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, re-searchers and practitioners who wish to research on sensitive topics with re-search participants from a significantly different culture from their own. Background Embarking on doctoral research in different cultural contexts presents chal-lenges 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 explor-ing the lived experiences of senior travellers who have faced major life events. Little of the previous literature on the experiences of PhD students has ex-plored the experiences they had while researching on a sensitive topic in a dif-ferent cultural context to their own. To fill this knowledge gap, this paper pre-sents 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) Ex-ploring lived experiences. Recommendations for Practitioners When conducting sensitive cross-cultural research, understanding researchers' vulnerabilities, rapport-building and preparing for the unexpected are very im-portant. 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 methodolog-ical and practical challenges. It was very important to gain a wider cultural un-derstanding of the country and its people in my cross-cultural doctoral research. To this end, this paper suggests that future doctoral researchers consider volun-teering with the community as a way to gain understanding of the research con-text when preparing to undertake cross-cultural research. Impact on Society The findings support the importance of cultural sensitivity when doing cross-cultural research. Future Research Future research could be conducted in a different cultural setting to reveal whether the key themes identified here are universal.