Proceedings of the 8th World Conference on Qualitative Research

Introduction: Emotionally demanding research (EDR) is a branch of qualitative inquiry that heavily draws from researchers’ psychological, emotional, and physical resources. Additionally, EDR spans a plethora of academic fields such as health, education, and social science, and places researchers at the heart of an often turbulent and challenging research process. Despite recognition of the types and impact of EDR, there is limited empirical work exploring the lived and chronological experiences of qualitative researchers conducting EDR. Goals and methods: Expanding on Kumar and Cavallaro’s (2018) model of researcher self-care, we interviewed 15 expert qualitative researchers with the goal of unveiling their behavioral, psychological, and emotional experiences and the lived effects of conducting EDR at each phase of the research process. Interview data were analyzed using a blend of thematic narrative analysis and holistic-form structural analysis. Results and conclusions: In this paper presentation, we will discuss findings from this research, including how experts communicated their EDR quest through the metaphor of war and how researchers considered vulnerability as a collaborative journey with participants rather than an emotional experience that should be avoided in research. We will also discuss the distinct battles that experts reported during pre-data collection, data collection, and post-data collection, including a sense of duty, bandaging their wounds, and feelings of entrapment respectively. We will also offer recommendations for each phase of the research process and consider these reflections for the fields of health and social sciences in particular. Theoretical reflections will be discussed in relation to researcher self-care, existential-humanistic philosophy, and relational cultural theory, and method implications for future researchers conducting EDR will be shared.