Who else Needs Protection? Reflecting on Researcher Vulnerability in Sensitive Research

Emotional Labor in Dementia Research

The concept of emotional labor refers to the regulation and management of emotions within the workplace. This labor may involve a dissonance between the emotions that are internally felt and the emotions that can be externally expressed. The concept of emotional labor can be applied to the emotional management that occurs during research often when directly interacting with research participants. These emotions can have a positive role in building rapport and enabling the researcher to understand the participant's world. But equally, it can lead to emotional strain and potentially have a negative impact on researcher well-being. In this paper, we apply the concept of emotional labor to dementia research. While there has been attention paid to ethical issues in dementia research, this has often focused on the impact on the participant and not the researcher. Within this paper, we first draw on the literature to provide an overview of the role of emotional labor in the research context. Within the literature, we identify nine research scenarios where emotional labor might occur within dementia research. We then present three case studies illuminating our experiences of emotional labor within dementia research. These case studies provide illustrative examples of some of the research scenarios identified in the literature. To synthesize the learning from the literature and our case studies, we propose peer-critiqued recommendations for managing emotional labor in dementia research. We conclude by considering the implications for other health researchers.

Ethical challenges in qualitative sociology: a systematic literature review

Qualitative researchers often encounter ethical challenges during their research process. Due to the large number of papers in which researchers reflect on specific and various ethical challenges within their projects, it proves difficult to keep track of them. To capture these reflexive practices, we conducted a literature review of 72 papers in sociology. Our review shows who reflects on research ethics and when and where such reflections occur. We identify 11 ethical issues that sociologists reflect on. Some issues address the challenges of implementing established ethical principles, such as (1) informed consent, (2) voluntary participation, (3) avoiding harm, (4) anonymization, and (5) confidentiality. Others go beyond these principles and refer to (6) the relationship between researchers and participants, (7) power asymmetries, (8) protecting yourself as a researcher, (9) deviant actions, (10) covert research, and (11) leaving the field. Our findings help researchers gain an overview of ethical challenges, enhancing their reflexivity.

Considering Risks to Researchers and Staff in Low-Resource Settings during Public Health Crises: A Proposed Conceptual Model

Human subjects research protections have historically focused on mitigating risk of harm and promoting benefits for research participants. In many low-resource settings (LRS), complex and often severe challenges in daily living, poverty, geopolitical uprisings, sociopolitical, economic, and climate crises increase the burdens of even minimal risk research. While there has been important work to explore the scope of ethical responsibilities of researchers and research teams to respond to these wider challenges and hidden burdens in global health research, less attention has been given to the ethical dilemmas and risk experienced by frontline researcher staff as they perform research-related activities in LRS. Risks such as job insecurity, moral distress, infection, or physical harm can be exacerbated during public health crises, as recently highlighted by the COVID-19 pandemic. We highlight the layers of risk research staff face in LRS and present a conceptual model to characterize drivers of this risk, with particular attention to public health crises. A framework by which funders, institutions, principal investigators, and/or research team leaders can systematically consider these additional layers of risk to researchers and frontline staff is an important and needed addition to routine research proposals and protocol review.

Criminologist or criminal? Liminal spaces as the site for auto/biography

Feminist epistemologies place value on disrupting dominant ways of knowing. Personal experience and struggle can serve as transformative sites of meaning-making. I have lived experience of sex work and of organised crime. In 2018, I endured two crown court trials, both as the wife of the defendant, and as a victim. This article will interrogate the complexities of occupying such liminal spaces and the role of emotion as a way of knowing.