The greatest methodological challenge I encountered throughout the whole process concerned my role as a researcher. I felt guilty sometimes because the stories of my informants were very emotional and very hard, and in response I could not do anything but just listen. Although as a psychologist I am prepared to listening, I had serious frustrations in not being able to help them more. One of my biggest challenges in the whole process was not to cry during interviews and not being able to help them to solve some of their problems, but being there as someone that could only give temporary love and hope.
Another methodological challenge concerned the sample, as the sampling of my informants has not been random. It would probably have been better to randomize the sampling, but it was impossible. The time was short and I had never been in the country, therefore I did not know anyone in Nicaragua before travelling there. I spent 2 months trying to become trustable, partly due to the unethical behavior of the previous researcher, whilst partly because it always takes time to build trust. In the end, I had little time to do the interviews. It could have been better to do more than one interview with my chosen women; however, I decided I would rather have more of the shorter interviews with a variety of women, instead of fewer but longer interviews with fewer women. Besides, and regarding the “Samaritanas” participants, I always had to go with
28 Their names are invented in order to preserve their anonymity and have been borrowed from important women names from Nicaraguan history.
someone from the project in the venue's car, so organizing arrangements became difficult. Therefore, some of my decisions were based on this timing issue. As a final point, it has to be noted that this sample is clearly influenced by the fact that all the informants are somehow involved in the organization, above all those informants related to “Samaritanas” project. So it cannot be said that they represent prostitution in Managua as a whole.
To conclude, and even if I think that life story is the most suitable method I could use in order to write this thesis, it has two big disadvantages in relation to the validity of the data. Life stories are influenced in many ways and change over time. According to Mallimaci and Giménez (2006) it is important not to forget that interviewees do not describe "truth” but interpretations of their lives, of their own small pieces of “truth”.
Therefore the data is based on stories that have been transformed and biased throughout the interview and throughout their lives. One of these biases is social desirability, when people lie in order to make a certain impression and to achieve coherency. As a result, I tried to prevent this by asking again when things appeared to be contradictory or by asking my gatekeepers.
5.4 ETHICAL ISSUES
Before we start, I must mention that I have been very careful with the ethics in this thesis due to the sensitivity of my topic of research and of the life stories that I explore here. In this last part of the chapter I will point out the ethical aspects that I have taken into account within this research. Firstly, my intention with writing this thesis, as I have already mentioned in the introduction, is to help to improve the lives of my informants by producing knowledge about their circumstances and assigning a social value to this kind of research. Secondly, all of my informants knew that I was there to investigate and an informed consent was given by all. Thirdly, I have tried to develop my fieldwork in a less intrusive way, in order not to harm my informants. Lastly, I have tried to use my informants’ conversations and life stories in this thesis in a respectful, non judgemental and responsible way.
Nonetheless, there are some ethical issues and challenges I faced that have to be discussed here, before I start to analyze the data.
Participation involves diving into people’s reality (Mallimaci and Giménez 2006), and I was very lucky to be able to participate and “dive” into all of Samaritana’s and “La Casa Hogar” activities. However, I was constantly feeling a tension between being involved and trying to keep distance. I was not 100% a volunteer because I was doing research, but I was not 100% a researcher either. I had a multiciplity of roles. For example, when I was participating in some of the workshops I was neither a volunteer nor a researcher. Furthermore, my particular background as a psychologist may have influenced my participants. On the one hand, it may have helped them to speak more openly with me and to be able to build a bond between my interviewees and me; but on the other hand it may have created some confusion or some hopes for change that I could not accomplish. Nonetheless, I never hid my research intentions –they all knew–
and I was very concerned with being ethical and honest with them.
As I have pointed out before, my main ethical discussion relates to the “Samaritanas”
sample. Lourdes was with me in the interviews with the women-who-prostitute and she was also the one who introduced me to the women. On the one hand, having a gatekeeper was the only way to access the informants, but on the other hand I felt that being with her gave me the power to be trusted. The women-who-prostitute told me their stories, but we will never know if they felt indirectly and subtly forced to do so because of the power of my gatekeeper who coordinated the venue.
To conclude, and in relation to “La Casa Hogar” sample, I was a volunteer there until the end of the second month when I was informed that one of the primary objectives of the venue was to prevent the girls from being sexually exploited in the streets. It was not until I spoke with one of the founders that I discovered this. Marlene, the coordinator, and I decided then, to try to include some of the girls in my fieldwork after informed consent. My role then changed, but not completely. From a critical point of view, this change of roles could be confusing for the girls, although we tried to explain to them the situation so that they could understand.