Interaction as an ethically sensitive subject of research

In this paper, Hanna Maijala, Päivi Åstedt-Kurki and Eija Paavilainen discuss ethically sensitive family nursing research. A study of the interaction between caregivers and families expecting a child with an abnormality is used as an example: 29 parents and 22 caregivers were interviewed. Complementary data were obtained from essays written by five parents. This sensitive subject required discretion, especially when the parents were first asked to participate in the study, and during subsequent interviews. From the perspective of the data analysis, it was essential to obtain the informants' personal experiences unaltered. The constant comparative method of grounded theory was used to analyse the data. In the study findings, special attention was paid to presenting the results truthfully, while safeguarding the informants' anonymity. In conclusion, the ethical questions related to the subject of the study are discussed from the point of view of both the participant and the researcher.