Trust and Participant Agency in Engaging Hard-to-Reach Populations

Abstract

Multiply body-modified individuals are a hard-to-reach population, not due to their lack of visibility, but due to their distrust of academic researchers. As a result, social entrée and participant trust is crucial. This is achieved through snowball sampling within existing social networks, while also giving participants agency over their data, and subsequent coding. The goal then in working with these populations is to reverse the traditional power dynamic between researcher and researched, and to instead allow participants as much power in the process as possible through co-constructed research. In the case outlined, this was achieved through active listening in the interview, then having participants review their transcripts where they could delete sections they later decided against, and participate in the coding structure and analysis.

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