Numerous articles and textbooks advise qualitative researchers on accessing “hard-to-reach” or “hidden” populations. In this article, I compare two studies that I conducted with justice-involved women in the United States: a yearlong ethnography inside a state women’s prison and an interview study with formerly incarcerated women. Although these two populations are interconnected—and both are widely deemed hard-to-reach—the barriers to access differed. In the prison study, hard-to-reach reflected an issue of institutional legitimacy, in which researchers must demonstrate themselves and their proposed study as legible, appropriate, and worthy to organizational gatekeepers. In the reentry study, hard-to-reach reflected an issue of structural precarity, in which researchers must navigate the everyday vulnerabilities of research participants’ social position to ensure the study is inclusive and feasible. Juxtaposing these two experiences, I propose greater nuance to the term hard-to-reach such that researchers may proactively address institutional and structural barriers to access.

许多文章和教科书为定性研究人员提供了有关访问“难以到达”或“隐藏”人群的建议。在本文中，我比较了我与美国参与正义的女性进行的两项研究：在州女性监狱内进行的为期一年的人种志研究和对曾被监禁的女性进行的访谈研究。尽管这两个人口是相互联系的，并且都被广泛认为难以到达，但获得障碍却有所不同。在监狱研究中，难以触及的问题反映了机构合法性的问题，在此问题中，研究人员必须证明自己和他们提出的研究是清晰，适当和值得组织看门人使用的。在折返研究中，难以到达反映了结构不稳定的问题，研究人员必须在其中应对研究参与者社会地位的日常脆弱性，以确保研究具有包容性和可行性。将这两种经验并列，我建议对难以达到的术语进行更细微的区分，以便研究人员可以主动解决获取方面的制度性和结构性障碍。