“It’s Not Much of a Life”: The Benefits and Ethics of Using Life History Methods With People Who Inject Drugs in Qualitative Harm Reduction Research

Abstract

A life history approach enables study of how risk or health protection is shaped by critical transitions and turning points in a life trajectory and in the context of social environment and time. We employed visual and narrative life history methods with people who inject drugs to explore how hepatitis C protection was enabled and maintained over the life course. We overview our methodological approach, with a focus on the ethics in practice of using life history timelines and life-grids with 37 participants. The life-grid evoked mixed emotions for participants: pleasure in receiving a personalized visual history and pain elicited by its contents. A minority managed this pain with additional heroin use. The methodological benefits of using life history methods and visual aids have been extensively reported. Crucial to consider are the ethical implications of this process, particularly for people who lack socially ascribed markers of a "successful life."

Evaluating Complex Health Interventions With Randomized Controlled Trials: How Do We Improve the Use of Qualitative Methods?

“…Although many social scientists would take an interest in describing the health perceptions of a particular population, when placed in relation to intervention evaluation this type of rich description is often perceived to be most valuable for designing the intervention itself. A diverse range of qualitative methods are available to do this early formative work, including participant observation (Dahlke, Hall, & Phinney, 2015; Peacock, Khumalo, & McNab, 2006), spiral walks (Ngwenya et al, 2018), audio diaries (Mupambireyi & Bernays, 2018), life history interviews (Harris & Rhodes, 2018), narrative interviews (Vindrola-Padros & Johnson, 2014), and illustrated story cards (Karnieli-Miller, Nissim, & Goldberg, 2017). The Broad Brush Survey method described by Bond et al (2018) in this special issue of Qualitative Health Research outlines a comprehensive means of providing rich description of the social context to inform trial design decisions early on using participatory qualitative methods.…”

Exploring pathways into and out of amphetamine type stimulant use at critical turning points: a qualitative interview study

“…Prevalence of methamphetamine use remains relatively low in the UK compared to other parts of Europe (Public Health England, 2017), with policy to reduce illicit and other harmful drug use currently focused on other amphetamine type substances such as speed, ecstasy and mephedrone (Home Office, 2017). At present, there is limited understanding of how best to prevent and treat harmful ATS use (Ciketic, Hayatbakhsh, Doran, Najman, & McKetin, 2012;Minozzi, Saulle, De Crescenzo, & Amato, 2016), or what critical turning points influence different pathways of ATS use over time (Alm, 2017;Beynon, 2009;Harris & Rhodes, 2018;Laub & Sampson, 1993;O'Donnell et al, 2018;Wojciechowski, 2018).…”

Climate Autobiography Timeline: Adapting Timeline Research Methods to the Study of Climate Perceptions

“…Visual timelines have also been used to complement semistructured interviewing approaches to help focus participant's attention, serve as a memory aid, and situate participant responses in broader personal and structural contexts (Kolar et al 2017). Similar methods have also helped researchers identify turning points, epiphanies, and critical moments in participants' lives, leading to greater understandings of complex topics such as social resilience and risk avoidance (Gray and Dagg 2019;Harris and Rhodes 2018). In group settings timeline-based methods helped generate detailed and accurate data associated with long-term disaster recovery, addressing shortfalls associated with longitudinal postdisaster research, such as lapses in memory and the simplification of events (Sword-Daniels et al 2015).…”