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Reflexivity: (a) the process of critical self-reflection on one's biases theoretical predispositions, preferences; (b) an acknowledgement of the inquirer's place in the setting, context, and social phenomenon he or she seeks to understand and a means for a critical examination of the entire research process. (Schwandt, 1997)
Researchers want good data. As Creswell writes in this issue, validity criteria are met, in part, by good data. Throughout a study, researchers focus on theoretical groundings, timelines, collecting and analyzing data, and writing up interpretations. Separating these thoughts and actions from reflexivity is impossible.` Researcher reflexivity represents a methodical process of learning about self as researcher, which, in turn, illuminates deeper, richer meanings about personal, theoretical, ethical, and epistemological aspects of the research question. Qualitative researchers engage in reflexivity because they have reason to believe that good data result.
Schwandt (1997), in the definition above, identifies elements of a reflexive process and acknowledgment of the researcher's place (positionality). Schwandt is referring to a specific kind of documentation that may be written down in longhand, keyed into a word processing program, perhaps dictated into a tape recorder for transcription.
The documentation format is flexible, revealing the preferences and strengths of the researcher and, often, the conventions of the discipline or field.
Anthropologists, for example, take and keep copious field notes, sometimes a private second set that includes reflexive writing. In a text introducing qualitative research for educational researchers, Bogdan and Biklen (1998) suggest that researchers bracket observer comments within a set of field notes. Bracketing provides a visual reminder that the researcher observes and comments on self and is, in fact, part of the text.
Regardless of the form, researchers intent on prizing reflexivity collect and examine reflexivity data as they would interview and observation data. Such documentation makes researcher thinking about personal and theoretical commitments visible and, as suggested by Schwandt, open to a critical examination of the research process. Thus, researcher reflexivity and researcher writing form an important and close connection.
Untangling the Personal and Theoretical
Dynamic and creative, reflexivity gives qualitative research its pulse. The excerpt below, from Behar's The Vulnerable Observer: Anthropology That Breaks Your Heart (1996), provides one example of reflexivity.
My grandfather's dying and death while I was in Spain brought home...