2. STRUCTURE OF THE CHAPTER
• What is sensitive research?
• Sampling and access
• Ethical issues in sensitive research
• Researching powerful people
• Researching powerless and vulnerable people
• Asking questions
3. THE IMPORTANCE OF SENSITIVITY
• The researcher has to be sensitive to the
context, the cultures, the participants, the
consequences of the research on a range of
parties, the powerless, the powerful, and
people’s agendas.
4. WHAT MAKES RESEARCH SENSITIVE?
• Consequences for the participants and others;
• Contents, e.g. taboo, negative or emotionally
charged areas;
• Situational and contextual circumstances;
• Intrusion into private, intimate spheres and deep
personal experience;
• Potential sanction, risk or threat of stigmatization,
incrimination, costs or career loss to the
researcher, participants or others, e.g. groups
and communities;
• Impingement on political alignments;
5. WHAT MAKES RESEARCH SENSITIVE?
• Penetration of personal defences;
• Cultural and cross-cultural factors and inhibitions;
• Fear of scrutiny and exposure;
• Threat to the researcher and to the family
members and associates of those studied;
• Methodologies and conduct, e.g. when junior
researchers conduct research on powerful
people, when men interview women, when senior
people are involved, where access and
disclosure are difficult.
6. THREE AREAS OF SENSITIVE
RESEARCH (Lee, 1993)
• Intrusive threat (probing into areas which are
‘private, stressful or sacred’);
• Studies of deviance and social control, i.e. which
could reveal information that could stigmatize or
incriminate;
• Political alignments (e.g. of rich, powerful and
famous).
7. SAMPLING AND ACCESS
• It may be difficult to assess the size of the
population from which the sample is to be
drawn, as members of particular groups may not
want to disclose their associations or expose
themselves to public scrutiny.
• People may not wish to reveal their membership
of groups or their own activities, as these may
be illicit, critical of others, unpopular, threatening
to their own professional security, deviant and
less frequent than other activities.
8. SAMPLING AND ACCESS
• Access may be a major obstacle.
• How do researchers gain access to truants,
teenage mothers, bullies and victims, drug
users, solvent abusers in school students, or
alcohol and medication use in teachers, or
family relationship problems brought about by
the stresses of teaching?
• Gatekeepers have a powerful function, in
controlling, blocking or gaining access; what to
offer gatekeepers, or how to go round them?
9. GAINING ACCESS INVOLVES . . .
• Gaining access to schools and teachers;
• Gaining permission to conduct the research;
• People vetting which data can be used;
• Finding enough willing participants for the
sample;
• Schools/institutions/people not wishing to divulge
information about themselves;
• Schools’ fear of criticism/loss of face or
reputation;
• Schools/institutions not wishing to be identifiable,
even with protections guaranteed;
• Local political factors that impinge on the
school/educational institution;
10. GAINING ACCESS INVOLVES . . .
• Teachers’/participants’ fear of being identified/
traceable, even with protections guaranteed;
• Fear of participation by teachers (e.g. if they say critical
matters about the school or others they could lose their
contracts);
• Unwillingness of teachers to be involved because of
their workload;
• The headteacher/principal deciding on whether to
involve the staff, without consultation with the staff;
• The sensitivity of the research – the issues being
investigated;
• The power/position of the researcher (e.g. whether the
researcher is a junior or senior figure in education).
11. SAMPLING STRATEGIES IN
SENSITIVE RESEARCH (Lee, 1993)
• List sampling (looking through public domain
lists of e.g. recent divorces)
• Multi-purposing (using an existing survey to
reach populations of interest)
• Screening (targeting a particular location and
canvassing within it)
• Outcropping (going to a particular location
where known members of the target group
congregate or can be found, e.g. a school
staffroom)
12. SAMPLING STRATEGIES IN
SENSITIVE RESEARCH (Lee, 1993)
• Servicing (offering some sort of service in return
for participation)
• Professional informants (e.g. police, doctors,
priests, social workers, medics, teachers,
counsellors)
• Advertising (to reach a wide population)
• Networking (snowball sampling)
13. ETHICAL ISSUES IN SENSITIVE RESEARCH
• ‘Guilty knowledge’ and ‘dirty hands’.
• Protection of individuals versus the public’s right to
know.
• Covert or overt research, deception and betrayal.
• Breaching informed consent.
• Whose interests is the researcher serving?
• Whose side is she/he on?
• Are participants safe? Are guarantees of
confidentiality and non-traceability real or possible?
• What if it is not possible to conceal identities?
• What if the research yields negative findings?
• What to do with useful ‘off the record’ data?
14. RESEARCHING POWERFUL PEOPLE
• How to gain and sustain access;
• How much are the participants might disclose/withhold;
• What is on and off the record;
• How to prepare for interviews with powerful people;
• How to probe and challenge powerful people;
• How, and whether to gain informed consent;
• How to balance the interviewer’s and interviewees’
agendas;
• The status of the researcher vis-à-vis the participants;
• Who should conduct interviews with powerful people;
• How neutral/accepting to be with participants;
• Whether to identify the participants in the reporting;
• How to balance the public’s right to know and the
individual’s right to privacy; what is in the public interest.
15. RESEARCHING THE POWERLESS AND
VULNERABLE
• How to gain and sustain access;
• How much are the participants likely to disclose or
withhold;
• What is on and off the record;
• Where the interviews/data collection will take place;
• How to probe powerless and vulnerable people;
• How to ensure non-maleficence and beneficence,
dignity and respect;
• How to avoid further stigmatization, negative
stereotyping, and marginalization;
• How to act in the interests of the participants;
• How, and whether to gain informed consent;
16. RESEARCHING THE POWERLESS AND
VULNERABLE
• Overt or covert research, with or without deceit;
• How to conduct interviews that balance the interviewer’s
and interviewees’ agendas;
• How to equalize status between the researcher and the
participants;
• How to ensure inclusiveness of participants;
• Who should conduct interviews with powerless and
vulnerable people;
• What protections are there for the participants;
• Whether to identify the participants in the reporting;
• How to balance the public’s right to know and the
individual’s right to privacy; what is in the public interest.
17. ASKING QUESTIONS
• As a general rule, the more sensitive is the
research, the more important it is to conduct
face-to-face interviews for data collection.
• Open questions may be preferable to closed
questions.
• Longer questions may be preferable to shorter
questions.
• Enable respondents to answer in their own
words.
• Use familiar words.
• Use real-life examples.
• Plan how to handle emotive topics.
18. ASKING QUESTIONS
• Consider: the characteristics of the researcher
(e.g. sex, ethnicity, race, age, status, clothing,
appearance, rapport, background, expertise,
institutional affiliation, political affiliation, type of
employment or vocation).
• Females may feel more comfortable being
interviewed by a female;
• Males may feel uncomfortable being interviewed
by a female;
• Powerful people may feel insulted by being
interviewed by a novice research assistant.
• Anticipate difficulties in the interview
and plan how to overcome them.
