Maintaining good relationships with research participants

Ellison, ER ORCiD: 0000-0002-0865-950XUndertaking the data collection phase of a qualitative research project can be met with excitement and trepidation. Despite the extensive preparation of the project’s research aims, questions and method, the ability to extract the richest possible data will often come down to the relationships built and maintained, and the approaches a student takes, in interacting with study participants. While there has been significant research into the typical challenges associated with the data collection phase including establishing rapport, locating a participant, understanding the culture/language and ‘getting into’ a community, this chapter will discuss these issues through the experiences of an insider in the chosen research field. The chapter will highlight the benefits of establishing, building and maintaining the relationship with the study participants. It is demonstrated that the level of rapport a student can build with those study participants is a critical factor in developing an individual’s research and subsequent work in that field in the future

Autoethnography

Autoethnography is a branch of ethnography that enables a practitioner to also be a researcher and vice versa. While ethnography is concerned with the descriptive documentation of the sociocultural relationships within a given research environment, the researcher remains an observer of the situation under study. Autoethnography enables the researcher to maximize her (his) personal involvement with the action. The researcher’s lived experience is an integral part of the learning; her engagement with the context, stakeholders, and processes, along with her reflections on that engagement, is paramount to the autoethnographic methodology. Autoethnography is considered to have two clear branches: emotive and analytic. Emotive autoethnography seeks to bring the readers to an empathetic understanding of the writer’s experience. Analytic autoethnography allows for the researcher’s engagement in the situation to be included in the analysis, adding to the theoretical understanding of the social processes under study by making more interpretive use of available data. Analytic autoethnography is, therefore, particularly useful for the design phases of community-based action research in areas such as community development, health promotion, and social work. This chapter will provide an overview of methods involved in autoethnography, with focus on analytic autoethnography as an “action-oriented” method for social science researchers. Advantages and limitations will be discussed and illustrated with lived experience from the authors’ study of complex community interventions