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Nico, M., Silva, M. G. V. & Caetano, A. (2026). Finding out family secrets while interviewing: How to ethically, methodologically, and sociologically deal with serendipity. Sage Research Methods.

M. L. Nico et al.,  "Finding out family secrets while interviewing: How to ethically, methodologically, and sociologically deal with serendipity", in Sage Research Methods, 2026

@article{nico2026_1768971367407,
	author = "Nico, M. and Silva, M. G. V. and Caetano, A.",
	title = "Finding out family secrets while interviewing: How to ethically, methodologically, and sociologically deal with serendipity",
	journal = "Sage Research Methods",
	year = "2026",
	volume = "",
	number = "",
	doi = "10.4135/9781036243197"
}

TY  - JOUR
TI  - Finding out family secrets while interviewing: How to ethically, methodologically, and sociologically deal with serendipity
T2  - Sage Research Methods
AU  - Nico, M.
AU  - Silva, M. G. V.
AU  - Caetano, A.
PY  - 2026
SN  - 9781-0362
DO  - 10.4135/9781036243197
AB  - In case study, we discuss how we ethically dealt with, analyzed, and published about sensitive, intimate, and unexpected information shared during interviews. Finding secrets in a research project about family histories (Linked Lives project) was a surprise, and an exciting opportunity to both embrace serendipity and to enrich our understanding about family life and relationships. It was also a good pretext to reflect more deeply on the project’s methods, and on the role they played in the process of identifying and analyzing secrets.

The emergence of secrets in the course of the interviews was not a chance event, a coincidence, or a lapse of narrative concentration from the participants. The methodological apparatus that involved the conduction of open, flexible, and empathic individual interviews; the cofilling of individual life calendars; and the collective construction of family genealogies contributed to the creation of a safe space for the disclosure of secrets (as well as other relevant, intimate, and usually hidden family dynamics).
This emergence did not come without challenges. Ethical issues regarding the overall protection of the participants, as well as the handling, analysis and publication of such sensitive information, were carefully considered. Specific procedures of the thematic content analysis carried out with the use of Computer Assisted Qualitative Data Analysis Software (CAQDAS) were implemented to minimisze the risk of identification of the families in their connection to the secrets. Overall, a situated relational ethics of care, transversal to every step of the research, was put in place, in close dialogue with the general guidelines provided by regulatory codes of ethics.
ER  -