ABSTRACT
Do bereaved participants experience the research process as ethics committees presume, as “vulnerable” persons in need of protection from insensitive researchers, or are they resilient? Sixteen bereaved persons who had previously taken part in three different thanatology studies (funeral arrangements, suicide among Maori persons, and late-term abortions) were interviewed retrospectively about their experience of taking part in sensitive research. The international literature suggests that ethics committees remain wary of giving ethical approval to qualitative studies with bereaved persons (see, e.g., Buckle, Dwyer, & Jackson, 2010; Lakeman & Fitzgerald, 2009; Turner & Webb, 2012).
