Physical or sexual attraction plays an important role in shaping a wide range of relationships and in myriad ways. Our primary interest here is in how attraction shapes the qualitative research experience. Close examination of popular sociological ethnographies found that attractiveness is used as a descriptor, and almost always in a distancing…

This article documents the first stage of the qualitative research process: "entering the field." In it, the author, a young graduate student, uses portraiture to describe her journey to find a "research site" and then establish a "research relationship" with this community, a town in rural Arkansas. This portrait…

While engaged in a research project involving the use of visual methods with children, the authors discovered that there are many ethical considerations beyond what could have been predicted at the outset. Some of these considerations are important with respect to research with children in general, while others arise more particularly when using…

In this article we describe some of the challenges and constraints that students face when they engage in qualitative research interviews. We borrow extensively from Ron Pelias' in-depth description of "leaning in" during everyday life encounters. Although he refers to other kinds of relationships, we believe that the similarities…

In this article, I use a Spivakian decolonizing perspective to take simplification to task in two ways--the simplification of methodology with/in grants and the simplification of critique that skirts the impossibility of noncomplicitous research and researchers. I posit that "neoliberal scientism"'s grants culture is colonizing research--narrowly…

This article emanates from an in-depth qualitative study that examined ideological beliefs among Indigenous parents regarding school desegregation and school "choice" policies in South Africa. The author discusses the politics of qualitative research design and methodology along two primary dimensions: decolonizing research and the…

In this article, the author problematizes external, objectified, oversimplified, and mechanical approaches to validity in qualitative research, which endorse simplistic and reductionist views of knowledge and data. Instead of promoting one generalizable definition or operational criteria for validity, the author's "deconstructive validity work"…

Though researcher dilemmas are not new to the pages of "Qualitative Inquiry," we argue that the current contemporary context has both altered and intensified issues associated with conducting qualitative research within sites most affected by more recent social, political, and economic shift. Navigating such sites as researchers poses…

This article draws on the articulation of a value for reflexivity that has accumulated within qualitative methods debates in the past decade. It demonstrates how reflexivity is interwoven with the concept of ethical mindfulness. The argument has developed from a consideration of the ethical dilemmas that were a salient aspect of an ongoing…

Issues of anonymity of place, participants, and visual images are well documented in social science research (Wiles et al., 2008). However, in this article, I move beyond issues of the immediate concerns of anonymity to a wider application that encompasses the position of research participants, the researcher, and that of individuals who are…

In this study, the author analyzes the websites of 32 universities' Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) to explore two specific issues: (a) how individual IRBs define "vulnerable populations," and (b) the guidelines those IRBs offer with respect to participants who may have limited or no English language proficiency. Analysis indicates wide…

Many qualitative researchers have puzzled over the question of how to write more engaging, more communicative texts. "Why" we write, however, is not often part of our scholarly conversations. In this article, I examine the writing process and position writing as a learning tool which enables what researchers know about themselves and their topics.…

The article argues that the emotional framing of interviews plays a major role in shaping the content of interviews. Drawing on the psychoanalytic theory of Jessica Benjamin and Luce Irigaray, the article describes how interviews can be experienced as either conquest or communion. Qualitative researchers typically focus on the cognitively…

In this article, the author revisits an interview with Ava Montalvo--a mother of two living in Albuquerque, New Mexico--which initially confounded her interpretive resources. This reflexive, performative article examines the role of excess as an analytical lens through which to understand maternal subjectivity and elaborates the methodological…

I reread the 50-year-old history of the qualitative inquiry that calls for triangulation and mixed methods. I briefly visit the disputes within the mixed methods community asking how did we get to where we are today, the period of mixed-multiple-methods advocacy, and Teddlie and Tashakkori's third methodological moment. (Contains 10 notes.)