Rhetoric of Health and Medicine Oct 2019 Open Access

Surveying Precarious Publics

Christa Teston The Ohio State University ; Laura Gonzales The University of Texas at El Paso ; Kristin Marie Bivens Harold Washington College ; Kelly Whitney New Mexico State University

Abstract

This essay assumes that the design and use of surveys is a fundamentally rhetorical act. It provides suggestions for employing and designing health-related surveys intended for research participants who might be characterized as inhabiting one or more precarious positionalities. We use “precarious positionality” to signal when research participants self-identify as one or more of the following: a racial and/or linguistic minority, economically disadvantaged, disabled, former or current drug user, undocumented, un(der)educated, oppressed, sexualized, disenfranchised, criminalized,and/or colonized. Drawing on the research team’s experiences with piloting what we hope will eventually become a nationwide survey, the essay describes how to avoid several survey-designpitfalls; it also makes recommendations for how to improve survey-based health research that enrolls participants who inhabit one or more precarious positionalities. Our recommendations attend to rhetorical complexities related to survey ethics, inclusion criteria, privacy, stigmatized and misleading language, variations in discursive repertoires, accessibility, and liability.

Journal
Rhetoric of Health and Medicine
Published
2019-10-08
DOI
10.5744/rhm.2019.1015
CompPile
Open Access
OA PDF Gold
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Citation context

Cited by in this index (8)

  1. Johnson-Sheehan et al. (2026)
    Leveraging Human-Centered Design and Artificial Intelligence to Improve Rural H…
    Written Communication
  2. Acharya (2024)
    Designing Equitable and Inclusive mHealth Technology: Insights from Global Sout…
    IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication
  3. Welhausen (2023)
    Visualizing a Drug Abuse Epidemic: Media Coverage, Opioids, and the Racialized …
    Journal of Technical Writing and Communication
  4. Phelps (2022)
    Concomitant Ethics: Institutional Review Boards and Technical and Professional …
    Journal of Business and Technical Communication
  5. Welhausen (2022)
    Precarious Data: Crack, Opioids, and Enacting a Social Justice Ethic in Data Vi…
    IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication
Show all 8 →
  1. Cannon et al. (2021)
    Re/producing Knowledge in Health and Medicine: Designing Research Methods for M…
    Technical Communication Quarterly
  2. Harper (2021)
    Tired as a Mutha: Black Mother Activists and the Fight for Affordable Housing a…
    Technical Communication Quarterly
  3. Johnson et al. (2020)
    Precarious Data: Affect, Infrastructure, and Public Education
    Rhetoric Society Quarterly

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