Ethical Research in Reflexive Relationships

Abstract

This article aims to show how reflexivity helps create transparency and dialogue that is required for forming and sustaining ethical research relationships, especially when prior relationships with participants already exist. The article draws on literature relating to ethics and reflexivity and uses two stories, illustrated by conversations with research participants, to demonstrate how ethical issues emerge through conversation when planning research and how participants can use those conversations to inform later ethical decision-making practices. The article also presents literature, theories, and poetic representation that go some way toward explaining and describing the vulnerabilities experienced by researchers when using reflexivity. Reflexivity, although enabling the conduct of ethical relational research, also requires researchers to come from behind the protective barriers of objectivity and invite others to join with us in our learning about being a researcher as well as remaining human in our research relationships.