Online qualitative research with vulnerable populations in the Philippines: Ethical and methodological challenges during COVID-19

Abstract

Our article draws on two multi-sited studies to present the ethical and methodological challenges of conducting online qualitative research among vulnerable populations in the Philippines—specifically, among people who use drugs—during the COVID-19 pandemic. While the global scholarship has long articulated the difficulties inherent to pursuing research on such populations, we show how the specific milieu of the Philippines in the last three years has created exceptional, structural challenges to the conduct of said research. Besides the inevitable migration to online fieldwork brought about by the pandemic, researchers have had to contend with the continuing sociopolitical and existential threat to vulnerable populations posed by the government's drug war. Such a milieu, we argue, has further restricted access to potential study participants; redefined notions of intimacy and safety in conducting virtual data collection; and rendered people in vulnerable circumstances “more vulnerable” amid a climate of pandemic-induced precarity and aggravated distrust in the state—all of which have compelled researchers to undertake necessary innovations to uphold quality and equity in online research. We conclude by highlighting the need to maintain networks of trust with vulnerable communities, compensate research participants justly, and safeguard the independence of research institutions and people's trust in them.