Humanizing Qualitative Methods

The foundations of qualitative methods—designing research questions, selecting research populations and/or field sites, technical advice on data collection, and how to approach data analysis—have largely sat amongst privileged scholars, individuals who either hold dominant identities (e.g., White, cisgender, male) and/or have access to an abundance of resources and time. Less attention has been given to the complex identities of qualitative researchers and the populations they study, and how these identities inform experiences of qualitative data collection. In this process, scholars learning about qualitative methods can come to see the work as a disembodied, disconnected experience that does not value who we are, how we do this research, who we are actually studying, and the implications of those intersections. In presenting on a book project featuring theoretical reflections from seven interdisciplinary qualitative and ethnographic researchers and their field work, we challenge this predominant framing of qualitative methods by providing applied examples that reveal how critical it is to center humanity in qualitative methods: through considering the tensions and apprehensions of researcher positionality, addressing ethical questions and emotions that emerge in fieldwork. Each principle on centering humanity in qualitative methods is illuminated through qualitative case studies, with examples ranging from reflections on how participants' engaged with the racial identity of a researcher, how a woman ethnographer studying street vending navigated longterm relational experiences with majority men participants, and how a researcher challenged traditional approaches to research with young people experiencing homelessness through play- and arts- based approaches to qualitative research design.