Separately Together: Working Reflexively as a Team

Discussions of reflexivity tend to ignore issues of practice, and those addressing practice are likely to presume a sole researcher. In this paper, we respond to the need for attention to reflexive practice in qualitative research teams. Drawing on our experience of working ‘separately together’, we identify reflexivity as an embedded feature of team-based research. We discuss how reflexivity can be used as a collective interpretive resource in the construction of the research subject/object, and we highlight reflexive possibilities unique to team-based research. We include in the article a presentation of the orientations and research practices that supported our reflexive teamwork.     

Class matters: interviewing across social class boundaries

In this paper, we explore the methodological implications of conducting qualitative interviews when researchers and participants come from different social classes. Singling out class on its own terms, rather than considering it as an auxiliary structural factor, we examine the unique challenges that arise during cross-class interviews. Such challenges, we contend, require researcher reflexivity about how researcher–participant interactions unfold and the ways in which knowledge is generated during the interview process. In our discussion, we draw on Bourdieu’s cultural view of social class to argue that cross-class dynamics between the researcher and the participant – along with the normalization of middle-class values often inherent in interview questions – create potential obstacles to establishing rapport and facilitating fertile conversation. We use examples from our own field research in a U.S. fast-food chain to illustrate these barriers. We also provide practical recommendations to researchers regarding how they can minimize class-based biases, reduce class saliency, and gain awareness of their own class positions during cross-class interviews.     

The experiential gap in disaster research: Feminist epistemology and the contribution of local affected researchers

ABSTRACT

In this article, we make the case for a situated knowledge of disasters. By applying a feminist standpoint framework, we argue that an ethic of “objectivity” and a privileging of the unattached researcher creates an experiential gap in the disaster literature whereby researchers who themselves experience disaster are undervalued and underrepresented. We analyze reflexive accounts by disaster researchers to show what epi stemological barriers emerge from conventional processes of inquiry and the systematic disadvantaging of local, affected researchers. We also study patterns in articles by “outsider” and “insider” researchers, focusing on differences and similarities in research questions, reflexivity, relationships with and access to participants, and larger theoretical goals. This comparison reveals that the unique position of affected researchers can help to bridge formal knowledge and practical life knowledge, creating new and worthwhile paths to understanding the social effects of disaster.     

“From Her Side of the Gossamer Wall(s)”: Reflexivity and Relational Knowing

Drawing on a provocative metaphor from an award-winning novel, this article argues that reflexivity can be conceived as three gossamer walls through which researchers construct knowledge from within three sets of relationships, including relations with: oneself (and the ghosts that haunt us); with research participants; and with one’s readers, audiences, and epistemological communities. On the other side of a first gossamer wall are relations with our many selves as well as with ‘ghosts,’ deeply buried across time and space, that may come back to haunt us when we are physically and emotionally invested in our research. Behind a second gossamer wall are the multi-layered relations between researchers and research respondents, relationships that can involve oral, audible, physical, emotional, textual, embodied, as well as shifting theoretical and epistemological dimensions. Finally, a third gossamer wall lies between ourselves and our readers and audiences as well as the epistemological or epistemic communities wherein our work is located, read, reviewed, and received. Rooted in an ethnography of Canadian primary caregiving fathers, the article contributes to current discussions of reflexivity in qualitative research practice by expanding dominant understandings of reflexivity as a self-centered exercise towards a consideration of other critical relationships that are part of how we come to know and write about others. The metaphor of gossamer walls, combining the sheerness of gossamer and the solidity of walls, provides for creative ways of conceptualizing reflexivity in temporal and spatial terms as well as to consider the constantly shifting degrees of transparency and obscurity, connection and separation that recur in the multiple relations that constitute reflexive research and knowing.     

“Show us what you’ve got”: From experiences of undoing to mobilizing agentic vulnerability in research

This inquiry both builds on and extends exploration into gendered research through a focus on researcher vulnerability and its associated ethics. We discuss six critical vignettes across Western and Eastern contexts in which female researchers are “undone” and subsequently “redone” during their research endeavors. We draw upon Butler's work on gender and vulnerability, theorized as a subset of precarity. Attention is drawn to attempts to reframe, understand, and mobilize vulnerability differently, as a form of resistance, research activism, and emancipatory enactment. We propose agentic vulnerability as speaking to felt moments of vulnerability experienced in field research. We extend this contribution into a theorization of the researcher as activist, outlining practical applications of this concept. Ultimately, we seek to reposition agentic vulnerability in institutional research as a source of new ethics, research practices, and activism.     

When the snowball fails to roll and the use of ‘horizontal’ networking in qualitative social research

Snowball sampling is frequently advocated and employed by qualitative social researchers. Under certain circumstances, however, it is prone to faltering and even failure. Drawing on two research projects where the snowball failed to roll, the paper identifies reasons for this stasis. It goes on to argue that there are alternative forms of networking that can be developed by the qualitative social researcher in lieu of snowballing. Specifically, when research momentum fails to build, rather than drilling down ‘vertically’ through social networks, we argue that the researcher can move ‘horizontally’ across social networks and cast the sampling and recruitment net wide and shallow rather than deep. This change in emphasis can, we argue, make the difference between a project failing and a project succeeding, and points to the importance of a variegated understanding of the social networks on which our social research depends.     

From guided-instruction to facilitation of learning: the development of Five-level QDA as a CAQDAS pedagogy that explicates the practices of expert users

This paper introduces Five-level QDA (Qualitative Data Analysis) as a pedagogy for the teaching and learning of CAQDAS (Computer Assisted Qualitative Data AnalysiS) that spans methodologies, software packages and teaching modes. Based on the authors’ personal trajectories of using, teaching and researching CAQDAS since the late-1990s, the paper illustrates the need for a CAQDAS pedagogy by describing the challenges of learners in powerfully harnessing CAQDAS packages. The principles behind Five-level QDA are outlined, which focus on the contrast between the strategies and tactics of conducting QDA with software, and the need to translate between these. The implementation of Five-level QDA as an adaptable method of instruction is illustrated through the use of Analytic Planning Worksheets in the Recurring Hourglass design.     

Methodological challenges of conducting ‘insider’ reflexive research with the miscarriages of justice community

There is an increasing body of literature which examines the personal experiences of social science practitioners who become reflexive researchers. Less, however, has been written on researchers who reflexively investigate once traumatising locations and experiences. This paper problematises the psychological and methodological challenges experienced by a social scientist and ‘survivor’ of wrongful conviction conducting reflexive research where the participants and researcher have a shared (hi)story of wrongful conviction and trauma. A particular consequence of conducting the study was that friendship groups were developed between researcher and participants. The paper will examine this phenomenon and conclude that reflexive ‘insider’ approaches that spawn friendship groups can provide rich data providing the challenges of such research are acknowledged and appropriate strategies employed to safeguard the integrity of the research. The paper similarly concludes that measures should be adopted to protect the psychological equilibrium of the ‘insider’ researcher to avoid possible re-traumatisation.     

Reflexivity and ethical research practice while interviewing on sexual topics

Reflexivity is a multimodal research feature that relies on the researcher’s subjectivity and self-awareness. This paper discusses uses of reflexivity when carrying out qualitative in-depth interviews on sexual topics. Through extracts of a challenging interview, where the challenge comes in the form of sexualised provocation from one man to another, this paper considers the benefits of using reflexivity to address emerging complexities in the interview process. The discussion focuses on ethical research practice through the lens of three forms of reflexivity: (1) reviewing the values that underpin a research project, with emphasis on the tension between rationality and intuition; (2) emotional self-awareness and self-care; and (3) recognition of the power dynamics in the researcher-participant relationship. Reflexivity promotes an intuition-informed decision-making process as a means to achieve ethical practice and conduct interviews with sensitivity and proficiency.     

Reflection note: confessions of a Muslim researcher – considering identity in research

ABSTRACT

This research note explores some of the contentions that have emerged from Muslim-on-Muslim research and how this can implicate the researcher more personally. Speaking in the context of methodological concerns arising from qualitative research, the paper consider the following aspects: inappropriate access of participants, over-representation of own experiences, and questioning fundamental parts of your identity. Whilst certain experiences can shake the foundations of being a researcher and even sense of self, these should ultimately be welcomed. It is concluded that, in taking the time to reconcile from such tensions emerging from our multiple identities, it can allow for becoming a more rigorous and reflexive researcher.     

Reflexivity in the Research Process: Psychoanalytic Observations

This paper highlights what psychoanalysis can add to discussions of reflexivity, by specifically describing how reflexivity is conceptualized and fostered on psychoanalytic observation methods courses at the Tavistock Clinic, London. It is demonstrated that this psychological form of reflexivity is relevant to empirical and conceptual work and shown that it shares interesting parallels with debates about reflexivity in social research methods, while also being able to contribute to discussions of what constitutes reflexivity and what kinds of methods course might facilitate it. Reflexivity is often discussed in relation to a researcher’s empirical work, but this paper argues that reflexivity is equally needed in relation to the academic context in which most research and learning takes place. This paper demonstrates how psychoanalytic approaches to learning stimulate a reflexive relation to empirical and conceptual work and it provides examples of reflexivity from a two‐year infant observation and a research project on romantic love (involving conceptual and biographical research).     

The Aporias of Reflexivity: Standpoint,Position, and Non-normative Childhoods

In social work practice and research, both researchers and practitioners are required to be self-reflexive in order to produce authorized knowledge. In this article I examine the aporias of reflexivity, using aporia as a concept for dealing with and discussing the dilemmas, limitations, and shortcomings of reflexive methodology. To examine in a concrete and detailed way related issues involving the aporias of reflexivity, this article describes a project focused on non-normative childhoods in which reflexive research practice raised many, often highly ambiguous, questions concerning the processes of marginalization and domination as well as ethical considerations.     

TAKING THE DEBATE ON REFLEXIVITY FURTHER

Much has been written on the presence of researcher subjectivity in qualitative research and the concept of reflexivity, and efforts to account for researcher influence abound. A vast proportion of this literature examines interviewer effects and is confined to the relationship between researcher and respondent in the interview interaction. The present paper extends this focus. It contributes insights from a collaborative team project by presenting a case study of a biographical‐narrative interview in an organisational setting. The psychodynamically informed panel analysis considered dynamics not only in the interview, but also in the research team and the organisation. This proved valuable in making explicit latent ways in which the interviewer, subject to such wider dynamics, shaped the interview accordingly. The paper shows that awareness of the nature of researcher influence can lead to important insights about the phenomenon studied.     

When the Methodological Shoe is on the Other Foot: African American Interviewer and White Interviewees

Some scholars engaging in the insider/outsider debate have argued that the pairing of researcher and subjects based on racial similarity—i.e., “race matching”—is the most effective means for conducting qualitative research. Although insider/outsider status has been discussed with respect to white researchers' studies of African Americans, I explore the heretofore rarely discussed situation in which an African American is the researcher and whites are the subjects. I argue that insider status with respect to race continues to be based on a presumed connectedness linked to phenotypical characteristics—like skin color or hair texture. Yet, rather than experiencing a solely insider or outsider status, researchers and subjects experience what I call “insider moments” wherein their interests converge and they are able to share in the kinds of interactions that yield important insights. I conclude by evaluating the utility of insider/outsider status in qualitative research.     

Where are the children? Exploring the boundaries between text and context in the study of place and space in four different countries

In this article, we demonstrate how the cultural conceptions of a team of five researchers from different cultural and national backgrounds can be used as a source of knowledge during a collective, self‐reflexive analytical process. While collectively analysing texts describing daily life produced by first‐grade children and their parents in China, Norway, South Africa and the United States, the research team engaged in a collectively negotiated analytical process, which we refer to as an ‘analytic negotiating method’. The strength of this process rests on the ability to examine critically the boundaries between the researcher's contextual conceptions and conceptions derived from the texts. Engaging in this kind of negotiated analytical process contributes to scholarship by working towards a level of self‐reflexivity that makes the link between empirical data and researcher interpretation more transparent and produces a sensitivity to context that allows insights into the conceptions of childhood that operate cross‐culturally.     

Beware of Allies!

In science and technology studies (STS), reflexivity is not the foremost political or ethical concern that it is for some postmodernists, feminists, anthropologists, or those earnest students of Bourdieu. For us, reflexivity is a practical methodological concern. When reflexivity is raised in our scholarly communications it is, without irony, about crafting scientific communications (i.e., scholarly accounts like articles or books) reflexively. This paper therefore is an actor-network account of making reflexive actor-network accounts, specifically, in the process of writing-up qualitative research findings. It is a paper about research. It is a paper about the research process. As our empirical contribution, we report on research we previously conducted and about the subsequent steps we took toward a (publishable) way of reporting it. We are trying to honestly disclose how the process of preparing a reflexive account is more than merely a matter of cleaning-up the messiness of data, but also, and perhaps foremost, a process of finding, aligning, and occasionally distancing our accounts from our allies?—?in our case, actor-network theory (ANT) and reflexivity.     

Computer software and qualitative analysis: Trends,issues and resources

Developments during the 1990s in the use of computer software for qualitative data analysis are surveyed. Salient trends are identified as are wider issues associated with software use. Also listed are some of the resources now available to potential and actual users of computer-assisted qualitative data analysis software (CAQDAS).