In qualitative research methods, a researcher attempts to study the lived experiences of society. During the qualitative research, researchers methodically explore the participants’ relationships at the micro level and derive the meanings within the society. The definition of qualitative research method includes analyzing verbal and nonverbal behaviors, observational methods, particularly in ethological and ecological traditions, are essentially qualitative, because the object of the research is to describe spontaneous behavior in relatively unconstrained and, ideally, natural settings (Kuczynski, 2003).

This article reviews the five journal articles in which different methodological aspects of qualitative research are discussed. The papers reviewed are; ‘Decolonizing Ethnography in the Field: An Anthropological Account (Uddin, 2011), Multi-context Engaged Learning and Ethnographic Field Work: Some Notes from the Middle of the Edge (Carlarne, 2011), Emotional Engagements with the Field: a View from Area Studies (Kay & Oldfield, 2011), Research Note: The Silenced Assistant: Reflections of Invisible Interpreters and Research Assistants (Turner, 2010), and The Ethical Challenges of Field Research in Conflict Zones (Wood, 2006). I have raised the issues of researchers’ ethics with the help of other related research articles. The discussions here brought the cases from both general and conflict-affected situations.

While doing qualitative research, Lofland and Lofland (1993) suggested two major questions for consideration. First, having an understanding of whether the place where the research is being conducted is new or has been studied by others earlier. The second one is the process of communication within the research place. This is because Lofland and Lofland (1993) further elaborate that “the communication that happens in some sites is too personal or too sensitive to legitimize anyone studying it, so the researcher has to consider if it would be ethical for anyone to use it for a study”. So these questions raise the key concerns about the ethical standards of the researchers. And these key ethical standards are consent and confidentiality. The researchers may be required to give special attention to the ethical and moral issues in the cross-cultural research because the ethical guidelines of most professions are designed to protect the rights of individual research participants, rather than the rights of a participant’s cultural community as a collective entity (Fontes, 1998).

This paper is focused on the ethics of the researchers. The journal articles discussed here are based on the research approach that the researchers followed and the researchers’ role in authenticating their entire research process. The objective of this paper is to raise an ethical issue during the qualitative research process, which is yet to be addressed. There are challenges in qualitative research in terms of ethics, emotions, and researchers’ positions. My argument here is that the researcher has to face these challenges and dig out the alternatives for validating their research without bias.

Ethics in Qualitative Research

For the research professional, rapport within the community, especially with the research participants, needs to be maintained. Continuous efforts of the researchers are required for developing relations and for getting easy access to the field. Therefore, during the rapport-building phase, a researcher’s role is to negotiate many aspects, like language, culture, and the context for building the relationship to gain access and entry to the field. These negotiating and rapport building processes are more complicated in the cross cultural research “It may require special attention to moral and ethical issues because the ethical guidelines of the most professions are designed to protect the rights of the individual research participants, rather than the participants’ cultural community as a collective entity” (Fontes, 1998). Therefore, researchers have to develop several different strategies and apply them to reach the research participants, build rapport, and gain their trust. These strategies mostly depend on the socio-cultural, geographical, and economic settings and the context of the research participants.

Researchers in developing their research design and methods should always take into account ethical imperatives from the beginning of the project’s development. The design of the field work is more complicated and serious in conflict zones. Ethical dilemmas that confront field researchers working in conflict zones and the extent to which the research procedures can adequately address those dilemmas are matters of discussion. I argue that how the research procedures address many such dilemmas depends critically on the particular conflict setting; “there are some settings where research cannot be ethically conducted and should not be attempted or should be curtailed” (Wood, 2006). In my opinion, in various settings, research procedures can address many dilemmas reasonably well. However, research in conflict-affected areas, the ethical concerns always depends critically on the judgment of the researcher; following abstract rules will not be sufficient.

For field research to be ethical, research subjects must consent to their participation in full understanding of the potential risks and benefits (Kelman, 1972 as cited in Wood, 2006). The well-understood fact is that everyone who participates in the study should have freely consented to participation, without being coerced or unfairly pressurized. This means the research participants should be well-informed about what their participation entails and reassured that the information they have provided will not affect any services they receive in the coming days (Patron and Cochran, 2002). Although it is sometimes even possible to have the dangers of a certain context (especially in a conflict-affected area). It is therefore essential to protect the information source and the identity of the person from whom the information is gathered. In such cases, the identity of the participants (informants) must be protected at all times and not left lying around in notebooks or unprotected computer files. In these contexts, the qualitative researcher has to understand the situation and act accordingly to maintain their ethics.

Wood (2006) further expressed her experience in ethical challenges in field research at conflict conflict-affected area.

“Field research in conflict zones is challenging for both methodological and ethical reasons. In conflict zones the usual imperatives of empirical research (to gather and analyze accurate data to address a relevant theoretical questions) are intensified by the absence of unbiased data from source such as newspapers, the partisan nature of much data compiled by organizations operating in the conflict zone, the difficulty of establishing what a representative sample would be and carrying out a study of that sample, and the obvious logistical challenges.

Agreeing with Wood, the challenges are in each step that begins from entering the field, the collection of data, and the reliability of the data source. The political bias and subjective interpretation of situations in the media may sway the researchers’ standpoint, influencing the research methods and design process.

Thus the experience and the training of the researchers and the research assistants should explicitly prepare them for anticipated ethical dilemmas and also instill ethical principles to guide their judgment in the field for unanticipated situations as well. Taylor (as cited in Spaaija & Geilenkirchenb, 2011) has argued that “it is important to go into fieldwork thinking about potential moral and ethical dilemmas before encountering them in the field”. From this perspective, reflecting on the dilemmas encountered by previous ethnographers is of great significance to researchers, “heightening their caution and awareness while helping them establish as much as possible, ethical guidelines and parameters before entering the field” (Taylor, as cited in Spaaija & Geilenkirchenb, 2011).

Wood in her paper discussed the ethical dilemma she had faced during her research in the conflict area. It is true that, as a qualitative researcher, one has to take informed consent from the research participants. And the participants have the right to know the potential risks and benefits of sharing the information to the researchers. The level of consent and the procedures taken for it depend on the participants. Sometimes it is better to take verbal consent rather than written and documented. Wood suggests, documented written consent brings more challenges than verbal consent if researchers have to travel frequently.

Field Researchers often have to decide whether or not to challenge lies they are told in the course of their work. This is both a practical and ethical dilemma: should the researcher confront the liar, it might result in hostility toward the project and perhaps toward participants. This dilemma occurs with particular force in interviews with perpetrators of violence (Wood, 2006).

Wood here reflected the challenges that researcher has to bear during information collection. Agreeing with her, I would like to add about the limitations of researchers in such situations. It is very difficult to verify the information once you know it is not true. Neither have you disclosed the name of the informants, nor the situation. In such a situation researcher has to predict the situation and interpret the norms in their own way. The challenges are not limited to this phase; sometimes the researcher has to face the loss of life of the informants, and he or she can not disclose the name and the information.

Emotional Engagement in the Field

Fieldwork is a two-way process where relationships and experiences are embodied after both researchers and research subjects (Omel’chenko, 2009, as cited in Kay and Oldfield, 2011). Emotion has also been shown to play an active role in shaping research endeavors at a much broader level in providing the underlying drive and justification for particular areas of research (Trudgill, 2008, as cited in Kay and Oldfield, 2011).

Kay & Oldfield (2011) argued in the article that emotions matter in the long durational field research, and our own (researchers’) reflections need to be considered with regard to the emotional links within the field. A purposeful engagement with the emotional aspects of research would seem to require a level of honesty in the process of writing and interaction. The writers discuss here that the consideration of emotions can leave researchers feeling very uncomfortable.

“The reflexivity is inextricably linked with emotion and emotional responses to events, issues, interactions, people, and places. Reflexivity of this nature is not a prerogative of ‘subjects (that) somehow exist outside of social worlds and cognitively and objectively reflect on the world in a realist fashion’, nor is it limited to late modern or post modern societies, un bound by “traditional” rules, norms, expectations and forms of authority” (Adkinns 2003, as cited in Kay and Oldfield, 2011).

The link between the lived experience and emotional subjectivities of the researcher and their subject(s) is perhaps most obvious where qualitative research methods are employed.

Emotional intimacy with the research field and its subjects, and the developing close and trusting relationship, is specifically positive and needs to be encouraged as a crucial process of data collection. This will lead researchers to involve themselves in a deep immersion and come back with a full and nuanced understanding of a particular culture.

“Qualitative methods of inquiry have often been viewed with ambivalence and a degree of trepidation by researchers”. Wainwright (1997) discusses this with the importance of qualitative research in terms of “sociological thought, addressing questions of power, ideology and subjective meaning” and also some confusion regarding the validity and reliability, particularly when compared with the quantitative research (Wainwright, 1997). It is believed that the researchers are flexible in qualitative research to use the field and apply his/ her theoretical knowledge into the real world (Varga-Dobai, 2012). Thus, the research approach selected by the researcher him/herself sometimes might be overloaded by the emotions. It is because the researcher has to work hard to build relations in the field. Relationships in the field, as elsewhere, can be rewarding, exhilarating, and supportive, but they can equally be draining, embarrassing, and frustrating (Kay & Oldfield, 2011).

Similarly, in the process of field study (especially in an ethnography), the researcher is involved in everyday activities in their natural settings, and collects data using various techniques, primarily using observation (mostly participatory and rarely nonparticipatory). The emotion in this case applies to building rapport with research participants and making the data collection procedures comfortable. Agreeing with Kay and Oldfield, I would like to add that during the ethnography, the researcher has to build strong relations with research participants during their long stay in the field. It creates emotional attachment and has a high risk of introducing bias in the data interpretation. But in my own experience, I mostly found that the emotions of the researchers are always overlooked and ignored in the data interpretation and writing.

“Reflecting on emotional engagements in the field (our own as well as those of or associated with others) may shed light upon structural inequalities and issues of power inherent in the research process, and/ or as part of the context of study, be they about gender, social or professional status, class, race or east west dynamics” (Kay & Oldfield, 2011)

I agree with Kay and Oldfield and put my argument that the researchers’ emotional attachment may sometimes influence the gender, social, and professional divisions. In such cases, the power of researchers is shadowed by other influencing factors, and again, emotions are undermined.

The link between the lived experiences and emotional subjectivities of the researcher and their subjects is perhaps most obvious where qualitative research methods are employed. In the participatory methods which define ethnographic research, for example, emotional intimacy with the research field and its subjects and the cultivation of close and trusting relationships are specifically encouraged as crucial to processes of emersion and the development of full and nuanced understandings of a particular culture (Kay and Oldfield, 2011).

Therefore, the emotional attachment of the researchers to the research field provides opportunities to immerse themselves deeply in the case and bring new insights from it. During the process of data collection, the challenge of confidentiality of the materials gathered and the anonymity of the research subjects is key (Wood, 2006). The process required flexibility to avoid pre-fixed arrangements that are imposed on what people said and did; the focus was normally on a single setting or group and was small-scale; the analysis of the data involved attribution of the meanings of the human actions described and explained (Hammersley & Atkinson, 1995, p. 110).

Once access to the field has been granted and the first steps of data collection are taken, researchers may experience ethical dilemmas that may not have been anticipated in the research plan (Field & Morse, 1992, as cited in Orb, Eisenhauer & Wynadu, 2000).

Researcher’s Position

It has been a long and crucial debate in qualitative research, especially in ethnographic research, regarding the relations between the researchers and the people. “An ethnographer always faces an intellectual dilemma in taking a position in the dichotomy of ‘we’ and ‘they” (Uddin, 2011).

As a qualitative researcher, they often try to shape their field in their natural settings. As “qualitative research seek(s), ―answers to questions from the field that stress how social experience is created and given meaning” (Denzin & Lincoln, 2005, p. 10). Being closer to the community and local people, exploring their perspectives using different tools in the field in the study process, the research tries to maintain objectivity and keep its position clear. As Ospina (2004) has described the qualitative research is a method of inquiry that is used to explore a phenomenon that has not been studied before (and that may be subsequently developed quantitatively). It is applied to add rich details and nuances that illustrate or document existing knowledge of a phenomenon, generated qualitatively for better understanding of a topic by studying it simultaneously (triangulation) or concurrently with both methods (mixing quantitative and qualitative methods at the same time or in cycles, depending on the problem).

Therefore, to understand the social phenomenon, a researcher has to present him/her from the perspective of the actors involved, rather than explaining it from the outside. Being an insider helps the qualitative researcher to understand complex phenomena that are difficult or impossible to approach or to capture as an outsider quantitatively (Ospina, 2004).

Ethnography captures social meanings and ordinary activities of people in naturally occurring settings or fields of study through the collection of data. During the field, the researchers present him/herself as the knowledgeable outsider and as having power, and consider the community people as followers of their plans. Such activities reflect that an ethnographer still represents with “colonial ideology” (Uddin, 2011) in the field while collecting and making meaning of ethnographic data. The researcher, while involved in the field, to collect data, assumes that the process will be undergone in a “systematic manner, without imposing meaning externally” (Brewer, 2000). However, there is a relationship of power between the researcher and the research participants (knowledge as power) in qualitative research. In some cases, the relations are changes in the “colonial domination” (Uddin, 2011) between the researcher and the participants.

Uddin (2011) further explained that the conflict between different communities (ethnicities) sometimes reflected in the impression of the researchers.

“The crisis from the very inception I encountered was identifying my position in ethnography – both as a way of doing field work and as a product of field work. My position can be regarded as neither an insider nor an outsider, rather, I am in between these two traditional categories, which relate to the ethnographer’s positioning in terms of ethnicity and birthplace.”

The position of the researchers cannot be easily specified. If the researcher is from the same community with a different cultural background, then in such a case, there is a contrast in the understanding of the researcher’s position as an insider or an outsider. The researcher’s position as an insider from within the same context versus an outsider from different cultural orientations is the praxis in qualitative research. And this is the reflection of one community versus another (for example, when the researcher is from a community other than the research study, Madhesi versus Pahadiya). Therefore, even while being an insider, the researcher sometimes has to act as an outsider. In such a case, the relation and feelings of ‘we’ and ‘they ‘determine the position of the researcher.

In this context, Uddin (2011) further reflected the researcher’s face crises of identity while positioning him/herself at the conflict-affected community. He pointed out the dilemma of “Within” and “beyond” in the dichotomy of research. Uddin has not only raised questions on the positioning of researchers he has also brought attention to ethical challenges to the researchers in the position. Agreeing with Uddin, I have also experienced difficulties to enter in entering the diversified communities due to the dichotomy of culture. I felt the crisis of representations begin in this stage.

Positionality and Subjectivity of the Research Assistant and/ or Interpreters

All social science researches raise ethical dilemmas to some extent and is riddled with power disparities at a range of scales. There are works of literature available that are well written about the use of a research assistant and/ or an interpreter in cross-cultural research. But very little is found about the relation between researcher and research assistant, and the positionality and subjectivity of the research assistant and interpreter.

Turner (2010) in her article has discussed the experiences of the research assistant and the interpreters from their standpoint. She has brought very important facts and issues for the qualitative researchers in cross-cultural settings. The writer here argued that

“the research assistants/interpreters come to the field with their own preconceptions, values and belief systems just like any researcher, if one believes, as I do, that ‘one’s position within the social world influences how you see it” (Temple and Young, 2004: 164 as cited in Turner 2010).

While the position of the researcher is made visible by authors willing enough to discuss their positionality and reflexivity, the case is different and is not properly discussed in the case of research assistants. Although their roles are very important, the presence of the research assistants/interpreters is consistently ignored at the time of data analysis and interpretation. For the assistants/interpreters at the core of this story, their positionality is silent and strongly influenced by ethnicity.

It is important to bring the voice of the research assistant and/or interpreter themselves, which will help clear their positionality and give a better understanding of their agency. The knowledge and perceptions of the interpreter sometimes influence the research process and the data itself.

“Research assistants have their approaches to dealing with such negotiations that they usually have to devise themselves, on the spot, because, at least in the outset of the field work, it is unlikely that the overseas researcher comprehends a number of the intricacies involved in these negotiations and relationships. Or, as Robson (1994) puts it, ‘it is common for the researcher on entering the research environment to find him/ herself in the role of naïve idiot’ (Turner, 2010)”

Agreeing with Turner, the cultural background determines the individual’s working style and the level of understanding. Therefore, the research assistants, being locals in the research area, express themselves in their way of working. They try to make the situation comfortable and easy to handle for themselves. It may not be such easy and comfortable for the researcher.

Different circumstances arise in the field, which have an emotional effect on the researchers as well as research assistants. In such situations, research assistants have to develop their coping mechanisms, which are locally appropriate. “ The complexity of multiple tasks they undertook is revealed in the nuanced reflections upon their positionality. Giving voice to these research assistants allows us to delve more deeply into the ‘triple subjectivity’ that is ongoing in the fieldwork process” (Turner, 2010).

There are many research studies undertaken with the support of research assistants and interpreters. Though the roles of research assistants are important in multi-cultural contexts, the position of the assistant in qualitative research is never discussed.

Relation of Researchers and Research Assistants

The relationship between the researcher and the research assistant is very important in the field of qualitative research. Without a proper understanding of each other, it is very difficult to work together in the field. The research assistant has to be clear about the objective (purpose) of the research. He or she has to be familiar with the research methodology, methods, and the tools applied during the data collection. The researcher and the research assistant must have a similar understanding of the context and the culture of the research site, research participants, the required information, and the way of asking questions.

Turner (2010) in her article emphasized the friendly relationships between researchers and research assistants/ interpreters during qualitative field work. Ignoring the positionality and subjectivity of the research assistant/ interpreters, the interviews and the data collection process can be influenced. The writer has raised questions regarding the ”triple subjectivity” among local research assistants/ interpreters, foreign researchers, and the research participants. The role of the research assistant and the interpreter (from within the community) is rather important in the multi-cultural, multi-context ethnographic field work.

Role of Researchers in Multi-Context Engaged Learning

Carlarne (2011) in his article described the challenges he has faced in the ethnographic fieldwork in transnational networks. He writes that,

“in seeking to address place and people in my fieldwork, I was faced with two key challenges that are of growing significance not only within my own discipline of anthropology, but also across the social sciences. The first was how to conduct field work within highly dispersed transnational networks while maintaining the necessary intimacy and depth.”

Within the dispersed cultural settings and diversified people contexts it is tough to researchers to follow systematic mono cultural research procedures. In such cases, complexities arise in terms of culture, nationality, languages and many others during the field research.

Carlarne (2011) further elaborated his challenges, “the second challenge centered on what …the process of conducting research among people who are in many ways similar to oneself.”

The writer argued that he had responded to the above-mentioned challenges in his methodological way, “multi-context engaged learning” (Carlarne 2011). However, this is not only the methodological requirement of multi/ transnational research, but it is also equally relevant in the diversified cultural contexts of research sites. The writer claimed;

I found the ‘engaged learning’ as mentioned in the articles is a type of in-depth observation conducted by researchers. As Coffey (1999) mentioned, the role of the researcher as an observer, without participation, demonstrates the passive roles of the researcher. However,I think the researcher has to be an active participant while observing, then only s/he can dig out the real meaning of the context.

Ethnography demands a prolonged and in-depth study of the site; however, the multi-context research cannot manage such time and effort. The writer claimed that he managed it by building relations with members. Disagreeing with the writer, I argue that such a relation can work only at the organizational level (as in the article), however, it is not fit for the community level.

CONCLUSION

I have discussed here the challenges and dilemmas faced by the researchers in the field during qualitative research. I have discussed here how an ethical challenge emerges and what can be done in the field to overcome these challenges. I also tried to bring out the issue of research assistant and their identities while positioning the researchers. The dichotomy between the researcher and the research participants is also a factor to deal with, or proper positioning.

Emotions are important factors for consideration while doing a prolonged field study. The emotions of the researchers can influence the data and the research findings, which is also an ethical issue.

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