Personal Boundaries in Qualitative Research –the Delicate Matter of Contact with the Interlocutorwhen the Interview Turns into a Crisis Intervention or Therapy Session

The chapter is a discussion on the category of personal boundaries, rarely undertaken
in the research context. A research conversation (interview) was treated as a type of
meeting, i.e. an interpersonal relationship between the researcher and the interlocutor. The
authors point to possible crossings of personal boundaries and their effects. The article contains
reconstructions of two research projects, within which the decisions made at individual
stages of the research process were thoroughly analyzed. They provide a background for
reproducing numerous research dilemmas, with regard to the type of relationship between
the study participants (interlocutors) and the researchers, that the authors had to face.