It’s like gossip. Problems and ethical challenges in sociological qualitative research on relations between adult siblings

Abstract

In research on family relations (between mothers and daughters, intimate partners etc.) various research methods are used (individual interviews with family members, dyads, focused group interviews, ethnographic observation) in order to learn the variety of perspectives and experiences of family members. Such an approach enables a researcher to analyze the problem in a more multidimensional way in comparison with a situation when the research is conducted only with one of the family members. However, engaging more research participants, who are often tied to each other with complicated emotional bonds, creates various ethical and methodological challenges. Considering this issue, I refer to my experience in conducting research on the dynamics and forms of adult siblings’ relations through their life course. I conducted interviews with 41 women and 14 men (in 7 cases more than one sibling from a family took part in my research). In the rest of the cases my interviewees rejected the possibility of my contacting their siblings. In this article I discuss issues concerning the recruitment of research participants belonging to the same family, managing data confidentiality when individuals who know each other are interviewed, and the dynamics of power relations between the researcher and the research participants.