Shame, healing, and trust: A personal reflection on qualitative ethics

Despite increasing pressure to publish the highest number of journal articles in the highest ranked journals possible, tourism researchers are not often discussing the impact of this pressure on research ethics. This is especially true for qualitative researchers, who are obliged to operate under a quantitative paradigm. Some journals (e.g., Annals of Tourism Research) are encouraging data sets to be made available to encourage transparency, but this still does not consider qualitative data that may be difficult to de-identify. This paper is a personal reflection on my own struggle with qualitative ethics and the impact that unethical research has had on me as a researcher and an individual.