This book is a comprehensive guide to the methodological, ethical and practical issues involved in undertaking research on sensitive topics. Raymond M Lee explores the reasons why social research may be politically or socially contentious: its relation to issues of social or political power; its capacity to encroach on people's lives; and its potentially problematic nature for the researcher. Issues examined include: the choice of methodologies for sensitive research; problems of estimating the size of hidden populations; questions of sampling, surveying and interviewing; and sensitivity in access and the handling of data. The book also discusses the political and ethical issues at stake in the relations between the researcher and the researched, and in the disclosure, dissemination and publication of research.

This book seeks to support social science researchers who interact with vulnerability and/or sensitivity in the context of their research. Whilst there has been some important debate about the theoretical, methodological and ethical issues of conducting research on sensitive topics, and/or with vulnerable populations, the number of scholarly publications focused solely on these topics is limited and not up to date. The book intends to fill this gap by providing various research experiences, as well as the elements that characterize them. The articles selected for this book intend, first and foremost, to stimulate reflexivity amongst the use of the concepts of sensitive topics and vulnerable groups, and to provide tools that will allow researchers to improve their research practices The book integrates several articles that explore a wide range of dilemmas that, to a certain extent, might allow the reader to access the backstage of this type of research. The reader will find here a rich and fruitful space for theoretical and empirical reflection, where several social science researchers with different backgrounds share their experiences and research paths in a rigorous and creative way.

The term ‘sensitive research’ is applied to a wide range of issues and settings. It is used to denote projects that may involve risk to people, stigmatising topics, and/or require a degree of sensitivity on behalf of the researcher. Rather than take the notion of ‘sensitive research’ for granted, this collection unpacks and challenges what the term means. This book is a collective endeavour to reflect on research practices around ‘sensitive research’, providing in-depth explorations about what this label means to different researchers, how it is done – including the need to be sensitive as a researcher – and what impacts this has on methods and knowledge creation. The book includes chapters from researchers who have explored a diverse range of research topics, including sex and sexuality, death, abortion, and learning disabilities, from several disciplinary perspectives, including sociology, anthropology, health services research and interdisciplinary work. The researchers included here collectively argue that current approaches fail to adequately account for the complex mix of emotions, experiences, and ethical dilemmas at the heart of many ‘sensitive’ research encounters. Overall, this book moves the field of ‘sensitive research’ beyond the genericity of this label, showing ways in which researchers have in practice addressed the methodological threats that are triggered when we uncritically embark on ‘sensitive research'. The chapters in this book were originally published in the International Journal of Social Research Methodology and the journal Mortality.

Social scientists are increasingly called upon to carry out research on topics that are `sensitive' in the sense that they deal with behaviour that is intimate, discreditable or incriminating. Such topics not only pose difficult technical problems, but also raise questions regarding the ethics and politics of research. Aiming to acquaint researchers with the tools and experiences of colleagues in various fields on methods of researching these topics, distinguished researchers from across the social sciences explore such issues as cross-cultural research, disclosure and the dissemination of research findings, feminist methodologies and self-censorship.

This book critically examines the potential of, and suggests ways forward in, harnessing a versatile and powerful method of research - focus groups. The book challenges some of the emerging orthodoxies and presents accessible, insightful and reflective discussions about the issues around focus group work. The contributors, an impressive group of experienced researchers from a range of disciplines and traditions, discuss different ways of designing, conducting and analyzing focus group research. They examine sampling strategies; the implications of combining focus groups with other methods; accessing views of `minority' groups; their contribution to participatory or feminist research; use of software packages; discourse anal

This book takes as its starting point the particular considerations and sensitivities of being a researcher faced with a subject group at the margins of society, and explores the ethical, practical, and methodological implications of working with such groups. Author Pranee Liamputtong explores qualitative methods using examples, drawn from around the world, and from the wide variety of contexts that might count as 'researching the vulnerable'. Numerous salient points for the conduct of research within vulnerable groups of people, including ethical and moral issues, are considered, and discussed in the context of sensitive and innovative research methods.