Ethics of qualitative interviewing with grieving families

Abstract Qualitative research interviews in grieving families provide researchers with helpful information far making ethical decisions and for evaluating the outcomes of those decisions. At the same time, such research presents researchers with many ethical challenges. Illustrations from a recent study of farm families who had lost a family member in a fatal farm accident are used to illuminate some of the ethical challenges in qualitative bereavement research. Included in these challenges are the ethics of recruiting people to be interviewed, the ethics of causing pain, the ethics of informed consent, ethical issues at the boundary between research and therapy, ethical problems in supporting family dysfunction, and the ethics of revealing family members' secrets to one another.