This paper challenges the universal application of saturation across qualitative methodologies. Saturation is often used to justify sample sizes and findings in qualitative research, yet its relevance varies across methodological approaches. Despite extensive debate, there remains a lack of clarity regarding the applicability of saturation to specific qualitative approaches, particularly within health sciences where its use is often expected. This paper offers a critical examination of the idea of saturation from the perspectives of phenomenological research and qualitative content analysis. We argue that saturation should not be treated as a universal marker of quality, as its uncritical use across qualitative methodologies risks methodological mismatch and oversimplification. Instead, we argue that researchers justify sampling and analytical strategies according to the epistemological logic of the chosen method. We call on researchers, editors and reviewers to critically reflect on the use of saturation in evaluation criteria and support methodologically grounded approaches assessments of qualitative research quality.

In this short piece, we argue that flexibility should be recognised as a foundational component of robust and ethical fieldwork design, especially in contexts where researchers are likely to encounter unexpected challenges. Drawing on two case studies from doctoral fieldwork in Indonesia and Vietnam, we examine how unanticipated disruptions to original research plans, which included injury, logistical constraints, and harassment, prompted a re-evaluation of methodological priorities and options. We argue that these adaptations, which were borne of necessity, did not undermine academic rigour but rather enhanced the richness and contextual sensitivity of the research. By sharing our experiences, we advocate for institutional and pedagogical recognition of fieldwork flexibility as a strength, and call for better support mechanisms to help early-career researchers prepare for the complexities of fieldwork.

This article explores the uses of comics as a method in qualitative research, an area of growing interest across the social sciences, arts and humanities. It critically reviews a comprehensive range of studies using the comics medium as part of their methodological approaches to attaining informed consent, communicating with participants (beyond the one-way elicitation of information), transcribing data and disseminating research findings. In analysing these uses of comics not as one codified method but as multiple approaches, this article advocates for greater use of comics as a keyword to better advance a collection of distinct yet connected approaches used across phases of research projects towards divergent methodological objectives. In asking what a given use of comics is being used to do in a given study, this article emphasises’ research participants’ agentic participation in research and highlights the need to problematise assumptions of visual and creative methods as participative.

Social scientists have shown limited interest in documents in their research on institutions, particularly the criminal justice system, which is surprising considering the omnipresence of documents in legal institutions. This article outlines an approach to conducting document analysis, with a particular focus on legal documents. It builds on existing methods but offers unique analytical strategies for researching authoritative texts. The purpose of this article is to inspire and facilitate more research with legal documents. Based on my research on sexual violence, I propose a step-by-step methodological approach to documents in general and a set of analytical strategies to interpret legal documents in particular. The aim is to sketch out a framework that encourages the researcher to reflect on various aspects of documents and to illustrate how to conduct document analysis.

In this arts-based inquiry, we explore how feminist ways of being can shape and reshape the practice of academic review. Drawing on experiences of being reviewed, we story moments of discomfort where we were pushed to “say more” or offer more of ourselves (e.g. about our identities, femininity, and trauma) by academic peers in response to sharing embodied or reflexive work. We focus on key moments when we balked, felt hesitance and/or declined these review requests to generatively consider how academic environments of consumption can cross boundaries and demand disclosure(s). Drawing inspiration from Ahmed's “feminist ear”—a mode of listening through subtext, signaling, and silence—we invite academics engaging with personal, embodied works to rethink review norms that rely on “interrogation.” We surface tensions within academic responsibilities to challenge peers, and suggest review approaches that tune feminist ears to responses that reverberate the source sounds authors choose to offer.

Scholarship on participant observation in the digital era has produced a proliferation of labels—virtual ethnography, digital ethnography, and netnography, among others—that often position digitally attuned methods as specialized departures from ethnography's core. This framing risks obscuring the relevance of digital practices for ethnographers whose research questions do not centrally concern technology. The present article proposes that attention to the multifaceted digital dimensions of social life enhances participant observation even for those who study social processes whose center of gravity is offline. Drawing on a multiyear ethnographic study initiated shortly before the COVID-19 pandemic, I emphasize that much ostensibly ‘in-person’ work unfolds through screens and digital infrastructures. Consciously engaging these environments expands ethnographic insight in three key ways: increasing the surface area of observable interaction, foregrounding participants’ extended social networks, and illuminating collaborative interpretive work among research participants.

This research note presents a critical moment during a doctoral research project in which I was faced with the decision of whether to offer Amazon gift cards to participants. Issues of ethics and justice were at the forefront of this research given its focus on teaching critical economics and the broader political context in which it was undertaken. I begin by contextualizing the critical incident within the research study and detailing the ethical dilemma it raised. Next, I outline the ways in which the dominant literature on research design and methods deals with ethical considerations in social research. I argue that most accounts overlook the potentially serious and lasting harm that may affect individuals and contexts beyond those directly implicated in the study, as illustrated by the Amazon gift card dilemma. I suggest that researchers ought to consider the research integrity of a project in which ethical decision-making is an integral part of the research process. I also propose a more collectivist approach to ethical decision-making in the research community, ending with specific recommendations.

Building upon decades of feminist methodological thinking, the objective of this article is to position caring as a central defining feature of qualitative interviewing within diverse transformative research paradigms. Transformative research designs are those that organize the research process—not just the findings—to catalyze positive social change. We are motivated by the question: how do we optimize the interview interaction’s transformative potential? Specifically, we argue that caring, as an interview ethos and technique, can maximize the interview as a mutually transformative experience for both the researcher and the researched. Using two of our transformative research projects for application, we present a working model of a caring interview, which includes (1) cathexis, (2) responsiveness, and (3) epistemic justice, before, during, and after the temporal boundaries of a qualitative research interview. Cathexis is the act of investing mental and emotional energy into something and can manifest in caring interviews via authentic concern for the well-being of the researched, prolonged relationships, and preparation of interview protocol and interview experience. Responsiveness implies that the researcher must listen to and respond to the desires and needs of the researched communities. It can manifest via honoring the food, time, or location preferences of the interviewee and flexibility in the deployment of the interview protocol. Finally, epistemic justice refers to the equal valuing of individuals as knowers and can manifest in caring interviews via verbal, geographic, and organizational cues from the interviewer. This working model can be used as a planning and reflection tool for researchers invested in transformative projects. The article concludes with a discussion of the implications for individual researchers and universities if they adopt this working model.

The increasing recognition of human entanglement with nonhuman agents, including animals, plants, natural entities, artefacts, and digital technologies, calls for new methodological approaches in qualitative research. This research note introduces being with as a research method. Inspired by Indigenous epistemologies and multispecies ethnography, being with entails a meditative state that opens up spaces for the perception of nonhuman presence. Instead of rationalizing, categorizing, and classifying nonhuman behaviour, being with redirects attention to the more-than-human transformations of human researchers. Bringing together a wide range of existing more-than-human research practices, this text illustrates the many forms being with a variety of nonhuman agents can take. It then examines the question of what being with means for data analysis and the writing process, which are taking place in the research assemblage involving the participation of data, technologies, and text.