Now I see it, now I don’t: researcher’s position and reflexivity in qualitative research

By Roni Berger. 2015

3,507 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This article addresses potential effects on reflexivity of researcher’s social position (e.g. gender, age, race, immigration status, sexual orientation), personal experiences, and political and professional beliefs. Because reflexivity is a major strategy for quality control in qualitative research, understanding how it may be impacted by the characteristics and experiences of the researcher is of paramount importance. Benefits and challenges to reflexivity under three types of researcher’s position are discussed and illustrated by means of case examples: (1) reflexivity when researcher shares the experience of study participants, (2) reflexivity when researcher moves from the position of an outsider to the position of an insider in the course of the study, and (3) reflexivity when researcher has no personal familiarity or experience with what is being studied. Strategies are offered for harvesting the benefits of researcher’s familiarity with the subject and for curbing its potentially negative effects. Directions for future research are suggested.

Subfields: Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/bd93cd67fd356921f49241243bb6fb5872a288cc

How researchers see this paper

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In Sociology and Political Science

1. J. McAvoy
2. J. Dodgson
3. L. Lazard

Citations in the corpus

• From “It Has Stopped Our Lives” to “Spending More Time Together Has Strengthened Bonds”: The Varied Experiences of Australian Families During COVID-19 (2020, background): “In terms of reflexivity, which actively acknowledges how the researchers’ positions within the project contributed to data interpretation (Berger, 2015), all authors reside in Australia, thereby experiencing the same social distancing/isolation restrictions as participants.”
• Exploring analytical trustworthiness and the process of reaching consensus in interpretative phenomenological analysis: lost in transcription (2015, background): “To do this, we need to self-monitor the ‘impact of our biases, beliefs and personal experiences on the research’ (Berger, 2013, p. 2).”
• Doing reflexivity in psychological research: What’s the point? What’s the practice? (2020, background): “Berger (2015), for example, suggests that “relevant researcher’s positioning include personal characteristics, such as gender, race, affiliation, age, sexual orientation, immigration status, personal experiences, linguistic tradition, beliefs, biases, preferences, theoretical, political and…”
• Reflexivity in Qualitative Research (2019, background): “The researchers’ position as an insider or outsider and/or whether they have shared the experiences with the study participants is especially important when considering both similarities and differences between the researcher and the participants (Berger, 2015; Teh & Lek, 2018).”