My Doctoral Journey: An Autoethnography of Doing Sensitive Research in a Different Cultural Context

Abstract

Aim/Purpose This paper aims to provide important learning insights for doctoral students, researchers and practitioners who wish to research on sensitive topics with research participants from a significantly different culture from their own. Background Embarking on doctoral research in different cultural contexts presents challenges for doctoral students, especially when researching a sensitive topic. Methodology This paper uses an autoethnography as its research methodology. Contribution This paper extends the literature on doctoral researchers’ experiences of exploring the lived experiences of senior travellers who have faced major life events. Little of the previous literature on the experiences of PhD students has explored the experiences they had while researching on a sensitive topic in a different cultural context to their own. To fill this knowledge gap, this paper presents an autoethnography of my experiences. Findings This paper presents some critical insights into undertaking research in another culture. Its findings are outlined under the following four themes: (a) Feeling vulnerable, (b) Building rapport, (c) Preparing for the unexpected, and (d) Exploring lived experiences. Recommendations for Practitioners When conducting sensitive cross-cultural research, understanding researchers’ vulnerabilities, rapport-building and preparing for the unexpected are very important. The use of a visual element is beneficial for the participants in their idea generation process. Visual methods have the potential to capture the lived experiences of participants and enable them to reflect on those. Recommendations for Researchers Doing cross-cultural sensitive doctoral research poses a number of methodological and practical challenges. It was very important to gain a wider cultural understanding of the country and its people in my cross-cultural doctoral research. Uditha Ramanayake University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand uditha.ramanayake@outlook.com