project has wide-reaching epistemological implications and dictates the basic methodological parameters under which much ‘sensitive’ social science research is undertaken. Indeed, at the core of this special issue is the theoretical argument that the assumed nature of the term ‘sensitive research’, including how it is normatively and routinely applied to a range of topics, uncritically reproduces ways of categorising the social world and sets of relationships. From ethics committees presuming what harms research may present and who needs protecting, to implicit practices in academia that promote research that is deemed less socially or politically ‘risky’. Yet, attempting to contain sensitive research in this way fails to adequately account for the experiences and complex mix of emotions at the heart of many research encounters and across research careers. We acknowledge that the recent turn towards emotional aspects of such research is helpful. However, we also feel it is about much more than ‘just’ emotions. It is our suggestion that broader experiences, including the reactions of others to our research, and complex emotions that fundamentally affect how researchers make knowledge claims about all sorts of divergent issues.

Consequently, the articles which follow have emerged from a collective endeavour to reflect upon a range of research practices around ‘sensitive research’ and to provide in-depth explorations about what this label means to different researchers; how the research is undertaken, including the need to be ‘sensitive’ as a researcher; the sensitivities engendered and required by the research; and thus the impacts this all has on methodologies and knowledge creation. As such, we do not seek to offer a unifying definition of what sensitive research is or how to best undertake it. Indeed, the overall aim has been to enable researchers from all sectors to critically engage with what it means to do ‘sensitive research’ in the twenty-first century and to reflect on their own research practices. As such the inclusion of articles which are drawn from a range of disciplinary backgrounds from researchers who have explored a diverse range of research topics, has been entirely purposeful.

Cross-cutting themes in the special issue

The authors who have contributed to this issue argue that current approaches fail to adequately account for the complex mix of emotions, experiences and ethical dilemmas which lie at the heart of many ‘sensitive’ research encounters. There are several themes that intersect across each of the articles. One of these is the issue of emotions and emotional affect. Although there is now widespread acknowledgement of the presence of emotions in the research encounter, their effect on the research and processes of knowledge creation is poorly understood and rarely routinely discussed. Loosely, we can understand how emotion tends to refer to the way in which feelings are expressed while ‘affect’ refers to the biological experiences of them.

When exploring sensitive topics, much attention is paid, rightly, to mitigating the possible deleterious feelings the process may give rise to in participants. But, as social scientists, our tools are not only our voice or image recorders and the pen, but also our bodies. Across the articles presented here, it is clear that the researcher and the researched are not unattached and objective instruments; rather research is personal, emotional and reflective, and situated in existing cultural and structural contexts (Coffey, 1999). Paying attention to the embodied experience of our emotions during the research process has been important to all these researchers. It was their reactions – emotional and embodied – to the experiences they were exploring, that had enormous potential to impact, both positively and negatively, on their (and our) understanding of the subjects at hand, and thus on the production of knowledge. For example, the articles here show how complex these reactions can be in sensitive research when the topic encourages the researcher to make assumptions and emotional investments that were prohibitive or disruptive (Witney and Keogh, Mallon and Elliott, Jones and Murphy, Hoggart) while others found it to be key to their understanding (Borgstrom and Ellis). Similarly, research can be made sensitive when participants evoke responses in us that are not expected such as anger (Jones and Murphy, Hoggart) and guilt (Jones and Murphy, Borgstrom and Ellis, Mallon and Elliott) which can result in some accounts being privileged over others.

When considering ‘sensitive research’, sensitivity is often thought of in terms of two key elements: firstly, the inherent sensitive or taboo qualities of the research topic itself and secondly the methodological and practical means of sensitively addressing such ‘sensitive’ issues. All of the articles here engage with both issues, and show how we need to think about the techniques of data collection and what this means for conducting research sensitively (Bloomer et al., Blackburn and Earle, Tilley et al.). A facet of this is an engagement with critically thinking about the sensitivity of, and experienced by, the researcher across the entire research journey. The examples in this special issue illustrate how the power of the researcher is of paramount importance in contextualizing any research scenario because it determines how sensitivity is navigated and resisted across the practice of social science research. For example, the sensitive nature of the research was apparent not only during data collection (as has traditionally transfixed ethics committees) but during analysis and dissemination (see Mallon & Elliott, Tilley et al., Jones and Murphy, and Hoggart). Researchers may find sensitivity arises unexpectedly in themselves, or the participants, in otherwise uncontroversial research (Robb, Tilley et al., Witney and Keogh). Several of the articles discuss what it means and how researchers navigate their own, and their participants’ emotions unexpectedly through a research project where such issues had not previously been considered. Research can also be made sensitive when participants don’t behave as researchers might hope (Hoggart, Mallon and Elliott) thus reducing or challenging the power of the researcher and the underlying (but often unspoken research agenda) and leading to practices in the research that feel deceptive (Hoggart, Witney and Keogh). Moreover, simplistic conceptualisations of the ‘insider versus outsider’ debate, such as those set out by Bourdieu (1996) who argues that reducing the social and cultural distance through subject familiarity, are repeatedly challenged in this special issue (see Jones and Murphy, Borgstrom and Ellis).

As well as the cross cutting intersections between articles, we also view the special issue as having three parts, each of which tackles a particular thematic area. Part One is Unpacking ‘sensitivity’: the tyranny of established definitions, with articles challenging the terminology of sensitive research from different perspectives by examining the processes involved in the practice of sensitive researchers. The overall commentary of these pieces provides an insightful acknowledgement of the lack of certainty that questioning the definition of ‘sensitive’ and ‘sensitivity’ can create in the research encounter. This, by its unique nature, makes a contribution to the intellectual field and has the potential to reduce the problems associated with such research; showing how researchers may be guided in their future application of this term to their research. For example, Mallon and Elliott explore how researchers’ motivations, combined with their personal and professional investment, can heighten their sensitivity to aspects of the research that remain underexplored in methodological texts on the issue of sensitive research. Conversely, Witney and Keogh’s article is a revealing account of the unexpected consequences of how broad stroke approaches and assumptions of the heightened sensitivity of research topics and research subjects can also limit one’s approaches to research. This article, in combination with Blackburn and Earle’s account of the intersection of multiple ‘sensitivities’, shows how the ethics review processes can encourage us to make unhelpful assumptions about the ways in which a topic might be ‘sensitive’. Both articles provide insightful details that illustrate how, as researchers, we can then set ourselves, and our participants, up to experience the topic as sensitive, whether the participants do or not. The articles also provide valuable critique of how researchers can work towards limiting and challenging these discourses of ‘normality’ and ‘taboo’ subjects.

This theme, of challenging the very basis of how we refer to a subject as sensitive, giving rise to a self-fulfilling prophecy of sensitivity is carried through to the second part that covers ‘sensitive’ ethics in action. The authors in this section provide timely methodological insight into emerging areas associated with collaborative and innovative practices within research. For example, Bloomer et al.’s online research shows how ‘sensitive processes’ can be experienced in groups on a culturally sensitive issue (abortion). In doing so, they show how ‘sensitive’ and ‘sensitivities’ can be reshaped, repackaged, and how they can be resisted across the research lifecycle. Tilley et al. explore another highly topical area by examining the impact of societal assumptions about inclusive research and the complex sensitivities of analytic interpretation involved in co-productive research with people with intellectual disability. Hoggart takes this analysis one step further by delving into her personal sensitivities, exploring how the emotional underpinning and subjective position of the researcher can cause challenges during analysis and tensions in representation of the research.

Authors in the final section – ‘The ideal sensitive researcher’ – address the issue of sensitivity as it applies directly to researchers involved in the research process. They consider the implications for ‘performed roles’ and knowledge production, examining how researchers might respond to these issues. For example, while sensitive subjects are often considered to be ones in which strong and potentially distressing emotions are likely to be unleashed, here the authors show the value in re-considering methodologies in terms of the study of the emotions and emotional affects. The definition offered by Lee (1993) acknowledged that areas of research had the potential to be threatening for those involved but fell short of explicitly acknowledging the ways in which researchers themselves can be made to feel threatened or vulnerable. Instead, it is widely assumed that researchers operate in a context where, while the research is seen as ‘risky’ and participants are positioned as ‘vulnerable’. These concepts and identities, and the protection that can be afforded because of them through ethics and governance procedures, are not routinely applied to the position occupied by the researcher. As a result, the care of the participant becomes paramount and to a certain extent, it is claimed that self-care for the researcher is now also well attended to. However, Borgstrom and Ellis take debates on researcher sensitivity beyond their usual boundaries to reimagine how it can get underneath the skin of the researcher re-emerging within their everyday lives. Following this, Jones and Murphy address some of the lesser discussed sensitive aspects of the process by considering emotions such as anger and guilt. Using the theoretical concept of emotional labour, they consider the consequences of this during the lifecycle of research. Indeed, unexpected emotions have the potential to result in a privileging of one account over another. Such an impact on knowledge creation may result in some participants being marginalised in the research findings. In the final article, Robb provides new insight into the challenges of mitigating and responding to ‘performative’ aspects of sensitivity as they intersect with the gender of researcher and the researched.

The discussion within and inspired by the articles in this special issue indicate that there is a need to rethink some of the practical structures and support that are in place for ‘sensitive’ research across the entire life course of the research project, and even research careers. As several of the articles indicate, how researchers deal appropriately with sensitive research has to some extent been allocated to the deliberations of ethics committee and demanding individual research reflexivity. Whilst these procedures have been useful in thinking through potential harm to the participant and researcher subjectivities, they are not sufficient in themselves nor fully supportive of the researcher. Here is a non-exhaustive collection of the practical implications raised by the discussions within this special issue:

• Researchers should have access to support – both in terms of research design and emotional – within their organisations from an early stage in the research process and beyond. This is particularly pertinent for, postgraduate students, early career researches, and those otherwise marginalised within academic settings. Examples can include peer-support groups, expert supervision or mentoring, and counselling.
• Funding bodies should be invested in knowing about and financially supporting such activities before committing to research projects. Organisations that regularly fund research that they class as ‘sensitive’ should consider what practical support they offer the researchers they fund both during and after the lifecycle of a project.
• All funders should consider what biases they may have towards research topics that may be considered as sensitive and how this inadvertently affects funding decisions, and by implication, what groups of researchers may be excluded (e.g. those with lived experiences seeking to study topics of personal and professional interest).
• Postgraduate supervisors should receive training on how to support students conducting ‘sensitive research’. Encounters during supervisions can greatly impact how researchers feel about their own work and worth, and influence decision-making around research design, analysis and representation.
• The nature of relationships in research teams can impact the ability to conduct research sensitively. Teams need to make time and energy for developing relationships that generate a level of trust and psychological safety, especially if there is the potential for research topics to reactivate trauma for those involved.
• Research ethics committees and researchers should not classify all projects related to certain topics as ‘sensitive’ by default. Instead there should be a consideration of why, when and from whose perspective a topic may be sensitive and the implications this has for the research and all stakeholders.
• Research ethics committees should also be willing to consider the implications for the research on the researcher when conducting ‘sensitive’ research, but not use this as a reason not to provide a favourable opinion on a proposed project.
• Projects can incorporate practices that support researchers and participants, depending on the context, such as safeguarding procedures within projects and/or operational plans for when a researcher is unwell or for extended periods of leave.
• As academics, we can be more committed in making academia a safe space in which the complexities and emotionality of ‘sensitive’ research and its related sensitivities are di...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• Preface
• 1 Introduction: Unpacking sensitive research: a stimulating exploration of an established concept
• Part One Unpacking ‘sensitivity’: the tyranny of established definitions
• Part Two ‘Sensitive’ Ethics in action: Research encounters and ‘Whose research is this anyway’?
• Part Three ‘The ideal sensitive researcher’: reflexivity, internalisation and the cost to self?
• Index