Cooperation or Co-Optation?: Assessing the Methodological Benefits and Barriers Involved in Conducting Qualitative Research Through Medical Institutional Settings
Restricted accessResearch articleFirst published online May, 2005
Cooperation or Co-Optation?: Assessing the Methodological Benefits and Barriers Involved in Conducting Qualitative Research Through Medical Institutional Settings
In this article, the authors highlight some benefits of and barriers to doing qualitative research in association with hospital-based services. They first describe an ongoing qualitative research project that involves interviewing women about their post-sexual assault medicolegal experiences in hospital-situated sexual assault centers across a large Canadian province. Their methodological journey led them to engage program coordinators at these centers to assist with locating participants and qualified interviewers, and with negotiating the demands of their respective research ethics boards. They outline the ways in which their project was shaped, positively and negatively, by working with them in medical institutions. They conclude by recommending that hospitals and hospital ethics boards counteract tendencies toward paternalism by recognizing the value of feminist qualitative research contributions to the activities of their own sexual assault centers and to the recovery of sexually assaulted women. Such recognition might be productively engaged by adopting an ethics-in-process approach.
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