Forum: Qualitative Social Research  

Wolff-Michael Roth,Hella von Unger

In this article, we provide a brief introduction to the special issue on research ethics in qualitative research. We describe the general context within which our idea emerged to organize a special issue and present its design and, for purposes of transpa... see more

Wolff-Michael Roth

Constructivist (constructionist) epistemologies focus on ethics as a system of values in the mind—even when previously co-constructed in a social context—against which social agents compare the actions that they mentally plan before performing them. This ... see more

Dvora Yanow,Peregrine Schwartz-Shea

No systematic assessment exists that justifies the extension of ethics regulations to non-experimental social science research. Instead, three studies—by MILGRAM, HUMPHREYS, and ZIMBARDO—are repeatedly cited to support such regulation, based on their use ... see more

Monique Antoinette Guishard,Alexis Halkovic,Anne Galletta,Peiwei Li

As qualitative researchers based in the United States, we theorize and ground ethical issues within our work as inherent to the continuum of methods, epistemologies, and research relationships. Through collective and transgressive reflexivity, we write as... see more

Alan Santinele Martino,Ann Fudge Schormans

We critically discuss how practices of ethical governance through university research ethics committees can contribute to the silencing of people labeled with intellectual disabilities through the reproduction of discourses of vulnerability and protection... see more

Valerie Webber,Fern Brunger

Research Ethics Boards (REBs) typically focus on ensuring the safety of participants. Increasingly, the risk that research poses to researchers is also discussed. Should REBs involve themselves in determining the degree of allowable researcher risk, and i... see more

Elisabeth Reitinger,Barbara Pichler,Barbara Egger,Bente Knoll,Birgit Hofleitner,Petra Plunger,Gert Dressel,Katharina Heimerl

In this contribution, we present an empirical description and theoretical reflection of our experience with ethical questions in qualitative research involving people with dementia. The participants in the project "Dementia on the Move: Study and Recommen... see more

Bree Akesson,David A. "Tony" Hoffman,Samia El Joueidi,Dena Badawi

In this article we examine the ethical implications of a qualitative research study exploring the everyday mobilities of Syrian families displaced in Lebanon. The multiple methods of data collection—collaborative family interviews, children's drawing and ... see more

Cordula Dittmer,Daniel F. Lorenz

In this article we discuss ethical questions of social science disaster research. We assume that disaster research has to confront ethical issues in a special way, since its main field of research is often extreme suffering and vulnerability. Because such... see more

Sarah Fichtner,Hoa Mai Tr?n

In the ethnographic study "Everyday Life of Young Children in Accommodation Centers for Refugees," we accompanied over an eight-month period children and their families in collective accommodation centers in Berlin. Through participant observation, formal... see more

Adrianna Danuta Surmiak

In this article, I analyze the ways researchers manage the issue of confidentiality in studies with vulnerable research participants in the Polish context, which is characterized by a relatively low degree of ethics and data protection legislation in the ... see more

Holger Knothe

Holocaust education always bears a moral dimension. Thus, ethical issues, understood as reflection on morals, always are immanent in sociological research on Holocaust education from its very beginning. In this article I therefore reflect on research ethi... see more

Irini Siouti

In this article, I am dealing with ethical challenges in biographical research drawing on my research experiences in the context of a study in the field of political participation. In the first part, I discuss general ethical questions in biographical res... see more

Thirusha Naidu,Neil Prose

Ethical considerations in communicating results to participants in community-based qualitative research are scrutinized less than in medical or genetics research. We report on ethical issues considered in planning, preparing and returning of study finding... see more

Caroline Meier zu Biesen

Taking into account the impact of global power relations with regard to health care, I investigated, as part of a medical-anthropological study, the introduction of a new (now-world-leading) anti-malaria drug in Tanzania. In so doing, I was confronted wit... see more

Nicolas Legewie,Anne Nassauer

Since the early 2000s, the proliferation of cameras in devices such as mobile phones, closed-circuit television (CCTV), or body cameras has led to a sharp increase in video recordings of human interaction and behavior. Through websites that employ user-ge... see more

Maximilian Krug,Svenja Heuser

Audio-visual recording of human interaction constitutes the empirical foundations of research in many social science disciplines. The cooperation and interactive coordination of participants is at the center of qualitative analyses and is often recorded s... see more

Florian Eßer,Miriam Sitter

Participatory approaches are currently used in qualitative research accompanied by reflections on the specific challenges to research ethics that emerge from these approaches. In the special case of participatory research with children, special ethical di... see more

Katharina Miko-Schefzig,Cornelia Reiter

In this article, we reflect on the ethical implications of a participatory security research project that focuses on police detention centers in Austria, that is, prisons run by police instead of the judiciary. In this project, we work together, on the on... see more

Jessica Nina Lester,Allison Daniel Anders

In this article, we engage with some of the ethical challenges we faced during a four-year postcritical ethnography that focused on the resettlement experiences of Burundians with refugee status living in southern Appalachia in the United States.We discus... see more

Amber Gazso,Katherine Bischoping

In Canada, social scientists are accountable to ethical guidelines, including the minimization of harm. Simultaneously, they are accountable to an academic community. But what of those moments in the researcher-participant relationship when these principl... see more

Will Carl van den Hoonaard

The medical model of research ethics codes operates from a privileged perspective. The reaction of social researchers spans the broad spectrum, from deference to rebellion. In this contribution, I explore an approach that would yield a move away from adve... see more

Hella von Unger

The situation of refugees is characterized by legal, economic and social vulnerabilities that generate particular challenges with regard to research ethics. The limited rights, precarious living conditions and high level of dependency in social interactio... see more

Fabio Balli

In this article I discuss how participatory action research (PAR) and game jams can be mutually enriching activities to achieve social transformation. PAR is a collaborative method where researchers and participants go through a cycle of reflection and ac... see more

Oliver Dimbath,Michael Ernst-Heidenreich,Matthias Roche

Theoretical sampling is an alternative to statistical sampling in social science that is compatible with genuinely qualitative research. It focuses on integrating the process of analyzing data with the process of selecting the cases or units to be examine... see more

João Leite Ferreira Neto

In this article, I analyze the methodological contributions of Michel FOUCAULT, highlighting his affinity with qualitative strategies of research in the human and social sciences. I propose a theoretical study on the subject, working with historical and c... see more

Theresa Lempp,Mandy Glöckner,Nora Krzywinski,Nadine Fischer,Hannah Zimmermann,Katharina Tampe

Within the framework of ethnography, field access plays an essential role for the progress and success of research projects using such a methodology. Based on a gender studies project in which we analyzed the change of gender arrangements (LENZ & ADLER, 2... see more

Claudia Lenz,Peter Schröder

This article is the result of an interdisciplinary endeavor to study the topic of historical consciousness, in which  theoretical and methodological approaches of memory research (an interdisciplinary discipline in itself) and conversation analysis (... see more

Joseph Levitan,Julia Mahfouz,Deborah L. Schussler

In this article, we examine a qualitative interview and analytical technique for exploring the influences of identities on an individual's experiences. The technique, pragmatic identity analysis (PIA), relies upon a collaborative, reflective, contextually... see more

Sarah MacKenzie-Dawson

Poetic inquiry offers the opportunity to become intimate with those multiple facets of self that shape our understanding. However, as scholars, even when we engage in creative forms of inquiry, we often find ourselves driven to ignore certain aspects of o... see more

Phillip Allen Olt,Eric D Teman

While higher education becomes increasingly reliant upon technology to deliver instruction, technological failures profoundly affect faculty members and students. We used duoethnography to explore the student-instructor dynamic during persistent technolog... see more

Janani Umamaheswar

In this article, I discuss the process of conducting research with two vulnerable and hard-to-reach populations (homeless and incarcerated men) in three research locations characterized by varying levels of gatekeeping: a prison, public streets in an urba... see more

Matthias Völcker,Alexander Bruns

In this article we address visualized self-presentation, which is colloquially described as a "selfie." More precisely, we deal with individual and group-related meanings of this pictorial practice as well as its relevance in the communicative event from ... see more

Dirk vom Lehn

"Photography and Society," edited by Thomas S. EBERLE contributes to the burgeoning debates about visuality and visual perception. The 25 chapters of the volume draw on Alfred SCHÜTZ's phenomenology to consider photography as a social phenomenon. They are... see more

Craig Whisker

"Situational Analysis: Grounded Theory After the Interpretive Turn" is the second edition [2E] of Adele CLARKE's inspirational 2005 book [1E], where this new approach to qualitative research first appeared in the tradition of grounded theory methodology [... see more