Meghan Crouch on using lived experience as a resource in research
Congratulations to Meghan Crouch for her oral presentation at the Qualitative Health Research Conference in Vancouver last week. Her talk, entitled, “It’s Personal: Using lived experience as a resource in research” explained how exposing her own “vulnerabilities” created possibilities for analyzing data for our study of Return to Work (RTW) Coordinators.
Abstract:
This presentation will discuss my experiences as a research assistant on a project investigating the roles and strategies of Return to Work (RTW) Coordinators for managing RTW of clients with common mental health (MH) disorders. Read More As an individual with lived experience of mental illness and addiction issues, in this presentation I will share some of my ongoing reflections on what it has been like navigating the research process with this embodied knowledge. I will discuss how such personal disclosure has impacted my involvement and role in the research project, working with other members on the research team, as well as engaging with, and interpreting the data. The goal of this presentation is to begin a conversation regarding inherent opportunities and challenges of such disclosure, and how exposing my own “vulnerabilities” created possibilities for analyzing the data. Recognizing that every qualitative researcher is not only critical to, but implicated by, the analysis and interpretation process, this presentation will outline some uncertainties and insights in relation to navigating this interactional process, and will touch upon issues of reflexivity, embodiment, and disclosure in practice.
