Abstract
There have been calls for researchers, especially within the qualitative paradigm, to document and discuss the challenges they experience on the field while researching sensitive topics or with vulnerable groups, as failure to do so creates a missed opportunity for researchers to learn from one another. Accordingly, in this article, we reflect on the several layers of fieldwork challenges we experienced while researching with a vulnerable group (young Nigerian girls trafficked into northern Ghana) on a sensitive topic (commercial sexual exploitation). The reflections on the methodological and ethical challenges in this paper are drawn from a wider qualitative study conducted by the authors to explore the factors predicting the trafficking of young Nigerian girls into commercial sexual exploitation in Ghana’s Tamale Metropolitan area. The sensitive nature of the topic, coupled with the “invisible” manner in which the victims operate in Tamale, naturally raises many ethical and methodological challenges for researchers. The article discusses four main challenges the authors encountered in the field: (i) Accessing Hard-to-Reach Participants, (ii) Ethical Dilemmas in Consent: Demands for Payment, (iii) Trust-Building Strategies, and (iv) Researching in Risky Environments. The paper also discusses the approaches used to surmount these challenges.
Introduction
The objective of this paper is to reflect on the several layers of fieldwork challenges we experienced while researching with a vulnerable group (young Nigerian girls trafficked into northern Ghana) on a sensitive topic (commercial sexual exploitation). In so doing, we hope to play a role in helping researchers learn from one another, as regards the kinds of methodological and ethical challenges that might come up in the field while qualitatively researching sensitive topics with vulnerable participants.
Human trafficking is one of the critical challenges confronting countries worldwide. Described sometimes as a form of “modern-day slavery”, human trafficking is said to be one of the fastest-growing lucrative criminal activities in the world, generating US$150 billion annually (International Labour Organization [ILO], 2017). Within the larger umbrella of activities that are characterised as human trafficking, the commercial sexual exploitation of children and youth (CSEC) constitutes one of the profitable strands of human trafficking. For purposes of this paper, we adopt the International Labour Organisation’s definition as “the sexual exploitation by an adult with respect to a child or an adolescent — female or male — under 18 years old; accompanied by a payment in money or in kind to the child or adolescent (male or female) or to one or more third parties” (International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour [IPEC], 2007, p. 7). Due to its business-like nature, the CSEC has been described as a commercialised form of child abuse (Bang et al., 2014) or the commodification of children’s bodies for monetary and material purposes (see Halter, 2010).
The growth of the CSEC globally has been partially attributed to its profitable nature (Babatunde, 2014). It is reported by the ILO that globally, over 6.3 million people were trafficked for commercial sex work in 2021. The figure stood at 4.3 million in 2016 (ILO, 2017). Out of these victims, 1.7 million were children (ILO, 2017). As victims, children are in increasing demand in the commercial sex trade globally (Hounmenou, 2017). There is also a gender dimension to the practice. For instance, compared to males, females are in high demand. Hounmenou (2017) and Perry and McEwing (2013), for example, note that four out of every five CSEC victims are female. This suggests the critical position of gender in the determination of global CSEC. Equally worthy of note is the fact that adolescents, as well as children, are more likely to experience sexual exploitation compared to young women 30 years and older (Kooffreh, 2024).
Even though it is a global problem occurring at local, regional and international levels sociological researchers have considered CSEC largely an Asian, South American and Eastern European problem (Bang et al., 2014). These places reportedly supply the global system, especially the European Union (EU) area, with both documented and undocumented children for sexual exploitation. This overemphasis by sociological researchers has resulted in the CSEC being under-researched, especially at the African regional level.
Problematising the CSEC in Africa
As initially highlighted, the overemphasis placed on CSEC as largely an Asian, South American and Eastern European problem, as Bang et al. (2014) note, is problematic. It particularly downplays the growth of CSEC in Africa. Meanwhile, African countries are noted to be CSEC’s origin, transit and destination points (Babatunde, 2014), with some arguing that the phenomenon is increasing in Sub-Saharan Africa (Crispin & Mann, 2016; Hounmenou & Her, 2018). A variety of factors predict CSEC in Africa, such as poverty and traditional norms (Amponsah et al., 2024; Hounmenou, 2019; Okeshola & Adenugba, 2018), non-implementation of laws (Peters & McEwing, 2013), and lack of access to formal education (Akor, 2011) among others. The CSEC is said to constitute about 53% of all trafficking situations in Africa, with South Africa and Nigeria often cited as source, transit and destination countries (Van der Watt & Kruger, 2017). However, between these two countries, Nigeria has been described as being notorious for international child trafficking for commercial sex exploitation (Adeyinka et al., 2023; Hounmenou, 2019). Babatunde (2014), for instance, notes that Nigeria has been acknowledged as one of the top five countries of origin for trafficking victims of sexual exploitation in Europe. For example, about 80% of the women and girls engaged in sex work on the streets of Italy were sourced from Nigeria (International Organisation for Migration, 2017). Also, between 2017 and 2018, Nigerians were ranked the highest among nationals of non-EU member states who were trafficked into the EU (European Commission, 2020).
As already hinted, this paper is based on our qualitative research to explore the factors predicting the CSEC of young Nigerian girls in Tamale. Accordingly, this article focuses on how the authors navigated the inherent challenges associated with investigating the lifeworld of Nigerian girls trafficked into commercial sex exploitation within the Tamale Metropolitan area, Ghana. The article details how data was collected from the victims of CSEC (who are classified as a hard-to-reach population) by highlighting the challenges faced during the data collection process, as well as various strategies employed to overcome these challenges. Building on Clark (2017), this article is significant at two levels. In the first place, by detailing the authors’ field experiences, particularly the ethical and methodological tensions that researchers experience when researching with vulnerable groups, as well as the practical ways the authors circumvented these challenges, this article is intended to serve as a guide to other researchers. Wood (2006, p. 385) rightly notes that “very often academic training does a poor job preparing us for field research”. Thus, when more researchers discuss their experiences in the field regarding the various hurdles they overcome, this weakness in academia might be addressed. Secondly, by partially highlighting the challenges the authors faced, it is envisioned that this article shall initiate and ignite discussions surrounding the over-concentration of research participants by university ethics committees and the neglect of researchers. While ethics committees require researchers to explain how they will protect participants from harm, Clark (2017) rightly notes that the committees rarely ask researchers how they would protect
Research Context and Approach
The contents of this paper are drawn from a wider qualitative study conducted by the authors to explore the factors predicting the CSEC of young Nigerian girls in Tamale. We chose a qualitative design for the study due to its unique ability to deal with challenging, sensitive or difficult topics such as suicide, disability, race, and trauma, among others (Silverio et al., 2022). Thus, since the topic under research is about trafficking children into CSEC from Nigeria to Ghana, a qualitative approach provided the researchers with the opportunity to engage participants in semi-structured interviews, showing empathy where needed, bearing in mind the sensitivity of the topic. The wider study interviewed 21 young Nigerian girls who identified as victims of trafficking and CSEC since each of them was either a child or an adolescent at the time of being trafficked into CSEC in Tamale. By victims of CSEC, we refer to young girls who are still in a situation of CSEC. The 21 victims of CSEC who participated in the study were mainly aged between 18 and 23 years old at the time of data collection in October 2023. More importantly, the study found that, on average, each of the 21 participants had been victims of the CSEC in Tamale for three years, suggesting that the majority of the respondents were trafficked into Tamale from Nigeria as children. Many of them were as young as 15 years old when they started working in Tamale. The interviews with the 21 Nigerian girls bordered on their families in Nigeria, their journey to Ghana and their experiences as victims of trafficking and CSEC in Ghana. Each of the three authors conducted seven one-on-one semi-structured interviews with victims of CSEC, giving us a total of twenty-one interviews.
Apart from the interviews with the 21 Nigerian girls, key informant interviews with law enforcement officers (from the Ghana Police Service and the Department of Social Welfare) were conducted. In the main study, it was found that the factors predicting the CSEC of young Nigerian girls in Tamale were the existence of a sophisticated recruitment network comprising agents in Nigeria and Madams 1 in Ghana, poverty and unemployment in Nigeria, as well as adverse family contexts. Once in Ghana, the study shows that victims are trapped in the practice through debt bondage, initiation of voodoo rituals, and the resort to violence by their madams.
Challenges Researching Victims of CSEC
In this section, we discuss some of the field-based methodological and ethical challenges the team encountered in the data collection process. The key challenges we will discuss in the ensuing sections are: (i) Accessing Hard-to-Reach Participants, (ii) Ethical Dilemmas in Consent: Demands for Payment, (iii) Trust-Building Strategies, and (iv) Researching in Risky Environments. We also outline how these challenges were surmounted via various strategies and mechanisms.
Accessing Hard-to-Reach Participants
Commercial sex exploitation is often perpetrated in secret. This was not an exception in the case of this study. As the practice happens under shadowy situations, the first major challenge we had to deal with was identifying potential participants. Further, another layer of complexity in this regard is the open hostility that commercial sexual workers are subjected to in Tamale. Increasing numbers of Nigerian sex workers in Tamale have created tensions between the commercial sex workers on the one hand and public officials and the religiously conservative society on the other hand. Following a declaration of “war” against the practice by the Mayor of Tamale in 2017 (see Ghanaweb, 2017), there have been numerous police swoops on popular sites of CSEC activities such as brothels, parking lots, famous streets (see Ayamga, 2019; Majeed, 2017; Nyabor, 2020). Accordingly, the activities of CSEC have been increasingly invisible. For example, the girls and young ladies engaged in CSEC are no longer seen at the popular sites that they used to. Accordingly, the participants in this study under the above context are classified as “hard-to-reach” (Faugier & Sargeant, 1997). Thus, to recruit the participants, we approached a local community-based sexual abuse NGO in Tamale that assists former victims in undergoing rehabilitation and learning vocational skills. When we invited the organisation’s Director to participate in the study through information leaflets about the study, we did not receive any response for two weeks. Subsequently, we returned to the organisation, and each time, we were told the Director was not around. On the third time, we met the Director who, from interactions, was not ready to assist us in identifying potential participants through her networks. From our interactions, the team realised that the main reason for the disinterest in our project was research fatigue. Research fatigues happen “when individuals and groups become tired of engaging with research” (Clark, 2008, p. 955), particularly when respondents are hard to reach (Clark & Sinclair, 2008; Emmel et al., 2007). As a response to our request to be linked to potential participants, the Director noted: Now, we [the organisation] are focusing on raising funds to do something practical like helping the girls to learn skills. Every year, we receive a lot of people like you [researchers] who come here to research, and we link them to some of the victims in the practice [of CSEC]. Yet, they [researchers] just conduct the research and go, nothing happens. The girls have been complaining [about this]. They engage in the research, and they see no change [in their situation].
As a well-known NGO working with victims of sexual abuse and exploitation, it turned out that researchers frequently approach them for research and also a request for access to the victims. However, the organisation, over the years, have become tired and unwilling to engage in such research anymore, as the Director stated, “Nothing happens after the research”. As an organisation, they had moved beyond being the link to victims of exploitation to seeking funds and assistance to help victims. While we understood that research fatigue was a natural consequence of the events that had been narrated by the NGO, as a team, we were determined to overcome that setback. Thus, the research team had to adopt other strategies to access victims of CSEC. Through referrals from the staff of the Department of Social Welfare, the team was able to identify a Nigerian woman in Tamale who, over the years, had evolved from being a victim of CSEC to a madam herself and then to her present status as an activist against CSEC. It did help greatly that one of the research team members is a Nigerian who speaks Pidgin English 2 as well as Ibo, an indigenous Nigerian language. The activist was able to link us to one of the victims after the team took her through the research objectives, documentation about the identities of the research team, and some of the questions. She argued that she had to satisfy herself that the girls would not be in danger through our interactions.
As Browne (2005, p. 47) explains, “snowball sampling is often used because the population under investigation is ‘hidden’ either due to low numbers of potential participants or the sensitivity of the topic”. The research team adopted snowball sampling, asking the first and subsequent interviewees if they could put us in contact with other potential interviewees. Because each interviewee had engaged in our study, they were satisfied that this was a research protection with no links to law enforcement authorities. Hence, they were not hesitant to speak to their colleagues to arrange meetings for us. Accordingly, through this sampling approach, the team were able to recruit all 21 participants. That is, all of the participants were recruited through referrals from their fellow victims of CSEC.
Ethical Dilemmas in Consent: Demands for Payment
A major ethical dilemma the researchers faced was whether research participants would be paid for participating in the research (and how much) since most of the participants requested payment. While the practice of offering payments to research participants for participation is widespread and dated, such payments are the subject of intense academic debates (Largent & Fernandez Lynch, 2017). Some studies have shown that offering payments to research participants is an effective way to encourage participation (Kelly et al., 2017), and it is also a way of compensating participants for their time and expertise (Surmiak, 2020). Nevertheless, offering payments to participants has proved contentious because of the belief that such payments might unduly induce or coerce participants who would otherwise have not participated in the study (Largent & Fernandez Lynch, 2017; Surmiak, 2020). This risk is especially heightened when participants are vulnerable and might not be able to resist financial payments to participate (American Sociological Association, 2018). Accordingly, researchers face the challenge of proving to Institutional Review and Ethics Boards that participants will be recruited in a manner that minimises the possibility of coercion and undue influence. Arguments around paying research participants are complicated, firstly because there is no regulatory and ethical guidance regarding what makes payment acceptable or not. Secondly, there are definitional disagreements regarding what the terms of coercion and undue inducement imply (Largent & Fernandez Lynch, 2017).
Similar to Clark’s (2017) findings, 18 out of the 21 participants agreed to participate in the study only on their terms. A key aspect of this conditionality was the need to pay them before they would participate, justifying their demands on two points. First, the participants argued that spending their time with the authors meant that they lost precious time — time that they could have spent with their clients for money. Cash demands were particularly rampant among victims who were found in the areas of operations at night, namely the Tamale Jubilee Park and Nagasaki (a place where victims operate at night by the roadside and in dark alleys). For them, any engagement meant money. The sum of money demanded ranged from GHS 100 to GHS 200. It is instructive to note that this form of payment departs from the general norm. Here, participants demanded payment upfront before participating. On the other hand, payments to participants, as captured in the literature, are often offered without demand and also at the end of participation. The participants explained that they had daily targets to meet in terms of the amount of money to pay their “madams”. As part of the arrangements to be trafficked into Ghana, they had sworn oaths to their traffickers to work to repay the debts. Accordingly, there was an agreed daily rate that they had to pay their madams, and this translated into the number of clients the victims had to attend to. Accordingly, taking time off to talk to us was a luxury they could not afford. As noted by Largent and Fernandez Lynch (2017), payments to research participants can be reimbursement for transport for research-related expenditures or as compensation to participants for their time and effort or inconvenience experiences. Hence, for this first category of participants, we viewed our payments as compensation for their time. From our interactions with the participants, it was clear they had no interest in engaging in the study or negotiating about the amount. Therefore, if we were going to carry out the study, it was clear we could not negotiate on the sums demanded.
The second strand of participants demanded payment because they had debts to pay as in the days before our meeting, they had not been able to pay their madams the agreed daily rates. This came about because they could not get clients. Therefore, they saw us as their clients and asked that we help them to repay their debts. In an engagement with one participant, she lamented the challenges she potentially had to go through in order to convince her “madam” that “business was not good today”. She noted: Yesterday, I did not get clients. So, I am broke. I need money to pay bills. So, if you want us to do this research, you will have to pay me. I owe my madam two days. Two days’ payment to my madam is a lot of money I don’t have. So, I have to work double to pay the debts and the current day’s payment. She does not agree if I tell her there is no market today [no clients]. My madam adds a fine on each day that the debt is not paid.
Having been made aware of this debt situation, the research team felt obliged to assist this category of participants. Interestingly, this category of participants asked for “gifts” rather than money. Unlike the other strand of participants who asked for specific sums of money, this group asked for a gift. However, in the local context in northern Ghana, gifts meant money. Accordingly, the research team offered them money, but after the interviews had ended. We situated the gifts within the central position of kola nuts/betel nuts (Guli in the Dagbanli language) among the Dagomba people of northern Ghana. In contemporary times, during many social engagements, the social role of kola nut has been replaced by money. Krah (2019, p. 66) refers to such monies as “moral monies”, a means of exchange that converts money’s immoral associations (of selling) into morally accepted interpretations (of gifting). The gifts offered to participants, especially money, thus symbolised kola nuts (betel nut), which, it is argued, stimulate and signify ideals of goodwill and trust, especially between a donor and a recipient (Krah, 2019). Krah (2019, p. 67) argues that kola is a “culturally and morally accepted gift, a token of respect that is exchanged when people of lower social status greet and ask favours from those with a higher (authoritative) status”. In this sense, the authors considered themselves within the lower social strata compared to the research participants as those with authority. This was particularly significant because the participants were in positions to disclose information or conceal information. Once they even agreed to disclose information, they were in a position to determine what and which kind of information they should give out. The participants were, hence, in authoritative positions compared to the authors.
Finally, since the authors’ relationship with research participants was ongoing, the gift of kola, money in this sense, was necessary because, as a gift, kola is “used to initiate an ongoing relationship in which the recipient may be expected to cede to a future request from the donor” (Drucker-Brown, 1995, p. 129). The gift of kola generally created and maintained mutual trust between the authors and research participants throughout the research process. As demonstrated clearly, these “payments” were not intended to induce and coerce participants. They became what Largent and Fernandez Lynch (2017) describe as legitimate compensation.
Trust-Building Strategies
Qualitative researchers encounter complex ethical dilemmas when researching sensitive topics such as physical abuse, disability and life-threatening disease (Mertens & Ginsberg, 2008). By sensitive topics, we mean research topics “which delve into the acutely personal about someone or that someone experiences. These are often discussed, laden with emotion and are immensely nostalgic (where positive), but can be harrowing (where negative) with the possibility of inducing short-term psychological anguish or distress when recounting the experiences” (Silverio et al., 2022, p. 2). Corbin and Morse (2003) and Dickson-Swift et al. (2007) note that inquiring into the personal experiences of vulnerable participants on sensitive topics has the probability of causing distress to the interviewee. Thus, it has been shown that to collect sensitive data, researchers need to establish trust and rapport with the participants, especially with vulnerable participants who are also hard to reach (Bahn & Weatherill, 2013; see; Ramogwebo et al., 2024). Establishing rapport with participants facilitates interactions and elicits genuine responses, where interviewees easily divulge and share information with researchers (Abedi, 2024; Schmid et al., 2024).
As highlighted by Silverio et al. (2022), discussions about sexuality pose unique challenges because they involve talking about intimate feelings whilst also being moderated by social norms. For many societies, particularly in sub-Saharan and Asian communities, there is a culture of silence around discussions about sexuality. They are considered a taboo subject, while sex work of all kinds is stigmatised. Stigmatisation poses serious threats to many research works. It, for instance, leads to what Clark (2017, p. 6) describes as a “culture of silence”. Generally, stigmatised people are often placed in distinct categories in order to accomplish some degree of separation of “us” from “them” (Link & Phelan, 2001, p. 367). In this sense, the label “sex worker” or “prostitute” was enough to separate the authors (“us”) from the research participants (“them”). Research participants assumed that once they were considered “bad”, they should be despised and avoided (Campbell et al., 2005, p. 8). Thus, they considered their engagements with the authors untenable.
Victims of commercial sex exploitation face adverse stigmatisation and victimisation in Tamale. The fact that victims were seen at standpoints or locations at specific times selling sex in exchange for money wrongly categorises them as sex workers willingly engaged in the commercial sex trade. In the case of this research, gaining the trust of the victims of commercial sex exploitation in the Tamale Metropolitan was tedious, even as the participants had agreed to participate in the study. Apart from the stigma surrounding sex work and the resultant culture of silence, the lack of trust and doubts in the minds of victims, the participants, in many cases, were apprehensive towards the researchers. A sense of uneasiness was always discernible, especially during our first encounters with the victims. Later on in the research, it emerged that the victims viewed their participation in our study as potentially detrimental to them. They, for instance, feared that since their activities were illegal, they could be ‘lured’ by our team to law enforcement authorities.
Furthermore, as the CSEC literature shows, all of the 21 girls in the study had undergone elaborate fear-inducing oath-taking juju rituals, never to talk to anyone about their journey to Ghana, their daily activities, or the identities of their madams. Juju is a synonym for all types of “traditional therapy” in which spirits and supernatural deities are called on to intervene in earthly issues for good or evil (Cbanga, 2009; Van der Watt & Kruger, 2017). The rituals are considered the most effective psychological control mechanisms that keep victims of CSEC entrapped (see Adeyinka et al., 2023). Getting the victims to open up and engage in the study within the context highlighted above was a significant challenge. We adopted the following strategies to address these challenges. First, it became apparent that with each victim, the researcher would have to meet them several times. For, it was practically impossible to get anything useful from each first interaction. Accordingly, with some of the participants, the team had to visit them about five different times, all in the hope of getting them to soften up and speak to us. In instances where the participants were extremely worried about the true identities of the researchers (whether we were spies sent by law enforcement officers or not), as well as fears of repercussions if they were found to have taken part in the study by their madams, significant efforts and time were focused on explaining that we were neither law enforcement officers nor spies dispatched by traditional authorises. Further, the research team provided assurances of anonymity to conceal their identities so that their madams would not identify them. Although the concept of anonymity was not immediately clear to them, we explained what anonymity is and provided examples of how we anonymise research data.
Another approach we adopted to engage the participants was to build trust and rapport with them. A healthy rapport between participants and researchers is generally considered a prerequisite to generating rich interview data (Seidman, 2019). To gain the trust of research participants, the authors were quite careful with the binary classification of “them” and “us”. The authors equally exercised caution in the use of concepts such as “prostitutes” and “sex workers.” As much as possible, we went to strenuous lengths to show we empathised with them and passed no judgment regarding sex work. Sometimes, the research team shared meals with the participants just to assure them that we saw them as people first and not necessarily sex workers. Furthermore, as neighbouring countries, there is a dated “rivalry” between Ghanaians and Nigerians. The researchers relied on this “rivalry” to make the discussions lively and momentarily transition from the main interview questions. With this approach, the authors raised issues surrounding which of the two countries was better at the game of football. Also, the team ignited debates surrounding which country prepares the best Jollof rice. These informal interactions were effective in getting the participants to loosen up. It was easier to segue from the discussions around the Ghana/Nigeria rivalry and back into the main discussions about CESC.
Building rapport and getting the participants to open up had downsides, contrary to the claims made in the literature. For instance, there is the assumption among most qualitative researchers and writers “that the more rapport the interviewer can establish with the participant, the better” (Seidman, 2019, p. 102). In our study, we got to the situation Duncombe and Jessop (2012) and Schmid et al. (2024) describe as “over-rapport”. Over-rapport is the situation where the researcher becomes too familiar with the participants, potentially leading the participants to disclose more information than they would have ideally revealed, with the risk of re-traumatisation when the research topic subject is sensitive (Schmid et al., 2024). For instance, in our discussions with a participant about the drivers of CSEC, she revealed personal traumatic experiences that occurred prior to her experiences of CSEC. Following this disclosure, the participant later asked that we take out what she had just said and that she did not intend to say it. She explained that she had never shared that experience with anyone else and, thus, was regretful that she had just narrated that to the team. At the onset, the team did not anticipate this scenario. However, as part of the informed consent process, we informed each participant that they had the right to withdraw from the research at any time without needing to give us reasons. Further, we were also meticulous in explaining to the participants that they had the right to ask us not to include any statement in our study if they had a change of mind in the course of the interviews. Thus, we do believe that this information empowered the participant in this case to ask that we do not include certain portions of her statements in our study. Therefore, being clear about participants’ rights to withdraw from research and in which ways to exercise those rights might help protect research participants.
More importantly, over-rapport in situations of sensitive topics has the risk of re-traumatisation for the research participants (see Jewkes et al., 2005; Melville & Hincks, 2016). In the specific case of the example highlighted above, the researchers realised that the participant’s mood quickly changed from lively to very sorrowful as she narrated her experiences with that family member. The participant became very sad, and we had to truncate the interview and continue 2 days later when she called us back. It is important to state that this experience was not unique to this specific participant. Many of the participants in our study became emotional as they narrated their experiences. However, most of them were able to continue the discussions after we allowed for some breaks to help them calm down. With a responsibility to protect participants from harm, the research team did not want the participants to relive their traumatic experiences through the interviews. In general, the research team followed Schmid et al.’s (2024) strategy of closing the interviews when participants showed signs of distress or discomfort. Hence, while establishing rapport is a great way of getting participants to freely narrate their experiences, researchers dealing with sensitive topics ought to be wary of situations of over-rapport, as participants might either reveal too much or become re-traumatised.
Researching in Risky Environments
It is certainly the case that sometimes researchers place themselves at risk while collecting data. As Bahn and Weatherill (2013) note, the risk could arise in situations that jeopardise the personal safety of researchers. For instance, entering the house of participants without any knowledge about who may be in the house or an understanding of the participant’s personality. Institutional Review and Ethics Boards require researchers to develop strategies to mitigate harm and emotional distress to participants before the commencement of fieldwork (Corbin & Morse, 2003). Conversely, the same level of attention is not paid to the safety of the researchers themselves. There seems to be limited guidance and procedures to protect researchers concerning their personal safety when they are on the field (Bahn & Weatherill, 2013). In our study, the participants were interviewed while on the streets (popular sites of CSEC activities) or in their homes, as some of the participants opted to be interviewed at home. Both interview sites presented situations that could potentially harm our safety. First, as already stated, the activities of CSEC in Tamale have drawn the ire of local traditional authorities and law enforcement officers. Accordingly, unannounced police swoops and raids often happen at the various sites noted for CSEC activities. In such swoops and raids, everyone seen at the sites is arrested.
Although police sting operations that arrest sex workers and shut down venues known for CSEC activities are a fairly common approach to combating CSEC, they are not without their drawbacks. The main challenge with such tactics is that the approach is not victim-oriented because even when they are arrested, trafficked victims do not self-identify as victims for fear of retribution from the trafficking networks and their madams (Farrell et al., 2019). In cases of swoops and arrests, there is great difficulty in determining whether sex workers consented freely or were victims of exploitation (see Farrell & Pfeffer, 2014). For this reason, it is important to rethink the approaches to combating CSEC, moving away from solely targeting the victims on the streets towards focusing on the networks of madams and traffickers.
The research team did not want to be seen talking to the ladies in popular locations noted for sex work, as the assumption would be that the team members were potential clients. More importantly, the team were at risk of being arrested together with the participants in the event of a police raid. To mitigate this risk, all the researchers had their staff identification cards, as well as copies of the ethics clearance letter, at all times while on the field. Although these would not necessarily prevent the researchers from being arrested in the event of swoops, the research team hoped that once at the police station, these two documents would show that the researchers are not clients and, thus, facilitate our release.
The above challenges notwithstanding, the main threat to our safety while on the field stemmed from the possibility of the research participants setting their “boys” upon the research team. The CSEC literature has shown that the girls and young women engaged in CSEC have male “guardians” or “boys” who are recruited by “madams” and, sometimes, the girls themselves, to, among other things, “protect” the girls and young women in cases of non-payment or underpayment by clients (see Baldwin et al., 2015; Klabbers et al., 2023). Anecdotal evidence also suggests that sometimes, the girls engaged in CSEC, in a bid to extort money from male clients, raise false alarms to set their “boys” upon clients, beating and extorting money from them. Accordingly, the research team was very wary of engaging the participants due to fear that our research questions might annoy the participants due to the sensitive nature of the topics. The threat of being set upon by their “boys” was more pronounced in cases where the participants had opted for the interviews to be carried out in their rooms. To mitigate these risks, the research team agreed to interview the respondents in their homes but not in their rooms. We insisted we would engage in the interviews in the compound or verandas in their houses. Also, for this category of respondents, the research team worked in pairs, with only one member interviewing the participant while the other member sat at a distance.
Just as steps are taken to protect participants from harm, it is equally essential to protect researchers because researchers sometimes place themselves at risk while collecting data in risky environments. Accordingly, Institutional Review Boards must fully understand any potential dangers that researchers might face in the field. With this understanding, Review Boards should assist researchers in developing risk-specific strategies to deal with each potential danger
Finally, in terms of how our study might advance research methodology with vulnerable participants, qualitative researchers have to prepare well in advance by thinking of all of the possible methodological and ethical challenges that might come up in the field and then designing strategies to mitigate those. Accessing vulnerable participants, especially when the research topic is sensitive, is easily facilitated by a lead and, in many cases, through a snowballing approach. By relying on this approach, suspicions from the participants regarding the nature of the study are limited. Furthermore, qualitative researchers should not be in a hurry to interview participants. In cases such as researching sensitive topics with vulnerable participants, researchers might have to visit the same participants more than once and engage them several times in the interest of building rapport. This approach was useful to allay the fears participants had regarding our identities and the research topic. Additionally, as the paper has shown, the participants had sworn oaths of secrecy not to reveal the identities of their madams and traffickers. Due to this fear, significant assurances of anonymity from the researchers were a prerequisite for victims to participate in the study. It is certainly the case that offering payments can induce participation. But in certain contexts, offering payment should not be seen as negative. Rather than seeing it as inducements, payments should be seen as compensation for lost time and participants’ expertise.
Study Implications
Our study holds some important implications for training programmes regarding researching vulnerable groups. First, during interviews with vulnerable groups such as victims of CSEC and sexual trafficking, researchers need to be attentive to the emotions of their participants. This is particularly necessary because while participants tell their stories and narrate experiences, there is the risk of re-traumatisation (Bahn & Weatherill, 2013; Silverio et al., 2022). At the heart of researching ethically is an abiding commitment not to harm participants. However, narrating experiences on sensitive topics has a probability of causing distress to the participants. Researchers, thus, ought to be aware of this and design mitigation strategies such as stopping the interviews or changing the topic to other benign issues. Further, even though researchers inform participants about their rights to withdraw from the research without repercussions as part of the consent-seeking process, vulnerable participants either often forget about this or cannot withdraw if they become uncomfortable during interviews. Accordingly, researchers must be aware of this to ensure that they help the participants by terminating the research in such cases. Additionally, it is also important for researchers to know that they themselves are at risk of emotional distress, especially as the topic under discussion becomes sensitive and emotional (Silverio et al., 2022). Knowing about these potential challenges during training sessions will help researchers prepare adequately for such instances.
Conclusion
This reflective piece is based on a wider qualitative study conducted by the authors to explore the factors predicting the CSEC of young Nigerian girls in Tamale. During fieldwork, we often wondered about the experiences of other researchers who have worked with victims of CSEC. We were particularly curious if they had encountered the same challenges we went through and how they dealt with them. Unfortunately, we were particularly struck by the paucity of research chronicling and discussing the fieldwork experiences of researchers, and this is a missed opportunity to learn from each other. Once researchers start documenting and discussing their fieldwork experiences, a corpus of data would be available for researchers to learn from each other, enriching the data produced for the academe. Accordingly, in response to growing calls for researchers (within the qualitative research paradigm especially) to document and discuss their challenges in the field, we reflected on the several layers of fieldwork challenges we experienced. We have reflected upon the challenges associated with accessing hard-to-reach participants, researching in risky environments, obtaining consent and dealing with demands for payment, and building trust and rapport with participants when researching a sensitive topic (commercial sexual exploitation of children and youth). Despite the difficulties associated with accessing participants, overall, we found the process of gaining access through a “lead” to such participants, as well as referrals from participants to participants, extremely valuable. Without these, we are certain we could not have had access to the participants, given the context provided in the study. Working with victims of CSEC is immensely challenging. Apart from finding interviewees who are ready to participate in the study, demands for payment, as well as decisions about where to conduct the study, are potential sources of setbacks researchers should be prepared for. Finally, researching sensitive topics can generate complex emotions, both from the researchers and participants. Participants are at risk of re-traumatisation when they narrate past experiences, while researchers might also be sad and unclear about how to handle such emotions. Accordingly, it is important that researchers, especially qualitative researchers researching sensitive topics with vulnerable participants, are adequately prepared for the challenges outlined in this article, as well as others, and make arrangements in advance about how they might deal with them.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
