Managing emotional responses to distressing research

The chapter describes the emotional challenges faced by the first author in collecting and analysing data from small business entrepreneurs at the height of the COVID pandemic and associated lockdowns. The description emphasises the anxiety and range of emotions experienced in the field, and how those feelings were re-activated with the coding process. It highlights the need to anticipate and even plan for distress in extreme and distressing contexts, as is the case for many emerging market contexts. Based on this description, the chapter elucidates why emotional responses to distressing data are often inevitable and should be actively managed for, rather than ignored or dismissed. A set of guidelines for managing emotional responses to distressing data provides a useful guide to researchers who need to manage distress in the course of qualitative data collection and analysis.