What is it about?
Certain people and experiences are excluded from sensitive qualitative interviews because of power imbalances, negative past experiences and negative expectations. We show how our study recruited a diverse and hard-to-reach sample using trauma-informed and relational approaches.
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Why is it important?
Most qualitative research about gender-based violence in higher education explores the experiences of white, majority students. But we know that staff and students from minority groups are at higher risk of gender-based violence. This article shows how we recruited to include international staff and students, racial and ethnic minorities, those with disabilities and those who had not spoken about the experience before.
Perspectives
During my PhD, I found it very difficult to recruit participants to qualitative interviews about life experiences of violence. In this article, we share some of the considerations that helped us to reach people who might have good reason not to trust researchers. I really hope these ideas will help other researchers to be more trauma-informed, and ultimately to create a better evidence base for acting to end discrimination and social injustice.
Carol Ballantine
University of Galway
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Research relationalities: trauma-informed principles for recruiting hidden and hard-to-reach participants to sensitive interviews, Qualitative Research Journal, August 2026, Emerald,
DOI: 10.1108/qrj-05-2026-0244.
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