Reflexivity in qualitative research dissertations
what is reflexivity? how do I write reflexively?
If you’re doing a social sciences dissertation – you’re going to have to get reflexive. This is about acknowledging your role in the research process.
But how do you actually do that? Keep reading because in this blogpost, I’m going to explain what reflexivity is, why it’s important to qualitative researchers, and I’ll walk you through some examples to show you how to be reflexive in particular parts of your dissertation.
What is reflexivity and why does it matter to qualitative researchers?
Reflexivity is about reflecting on how your own experiences, values and beliefs might impact upon your research.
Being open and transparent about this is good practice in qualitative research – because the role of the researcher is really important.
We can see why this is the case in the image here.
As a qualitative researcher, you research with people, you value immersing yourself in your research environment, you seek to understand things and identify the meanings.
Qualitative research isn’t about trying to be detached and objective, because as a qualitative researcher, you probably don’t believe that’s actually possible!
The way you go about making sense of what you’re studying is very different from how a purely quantitative researcher would do this. They do seek to be objective, and detached and value-free, observing from the outside, the researcher and the researched. As such, quantitative research is concerned with reliability – the idea that someone else could come along and follow their process and obtain similar results.
The criteria for rigor in qualitative research is different – it’s more about factors like trustworthiness and authenticity. To what extent have you accessed people’s authentic experiences in the research? To what extent have you been authentic yourself in the research?
In summary, reflexivity is about reflecting on how your own experiences, values and beliefs might impact on how you approach and conduct research. That’s important in qualitative research because this type of research acknowledges that the researcher isn’t just a researcher, they’re a unique and complex human who brings a lot of their own stuff to the research – and that is fine, as long as they’re open and transparent about that.
Where in my dissertation could I be reflexive and what might this look like?
Let’s examine a couple of examples.
“Doing it for the ‘gram? To what extent are young people’s choices of alcoholic beverages on nights out ‘performative’?”. This is a dissertation about young people’s drinking behaviour and social media.
“Is the side hustle worth it? Young female entrepreneurs’ experiences of misogyny and harassment on handmade seller platforms.”. This is a dissertation exploring online entrepreneurialism among young women.
Where might students be reflexive in these dissertations, and where might you be reflexive in yours?
Introduction
You can be reflexive in your dissertation’s Introduction chapter. One of the important things that the Introduction chapter of any dissertation addresses is, “Why is it important to do this research?”. How have your past experiences in a particular profession or area of life influenced your decision to pursue this specific research topic?
The students doing the example projects might write something like,
“Having worked bars during the course of my studies, I developed an interest in young people’s drinking behaviour”.
“Having set up my own online handmade business during my studies, I became interested in the journeys of female entrepreneurs”.
Literature Review
You can also be reflexive in the literature review. You might bring this in when you are identifying the areas of the literature relevant to your study. Your own positioning can help bridge gaps between separate bodies of literature.
The student looking at young people’s drinking behaviour and social media might encompass the public health literature, but from what they’ve seen and experienced, they might want to explore literature around marketing too. They might write something like this…
“The literature around young people’s drinking behaviour tends to be concentrated in the sphere of public health. However, during my experiences working in bars, I witnessed various ‘trends’ in the specific brands and varieties of drink that young people were consuming. As such, the literature review will also encompass relevant material from the marketing literature.”
What about the student looking at online entrepreneurialism among women? They will certainly have to engage with the business literature, but they may also bring in other literature around gender based abuse and misogyny. They might write…
“In Facebook groups for student entrepreneurs, I have shared my experiences of unwanted sexual advances from customers and discovered that many other women have also endured this. As such, whilst it was important for the literature review to engage with the business literature on entrepreneurialism, it was also necessary to explore the feminist literature around women’s experiences of gender based violence.”
Methodology
The methodology chapter is another part of the dissertation when you can be reflexive. This is an opportunity to think about how you positioned yourself in relation to your research participants.
Did you see yourself as ‘one of them’, did you identify with them, and as such, did you take an ‘insider’ perspective? What were some of the challenges associated with that? What impact did that have on your research? Or, did you see yourself as quite different from your participants in some way, taking more of an ‘outsider’ or observer perspective? What challenges came up in terms of how you thought about your research participants? What impact did that have on your research?
For example, take the student looking at young people’s drinking behaviour and social media. Let’s say that whilst this student worked in bars, they were actually teetotal, they didn’t consume alcohol themselves. But they were studying other young people who did drink. How much did their choice not to drink impact upon their views of their participants, who did? How did this impact upon their interactions with their participants, with whom they were doing semi-structured interviews? They might write…
“One thing I struggled with during the research was around disclosing my status as a teetotaller to my participants. In several interviews, many of my participants made comments like, ‘You know how it is when you’ve had too much to drink, right?’, to which I would respond, ‘Well no, I don’t drink…’. I noticed a considerable shift in their reaction to me. I wondered whether they thought I was judging them, and if they saw me as a moralistic outsider”.
Now let’s look at the student studying online entrepreneurialism among young women and let’s say that this student also did an interview study. She had an online business, she was able to draw on her own experiences and her familiarity with the processes and language around this topic. She very much felt like an insider. However, she sometimes found the discussion veering off course because her participants were asking her about things that weren’t always relevant to her research topic. She felt awkward about trying to steer them back on course. Her role as a member of the community she was researching with – her insider status - was sometimes challenging for her research. She might write for example…
“I had recruited my participants through a Facebook group set up for women selling on a particular handmade platform. I had been a member of this group for several years and regularly posted there, often advising about technical and software issues. During the interviews, many participants asked for my advice on things like how to change a particular setting or deal with a technical issue. I found this difficult to navigate. Whilst the interviews aimed to explore their experiences of harassment, I also felt I had a responsibility to help with their queries, so I would spend a few minutes offering advice before gently directing the interview back to the topic I was interested in”.
Conclusion and email sign-up
Can you see how reflexivity can come into multiple different parts of your dissertation? There is a tendency to think that it should just be confined to your methodology, but it can actually be used in other sections too, as we’ve seen in relation to the introduction and literature review.
I hope you now feel a bit more confident with reflexivity and ready to start getting all reflexive in relation to your own study!
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