Utilising timelines as a creative method in research with the under-served population of sex workers: stories from the field

Background: Gathering participant led data with underserved populations can be challenging, even with traditional qualitative methods. Additionally, , data collection with underserved populations is often fraught with further entrenched hegemony of the dominant narrative, a silencing of lived experience and can further marginalise and exclude those most in need. Creative methods such as timelines can be a useful, sensitive tool to gather data with participants experiencing inequalities and trauma, combining flexibility and malleability with their ethical appeal.
Aim: To outline the value of timelines as a creative method in health research, with sex workers as an underserved population, using the underlying principle of a feminist ethic of care.
Discussion: This article provides an overview of timelines in health research with women sex workers. It considers the ethics of using timelines, feminist values and power dynamics in data gathering.
Conclusion: Creative methods can work well to enable participants to choose how they narrate complex and traumatic life experiences, minimising the ways in which researchers control data production. Combined with deep, ongoing reflexivity, they can work to address some of the power imbalances inherent in the research process, to mitigate against epistemic violence.
Implications for practice: Considerations of the implications of creative research methods in practice are outlined, as are some options for managing these.