Abstract
Challenges and resolutions in fieldwork have become a dominant focus of interest for academicians and researchers conducting researches in social sciences. The objective of the chapter is to describe and reflect the researcher's experience in conducting a research study on anxiety, depression, and quality of life of the cancer patients that could be beneficial to novice researchers in the field of cancer studies. The author encountered these experiences in 2016 as part of her doctoral thesis that she had conducted in a tertiary care hospital based in Delhi. The chapter discusses the context of study with respect to the challenges faced in selecting a field site and acquiring access, recruiting, and building trust and rapport with the research participants, concern of confidentiality and emotional and psychological wellbeing of the researcher. Further, the chapter focuses on the resolutions and recommendations to deal with compassion fatigue, burnout, and secondary traumatic stress to avoid and manage great amount of emotional demands on the researchers.
TopIntroduction
Fieldwork is best described as a primary data collection carried out to accomplish the objectives of study stated by a researcher. This practical information is conducted in an innate social set-up with the resources at hand and within a specific time frame. The efficacy of fieldwork builds upon capabilities of the researcher in resolving the challenges encountered. A researcher’s dedicated approach is the motivating factor for dealing with any impasse while moving ahead with the research process. Fieldwork forms an integral part of any research project. We shall discuss here how the hardships faced were dealt with in the research study that was conducted on the anxiety, depression and quality of life of cancer patients. In this chapter the target is the confrontation of the challenges. The progression steps executed in a social science research process should be placed in a flawless sequence; as such study has specific significance certainly.
In the data collection process, unexpected hurdles may crop up that might hinder the completion of the research study. Therefore, the researcher should always be mentally prepared to handle such obstacles adeptly and make best use of the appropriate solutions whenever necessary. The challenges experienced in a fieldwork are neither mutually exclusive and nor are totally distinct. However, they need to be deciphered as per the potential requirements analogous with the aim and objectives of research study.
The fieldwork challenges are never forthright. One may require interrogating with the right question in order to reach an appropriate answer having the solution. In the available literature there is a lack of substantial discussions on these issues that the novice researchers and graduate students need to know. Therefore, this chapter is specifically about the reflective descriptions of a doctoral researcher’s fieldwork experience. This is with respect to the challenges faced during her research on the cancer patients at a tertiary care hospital based in New Delhi, India. This study was pertaining to the patients’ quality of life during their therapy sessions. The researcher exemplifies ‘reflective description’ with the practical strategies adopted and appropriate actions employed to deal with similar challenges.
The researcher selected the hospital as a field study site in order to delve into the relationship amongst the variables through mixed method (quantitative and qualitative method). For data collection, the researcher designed a set of questionnaires as the valid and reliable tools for her research study. After gaining approval from the ethics committee, the researcher acquired access to the site for collection of data through administration of questionnaires to the potential participants. The process of data collection from the research participants required building of trust, rapport and maintaining the confidentiality. This chapter discusses about the fieldwork experience during the research study on quality of life of cancer patients who were undergoing chemotherapy and radiotherapy sessions. The cancer patients are considered sensitive and vulnerable population, the researcher, therefore, had to handle concerns about their uneasiness, nervousness, worries and anticipated fear and their disrupted emotions while undergoing chemotherapy or radiotherapy sessions.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Emotional Well Being: It majorly deals with the emotions that are event-driven (physical), temporary, conscious experience, and often unleashed by an external or internal stimulus.
Burnout: It is characterized by the symptoms such as, emotional exhaustion, pessimism, and feelings of ineffectiveness at work.
Chemotherapy: Chemotherapy is defined as a concentrated and repeated treatment drug regimen for the management of cancer and its related symptoms. It is found to be associated with adverse reactions such as, hair loss, nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea, thereby leading to extended periods of treatment and repeated admissions to the hospital eventually affecting the QOL of cancer patients.
Outpatient Department (OPD): A ward in the hospital where a patient diagnosed for a serious condition, such as terminal illness comes at a prior taken appointment date and time for the intervention and then after the administration of the appropriate intervention, gets back to their respective homes. Here, the patient need not to stay whole day and night, but have to wait for his turn for intervention to be administered.
Cancer: Cancer is defined as a generic term for a large group of chronic diseases that is known to be pathologically characterized by abnormal rapid growth of cells thereby affecting any part of the human body of both genders.
Compassion Fatigue: It can be defined as a stressful situation that leads to emotional turmoil by exposure and re-experience of difficult events.
Rapport: Ethical Rapport can be defined as a friendly, harmonious relationship characterized by agreement, mutual understanding, or empathy that makes communication possible or easy for collection of data from the potential participants.
Quality of Life: Quality of life is a general term that integrates patients' physical (movement, physical activities, ability to succeed in work and in family responsibilities), psychological (life satisfaction), social (social activities, being beneficial, body image, anxiety and depression, social support need and role function), economic, spiritual, cognitional &environmental dimensions for wellbeing during the diseased and respective-treatment stage.
Radiotherapy: Radiation therapy uses high doses of radiation to kill cancer cells and shrink tumors. It might cause side-effects such as, skin pigmentation, destruction of salivary glands, severe problems related to eating, swallowing and speech, causing xerostomia, oral infections, dental caries, pain, and discomfort.
Confidentiality: It is defined as one of the key aspect of ethical consideration of keeping the participant’s information, such as name, socio-demographic details, identity, medical history and records as a secret and not disclosing it to anyone except for research and publication purposes.
Inpatient Department (IPD): A ward in the hospital where a patient diagnosed for a serious condition, such as terminal illness needs to stay there for a short duration or days in order to be treated with state-of-the-art facilities at the hospital for better outcomes.
Psychological Well Being: These are defined as the learned behaviors predominantly self-perception that deals with the feelings, arising out of sparking and subjective interpretation and expression of emotions that may persist for a long time.