Exposing failures, unsettling accommodations

This article aims to augment collective understandings of the ethical complexities of qualitative research, and to encourage more attention to the actual practices of interviewing than has usually been paid in discussions in this area. Drawing on interview transcripts, we offer an analysis of the ways vulnerability may be produced for research participants by the intersection of interview factors (an interview strategy, the interviewer's presence, a line of questioning) with particular discursive and political surrounds. This conceptualization of the conditions of interviewee vulnerability prompts a revisioning of the power that researchers bring to, and exercise in, interviews. In reflecting on interactions with research participants we describe our efforts to use our power wittingly and responsibly

Conceptualization · Engineering ethics · Interview · Political science · Politics · Qualitative research · Semi-structured interview · Social science · Sociology · Engineering · Law · Mental Health and Patient Involvement · Participatory Visual Research Methods · Psychology · Qualitative Research Methods and Ethics · Social Psychology

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