Too close for comfort?: ethical considerations around safeguarding the emotional and mental wellbeing of researchers using auto/biographical approaches to investigate ‘sensitive’ topics

ABSTRACT

Auto/biographical narrative research that touches on ‘sensitive’ areas can elicit accounts that researchers may find distressing and threatening to their emotional and psychological health. In this paper we offer a ‘confessional tale’ through which we consider our experiences of investigating a sensitive and painful topic from the perspectives of the Principal Investigator who was intimately acquainted with the field of study because it affected her own family, and of the Research Associate who had no prior experience of the substantive area. We discuss how we dealt with our distress and pain and offer some novel suggestions that other educational researchers using qualitative approaches might adopt to help ensure that their research is ethical in that the wellbeing of researchers, as well as participants, is safeguarded.

KEYWORDS:

• sensitive research
• relational ethics
• ethics of care
• auto/biographical approaches
• researcher well-being
• dementia

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Pat Sikes http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2399-0222

Notes

1 All names are pseudonyms.

Additional information

Funding

This project was supported by Alzheimer’s Society grant R138585. No financial interest or benefit that has arisen from the direct applications of this research.