Who am I and does it matter during research?

During my research journey, I realised that being a researcher is more than just collecting data. It’s about listening, learning, and unlearning. It’s a highly reflexive process that holds you to a certain level of accountability.

Diving into qualitative research with the goal of delivering perfect research- is fallacious. Everyone’s idea of perfection varies, and this is apparent in the choices we make with methodologies and theoretical frameworks. Each research is unique because perspectives, positions, and even styles of conducting interviews vary. There is no “one” perfect way of doing it. However, there are many deliberate efforts that can be made to ensure ethics of care are maintained; for those being interviewed and the interviewer.

Feminist objectivity is about limited location and situated knowledge, not about transcendence and splitting of subject and object. It allows us to become answerable for what we learn how to see. (Haraway, 1988, p. 583)

Accountability in qualitative interviews is important.

Researcher accountability lies in how you are treating people. Participants are people, and not subjects. They are human beings with complex emotions, experiences, and backgrounds. We need to be aware about their well-being and desire to share stories.

Qualitative interviews are treated as data, but we need to remember that these are also human narrations- untold stories. It is never “just data”. The themes we explore and the stories (that we lightly nudge for) are sometimes constructed in private and uncomfortable spaces. Sometimes they are not. Either way, navigating these spaces requires questioning yourself, now and again.

Treating research participants as mere assets or means to an end in the research process is problematic. It creates a power dynamic where the researcher is in charge and the participants are reduced to being urgent providers of “data”. The best way to disrupt this dynamic is through acknowledgment of positionality and a reflexive way of thinking. These are interlinked ideas that complement (and compliment) each other.

First, let’s explore the idea of positionality.

Positionality is understanding who you are as a person which includes’, but is not limited to; your age, gender, background, sexual orientation, physical abilities, and even socio-political leanings (Hill, 1986; Masoud, 2022). This helps you identify your positionality within the research topic, which in turn resituates the “imbalance” of power and sharing. This imbalance is a fragile dynamic where those being interviewed often share “personal stories”, but the researcher does not share as much (Masoud, 2022).

I considered some of the following points to understand my positionality (or how I represent myself) while anticipating the field of qualitative research (Masoud, 2022; Reich, 2021):

1. I am a Muslim woman from the majority Sunni sect in Pakistan interviewing participants from a small sub-sect of Muslims.
2. I speak Urdu and can contextualise conversations from Urdu to English for my thesis.
3. I have lived in Pakistan and understand the impact of religion and gendered differences in the culture.
4. I will maintain a cordial relationship with the participants which will not entail too much interaction beyond the research itself (I was wrong, which I will discuss in the next section).

These are just a few points. They have evolved overtime. I’ve questioned many ideals that I held at the start of my journey. Overtime, it has transformed my positionality.

For example, as time has passed I’ve realised the importance of detaching from a “voyeuristic” (Douglas, 2023) lens that looks into the lives of participants and then departs. By depart I mean detaching from the participant after the majority of the research work is done in a polite manner formal consideration of their well-being. That’s what I thought a formal, cordial relationship with a participant looked like.

Like I said, I was wrong.

I ended up thinking a lot about the people who allowed me to have conversations with them. This invited me to read more on reflexivity and in the process I had more meaningful conversations- away from research. I also formed a friendship where we shared laughter, grief, compassion, and hope (Douglas, 2023). My aim is not to romanticize research and use it as a means to find friends, but to to be aware that we are conversing and interacting with humans during the research process.

Self-awareness goes a long way in qualitative research, ethics, and well-being of participants.

Self-awareness and positionality contribute to “stronger social science methods” that create space for compassion, contextualisation, and responsibility- during and after the interviewing process (Haraway, 1988; Masoud, 2022; Mohanty, 2003). Another thing to keep in mind is that positionality can be flexible; fluid, and fundamental. By this, I mean that positionality can move between and beyond different regional spaces, complex contextual labels, and other nuanced identity markers. You can be one thing, and also another at the same time.

These shifts and realisations are integral to writing about one’s positionality in their research. “Under Western Eyes” (Mohanty, 1984) received a lot of praise and critical feedback among postcolonial scholars and interdisciplinary researchers for being an eye-opener that third world women are not a homogeneous group.

It highlighted the academic irresponsibility of clumping a group of women from certain regions as being alike- without any nuance or complexity to them. A few years later, Mohanty revisited her work by reflecting on her own positionality and understanding that she can be geographically situated within the west (or first world)1 but face challenges that align with those of third world immigrant women. This pre-existing yet freshly articulated reimagination in her work was also another dialogue for indigenous women located in the west, who faced challenges uniquely experienced by marginalised people.

Reflexivity is an active and ongoing process, it doesn’t end.

It allows researchers to think about power dynamics and evaluate themselves within the research process (Cohen & Crabtree, 2008; Lacy, 2017; Reich, 2021). This is especially useful when drafting interview questions for participants, to ensure that their well-being is of top priority. Reflexivity monitors the quality of research and creates awareness of the process and people involved in knowledge production (Cohen & Crabtree, 2008; Subramani, 2019).

A reflexive approach encourages self-critical thinking which allows researchers to address inequalities between the researcher and participants. This inequality highlights how the researcher is sometimes at the receiving end of hearing, transcribing, and analysing information that is deeply personal and may come from a place of fragility. To check in with one’s decisions, actions, and data analysis also falls within the reflexive process. It is a constant work of thinking, rethinking, learning, and unlearning.

I chose semi-structured interviews in my research design because it opens space for dialogue where there are higher chances of participants taking the lead (Douglas, 2023). Rich conversations emerge from this approach which creates space for understanding the perspectives of participants. This allows for further reflexivity and contextualisation of the research topic.

The reflexive process cannot be determined by an ethics board or reviewing committee- it is a journey. This is not to undermine the role of these monitoring bodies, but to reiterate the subjective and unique journey of the researcher.

It comes with the realisation that research and interviews involve human beings that are not just subjects of data extraction. This resonates with Douglas’ (2023) research that prioritises “seeing the archives as persons” rather than mere documents or data that contribute to scholarly work.

It is much more than that and counts as a significant step in maintaining an aspect of care during data collection and research interviews. Reflexivity pushes researchers to address unintentional bias and exercises a conscious effort to remain accountable and answerable by asking questions like (Braun & Clarke, 2013; Shepherd et al, 2022) :

1. Will my position as a researcher affect how participants respond, how and why?
2. Am I coming from a place of bias towards a minority sect as someone who belongs to the majority sect?
3. What are my preconceived notions and how can I intentionally address them and unpack them within the research process?
4. Am I affecting the well-being of the participants?

This process of revisiting one’s positionality and its impact leads to reflexivity and it does not end at data collection. Even during data analysis- deliberate attempts to revisit developing themes and assumptions is another form of practising reflexivity. This is done to find rich meanings of data rather than pre-determined categories where you just dump data without a second thought.

The second thoughts invite an organic process that is not rooted in finding the right answer (Byrne, 2022; Braun & Clarke, 2019). Even though these ideas specifically resonate with reflexive thematic analysis, they serve as grounds to understanding the importance of questioning, revisiting, and rethinking.

I am not perfect. And neither is my research. But learning about positionality and reflexivity has improved how I approach research and people by ten-folds.

1 Mohanty uses her own work and Gustavo Esteva and Madhu Suri Prakash (1998) to depict dichotomies, for example: First World/North and Third World/South. Furthermore, she employs terms such as One-Third World and Two-Thirds World.