Conflicting thoughts in 'sensitive case study analysis' case: Problems of migrated tea plantation women labourers

Many areas in the qualitative research filed that invite potential reaction viz. stress, sacredness and threats from people, community, institutions, researchers and participant‘s. Such issues, researchers‘ call it as ―sensitive issues‘, When the researchers choose such sensitive research topics, which is circled around socio-cultural, psycho-social, managerial, individual or political scenarios, they have to face many ethical and administrative hurdles from the field of study. In this particular paper the researcher conducted a case study on issues of migrated plantation women laborers in tea estates of southern part of Idukki districts of Kerala, India. The issues of tea plantation labourers are quiet unique but rarely reported by the researchers or the media so far, though it is clearly visible to everyone and it is very sensitive to those who involved in it. By conducting this sensitive qualitative research, the researcher has multi faced objectives like, a) explore the issues of tea plantations labourers of one tea estate, b) understand the sensitivity issues of researchers, and c) correlate issues of qualitative research designs, with principles of ethics in appropriate data collection. The study discusses major dilemmas of a qualitative researcher and it envisages that the researcher must make use of conscious use of self and think outside the box rather than merely following the ethics and principle in- toto. Key Terms: Sensitivity, Ethics, Ethical research, Qualitative research, Ethical dilemma, migration, plantation laborers

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