Stephanie Anne Shelton

August 6

Qualitative inquiry can create opportunities for people whose experiences and perspectives are often marginalized, overlooked, or misrepresented, directly shaping how their lives and experiences are understood. Yet simply inviting marginalized participants into a study does not ensure a research process that centers their agency, attends to power dynamics, or creates opportunities for them to contribute their experiences on their own terms. The ways researchers frame research processes can reproduce and/or disrupt power dynamics and (unintentional) research-based harms.

This workshop focuses on practical skills and ethical considerations for designing and implementing qualitative research methods that center research participants’ perspectives and needs. We consider how who researchers are and their methodological choices shape what becomes possible within qualitative encounters. Rather than treating participants as sources of data or researchers as neutral facilitators, the workshop explores how research design and interaction might create greater opportunities for participants to contribute their experiences, perspectives, and priorities on their own terms. Together we examine how seemingly routine choices—such as how research questions are framed, which questions are asked, how follow-up questions are posed, how silence or disagreement is handled, and whose contributions are taken up—can shape participants’ agency and the knowledge produced through qualitative inquiry.

Because of their common usage, we concentrate on interviews and focus groups as our primary datatype examples. The workshop combines brief didactic sessions with hands-on activities, examples, discussions, and practical research methods exercises.

Three interconnected areas direct workshop content:

• Recognizing power and positionality:Examining how researcher subjectivities, assumptions, identities, and methodological choices shape qualitative research interactions.
• Designing interviews and focus groups that center participant agency: Developing and revising research questions, interview guides, and focus group protocols to intentionally create meaningful opportunities for participants to contribute, redirect, elaborate, and respond on their own terms.
• Practicing and reflecting on qualitative encounters: Developing strategies for open-ended interviewing and focus-group facilitation, including responding to unexpected answers, silence, disagreement, disclosures, and differences in participation, while attending to cultural, accessibility, ethical, and relational considerations. This workshop segment emphasizes the research encounter itself: how researchers listen, use follow-up questions, respond to unexpected directions, make space for silence and disagreement, and facilitate participation.

To close, we reflect on these interactions and consider how these experiences can lead participants to incorporate points learned into their research designs or facilitation strategies.

Throughout the workshop, we are guided by the central question:

What does it mean to conduct qualitative research with people rather than on or for them?