“Just let those crack babies die!”: Reflections on the usefulness of distressing statements in qualitative research
Location
1053
Format Type
Event
Format Type
Paper
Start Date
January 2018
End Date
January 2018
Abstract
Distressing statements arise often in health care research. Study participants share stories that are distressing to hear or express views that seem offensive. As a rookie researcher, I found these events difficult and epoché seemed beyond reach. Distressing stories left me emotionally shaken and it was hard to keep myself from judging people for offensive comments.
With reflection, I learned to “pivot” distressing statements to extract a core value or issue where I could find impartiality. To reach epoché, I first had embrace what had been said as well as my feelings about it. I learned to appreciate these events for their capacity to deepen analysis in the thorniest topics in health care by surfacing core elements. For example, the person who said “just let those crack babies die” helped unlock my understanding of conceptual relationships in how people think about health care. It begins with the idea that “deservingness” plays a role in how we think about health care access: when do we believe that people deserve health care resources? Deservingness seems to hinge on the interplay of costs and perceived personal responsibility, not medical severity or treatability.
I will share strategies for pivoting such as listening for the visceral reaction as a signal that a pivot may be available; using distressing statements as codes or themes; examining how the distressing statement arose logically from prior discussion; and cross-walking distressing content with conceptual frameworks.
“Just let those crack babies die!”: Reflections on the usefulness of distressing statements in qualitative research
1053
Distressing statements arise often in health care research. Study participants share stories that are distressing to hear or express views that seem offensive. As a rookie researcher, I found these events difficult and epoché seemed beyond reach. Distressing stories left me emotionally shaken and it was hard to keep myself from judging people for offensive comments.
With reflection, I learned to “pivot” distressing statements to extract a core value or issue where I could find impartiality. To reach epoché, I first had embrace what had been said as well as my feelings about it. I learned to appreciate these events for their capacity to deepen analysis in the thorniest topics in health care by surfacing core elements. For example, the person who said “just let those crack babies die” helped unlock my understanding of conceptual relationships in how people think about health care. It begins with the idea that “deservingness” plays a role in how we think about health care access: when do we believe that people deserve health care resources? Deservingness seems to hinge on the interplay of costs and perceived personal responsibility, not medical severity or treatability.
I will share strategies for pivoting such as listening for the visceral reaction as a signal that a pivot may be available; using distressing statements as codes or themes; examining how the distressing statement arose logically from prior discussion; and cross-walking distressing content with conceptual frameworks.
Comments
Breakout Session B