“ … it’s almost therapeutic, right? Because it’s almost like that session that I never had”: gay men’s accounts of being a participant in HIV research

Abstract

Limited research has explored how gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men describe the impact of their involvement in HIV and sexual health research. We enrolled 166 gay and bisexual men who tested HIV-negative at a community sexual health clinic in Vancouver, British Columbia, into a year-long mixed methods study. Thirty-three of these participants who reported recent condomless anal intercourse were purposively recruited into an embedded qualitative study. Analysis revealed rich accounts of the self-described, interrelated impacts of study participation: (1) pride in contribution and community involvement (e.g., as a rationale for enrolment and an outcome of participation); (2) how one thinks about sexual behaviours and partnerships (e.g., encouraging reflection on the types and amount of sex they have had; in some cases the methods of quantitative data collection were said to have produced feelings of guilt or shame); and (3) experiencing research as a form of counselling (e.g., qualitative interviews were experienced as having a major therapeutic component to them). Our analysis underscores the importance of researchers being reflexive regarding how study participation in HIV research may impact participants, including unintended emotional and behavioural impacts.

An account from the inside: Examining the emotional impact of qualitative research through the lens of “insider” research.

“…Rather than enabling her to freely express these feelings, or perhaps probe their origins as a more emotionally neutral interviewer might have done, I responded, “It’s a pretty big job—like, I think if this were paid employment, there would be a ‘Manager of the Parenting’…It would never be just one person responsible for everything.” Nicole appreciated this reframing, saying, “That’s helpful, I haven’t really thought about that, it’s helpful to think of it that way, thanks.” Competing with the potential benefit to Nicole is the reality that by initiating this exchange, I not only potentially weakened the data set (by not encouraging Nicole to further describe or explore her feelings) but I also entered into the ethically murky territory where research and therapeutic intervention sometimes overlap in qualitative research (see Grace et al, in press). As Rossetto (2014) has noted, while there may be therapeutic value for participants associated with their experiences of qualitative research, “the researcher’s role is listener, learner, or observer, not counsellor or therapist” (p. 486)…”

Foregrounding fathers: Reflections on a psychoanalytic research process.

“…This implies that fatherhood research needs to allow the space for participants to tell their stories and to be heard—to gain some therapeutic benefit from participation. Others have also noted the potentially therapeutic effects of research interviews (e.g., Colbourne & Sque, 2005; Gale, 1992; Grace et al, 2016; Rossetto, 2014). Long and Eagle (2009), who have explored the potentially therapeutic experience of having one’s thoughts heard and thought about, caution however that the idea of a research interview as therapeutic raises a number of ethical tensions.…”