Time for an identity audit?

No one is a blank slate, so don’t underestimate the power of your own influence during the qualitative research process.

As we just discussed, language has power, but so do you. Are you planning on remaining neutral during your research? If so, you may need to think again. Despite our best efforts, observations about people and their environment are rarely objective.

Cruz (2015) puts it neatly:

‘Observation is an active interaction with reality. We never interact without our own perspectives, our own beliefs and assumptions’.

Why should I be in tune with my biases and subjectivity?

• She divided her page into various columns.
• In one column she recorded what she observed as impartially as possibly.
• In an adjacent column she reflected on each observation, by writing about her thoughts and feelings on it.

More strategies

• ‘Why do I observe what I observe and not something else?
• What lies behind these decisions?
• How could this dimension affect the research process?’

How else can I influence the process?

Appearing young, naïve and shy may help your participants feel more comfortable about sharing their vulnerabilities, but these same attributes could make them refrain from inviting you to happy hour. Being big, boisterous and jovial may enable participants to feel comfortable to include you in their humorous pranks, but it may discourage them from sharing their deepest confidences. Fieldworkers’ identities are ‘read’ and evaluated by participants just as much as participants’ identities are read and evaluated by fieldworkers. Our bodies and identities can both help and hurt as we study various groups, and the best we can do is to try to put ourselves in our participants’ shoes and reflect critically on our identity’s strengths and constraints vis-à-vis any particular scene (Tracy, 2013, p. 77).

Remember, we are each a unique product of our upbringing, life experiences, values, beliefs and attitudes. Before embarking on your research project and during the process of it, invest time in reflecting on what makes you uniquely you. Then ask, ‘how could this influence my research journey?’

Your task

As a researcher, your task is to make sense of multiple realities. With this in mind, it may be a good idea to start with your own.

1. Complete the Self Identity Audit
2. Post a comment on how important you think it is to be aware of how we are perceived in the world. What is the value of engaging in ongoing self reflection to become aware of your biases?

References

Cruz, L. (2015). Self-reflexivity as an ethical instrument to give full play to our explicit and implicit subjectivity as qualitative researchers. The Qualitative Report, 20(10), 1723-1735.

Schwartz, S. H. (2012). An Overview of the Schwartz Theory of Basic Values. Online Readings in Psychology and Culture, 2(1).

Tracy, S.J. (2013). Qualitative Research Methods: Collecting evidence, crafting analysis, communicating impact. UK: Wiley-Blackwell.