ETHICS OF QUALITATIVE INTERVIEWING WITH GRIEVING FAMILIES

Qualitative research interviews in grieving families provide researche rs with helpful information for making ethical decisions and for evalu ating 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 fat al 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 caus ing pain, the ethics of informed consent, ethical issues at the bounda ry between research and therapy, ethical problems in supporting family dysfunction,and the ethics of revealing family members' secrets to on e another.