Sixtenssen, J. (2022). ‘To say no wasn’t something we could do’: Reflexive accounts and negotiations of the ethical practice of informed consent during the research process and beyond. In The Politics and Ethics of Representation in Qualitative Research: Addressing Moments of Discomfort. The Critical Methodologies Collective (Eds.). Routledge: Abigndon, UK. ISBN: 978-0-367-28103-8 (paperback); ISBN: 978-0-429-29967-4 (e-book).

In this reflective chapter, the author reconnects with a participant several years after fieldwork and re-confronts uncomfortable and frustrating moments surrounding informed consent with teenage girls. She reflects that she approached informed consent as if it ‘would be a verbal, linear and rational one-time decision, and then [got] mixed, not always verbal, signals in return’ (p.31). Drawing on examples from her own research, the author argues, ‘To consent, or not…is rather an open-ended, situated, ambivalent and not necessarily verbal process that requires a situated ethical (re)thinking on the researcher’s part’ (p.31).

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