Nicola Turner
Dilemmas and dissonance in dealing with expected emotions in sensitive research
This paper reports on a qualitative study of young people’s experiences of living with a parent at the end of life. Both the context of the research (parental death) and the perceived vulnerability of participants (young people) raised expectations of the study being emotionally charged for participants and the researcher. In this paper, I explore the particular manifestation of emotion that was expected as a consequence of the research being defined as sensitive. I then outline the research dilemmas engendered by the pre-emptive characterisation of expected emotions. I argue that addressing expected emotion risks undermining the need to maintain a state of ethical mindfulness towards the unique emotional composition of a research encounter and substitutes adherence to process for a proper assessment of researcher competence. The emphasis on expected emotion during the early stages of a research study may raise anxiety in the early career researcher and impact on data collection. Furthermore, reflexivity as a tool for the conduit of expected emotion is poorly defined in practice and potentially increases the vulnerability of the researcher in the absence of a well-defined support structure. Finally, I discuss the dissonance experienced when expected emotions are not encountered. I draw on my experience of conducting a PhD study on young people living with a parent at the end of life to explore the incongruence between expected and expressed emotion and to consider how attending to emotional dissonance may enhance data analysis.
Tom Grant
'You always ask us how we feel?' : Uncovering emotions in research with young people as they think, plan and dream about their futures
Hope can be regarded by many as a transformative emotion which seeks something better (Ahmed 2010). My research explored working class young people’s aspirations towards the future and looked to investigate participation to higher education for those from underrepresented groups. For this research I used a range of participatory and creative techniques (e.g. rap, photovoice, mapping) with young people in school years 8 and 10. In this paper I explore how investigating aspiration as a form of hope uncovered various emotions in young people from those which can be considered hopeful and transformative to those which are more fearful and anxious in nature. I highlight some of the methodological ways in which I collected emotional data in the field (e.g. imaginative drawings). I argue that engaging with emotions in research is often a step into the unknown. What can be shared by participants and seen and observed by the researcher can often be superficial and yet I argue research which (expectedly or unexpectedly) considers emotions enables an understanding of the inner workings of people’s lives to emerge. Underneath the superficial social expectations which participants might share, often reveals a complex and messy social reality to people’s lives which is far removed from a nice, tidy social (Latour 2005). Here hopes and fears collide and social expectation clash with individual realism. Methodologically this can be challenging. I finish by questioning and reflecting on my role as researcher and problematize what it meant to engage with participants in an environment where emotions were affective and where I often found myself caught in the transmission of emotion.
Dilemmas and dissonance in dealing with expected emotions in sensitive research
This paper reports on a qualitative study of young people’s experiences of living with a parent at the end of life. Both the context of the research (parental death) and the perceived vulnerability of participants (young people) raised expectations of the study being emotionally charged for participants and the researcher. In this paper, I explore the particular manifestation of emotion that was expected as a consequence of the research being defined as sensitive. I then outline the research dilemmas engendered by the pre-emptive characterisation of expected emotions. I argue that addressing expected emotion risks undermining the need to maintain a state of ethical mindfulness towards the unique emotional composition of a research encounter and substitutes adherence to process for a proper assessment of researcher competence. The emphasis on expected emotion during the early stages of a research study may raise anxiety in the early career researcher and impact on data collection. Furthermore, reflexivity as a tool for the conduit of expected emotion is poorly defined in practice and potentially increases the vulnerability of the researcher in the absence of a well-defined support structure. Finally, I discuss the dissonance experienced when expected emotions are not encountered. I draw on my experience of conducting a PhD study on young people living with a parent at the end of life to explore the incongruence between expected and expressed emotion and to consider how attending to emotional dissonance may enhance data analysis.
Tom Grant
'You always ask us how we feel?' : Uncovering emotions in research with young people as they think, plan and dream about their futures
Hope can be regarded by many as a transformative emotion which seeks something better (Ahmed 2010). My research explored working class young people’s aspirations towards the future and looked to investigate participation to higher education for those from underrepresented groups. For this research I used a range of participatory and creative techniques (e.g. rap, photovoice, mapping) with young people in school years 8 and 10. In this paper I explore how investigating aspiration as a form of hope uncovered various emotions in young people from those which can be considered hopeful and transformative to those which are more fearful and anxious in nature. I highlight some of the methodological ways in which I collected emotional data in the field (e.g. imaginative drawings). I argue that engaging with emotions in research is often a step into the unknown. What can be shared by participants and seen and observed by the researcher can often be superficial and yet I argue research which (expectedly or unexpectedly) considers emotions enables an understanding of the inner workings of people’s lives to emerge. Underneath the superficial social expectations which participants might share, often reveals a complex and messy social reality to people’s lives which is far removed from a nice, tidy social (Latour 2005). Here hopes and fears collide and social expectation clash with individual realism. Methodologically this can be challenging. I finish by questioning and reflecting on my role as researcher and problematize what it meant to engage with participants in an environment where emotions were affective and where I often found myself caught in the transmission of emotion.