This presentation formed part of the HEA-funded workshop 'Reflexive learning for the researching professional'. This workshop explored the importance of reflexivity in professional learning, particularly in the context of doctoral research. From an understanding of reflexivity as critical self-awareness of our ways of being, knowing and doing, concepts such as identity, reflexive dialogue, liminality and transformation will be explored. Reflexivity will be illustrated from practitioner perspectives. This presentation forms part of a blog post which can be accessed via: http://bit.ly/K8twPT For further details of HEA Social Sciences work relating to teaching research methods please see http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/resources/detail/disciplines/Soc_Sci/Strategic_2013/ResearchMethods

1. The Reflexive Journey; On
Becoming Reflexive and
Developing as a Reflexive
Researcher
Click to edit Master title style
Professor Helen Woodruffe-Burton
Newcastle Business School,
Northumbria University
Click to edit Master subtitle style
09/01/14
1

2. What is reflexivity?
• “Reflexivity requires an awareness of the researcher's
contribution to the construction of meanings throughout the
research process, and an acknowledgment of the
impossibility of remaining 'outside of' one's subject matter
while conducting research. Reflexivity then, urges us "to
explore the ways in which a researcher's involvement with a
particular study influences, acts upon and informs such
research." (Nightingale and Cromby, 1999, p. 228).

3. What is reflexivity?
• Identified in the social sciences as a way to address
power and control in the research encounter
(amongst other issues)
– E.g. Wasserfall, 1993, Kleinsasser, 2000, Mauthner and Doucet, 2003
• However:
• There is a lack of structured debate about what reflexivity is
• Process are not articulated clearly
• Different approaches are evident
• The result of this complexity can be terminal
ambiguity (Johnson and Duberley, 2003)

4. Personal reflexivity?
• ‘Personal reflexivity’ involves reflecting upon the
ways in which our own values, experiences,
interests, beliefs, political commitments, wider
aims in life and social identities have shaped the
research. It also involves thinking about how the
research may have affected and possibly
changed us, as people and as researchers.

5. Epistemological reflexivity
•
‘Epistemological reflexivity’ requires us to engage with questions
such as:
– How has the research question defined and limited what can be
'found?'
– How has the design of the study and the method of analysis
'constructed' the data and the findings?
– How could the research question have been investigated
differently?
– To what extent would this have given rise to a different
understanding of the phenomenon under investigation?
•
Thus, epistemological reflexivity encourages us to reflect upon the
assumptions (about the world, about knowledge) that we have made
in the course of the research, and it helps us to think about the
implications of such assumptions for the research and its findings."
• Carla Willig, (2001) Introducing Qualitative Research in Psychology (p. 10).

6. Action research and reflexivity BERA guidelines
• Researchers engaged in action research must
consider the extent to which their own reflective
research impinges on others, for example in the case
of the dual role of teacher and researcher and the
impact on students and colleagues.
– BERA guidelines, p.6
• http://www.bera.ac.uk/publications/guidelines/

7. Reflexive Researchers
• present honest and self-searching accounts of the
research process
• demonstrate to their audiences their historical
situatedness, their personal investments in the
research, acknowledging various biases they may
bring
• reveal “their surprises and ‘undoings’ in the process
of the research endeavour.”
– Gergen and Gergen (2000)

8. Researcher as ‘bricoleur’
• research is a process shaped by the individual history
of the researcher and the individual characteristics of
all the people in the research setting
• The qualitative researcher “refuses to be limited”
(Janesick, 2000, p.381)
• the ‘researcher-as-bricoleur’ uses the tools of his or
her methodological trade to provide solutions to
problems (Denzin and Lincoln, 1998)

9. Struggling with methodology
• I tried to draw from a number of areas to develop a
methodological approach which could best capture the
individual’s point of view and secure rich descriptions whilst
also showing empathy and, indeed, concern for them and
their feelings and working from a position as researcher of
not being ‘in control’ or holding ‘power’ over them.
• Key influences
• the researcher’s (my) personality (Punch, 1998), (my) personal history
(Denzin and Lincoln, 1998), (my) personal interest (Morse, 1998) and (my)
personal desire to examine consumption independently of marketing
management implications (Holbrook, 1987) from the consumer’s
perspective (Hirschman, 1991)

10. Challenges
• Existential phenomenological interview
– ‘bracketing’
– The role of the researcher
• Self-disclosure
– Desire for maintaining rigour vs. being critical
• The ‘feminist dilemma’:
• “how we shift across the edges of our own personal lived
experiences, our research explorations of others’ private lives and
our transformation of these into the format of public knowledge.”
(Edwards and Ribbens, 1998, p.203)

11. Distance
• Schwandt (1998) states: “Whereas the individual-as-citizen
legitimately has a practical (in a classic sense), pragmatic,
interested attitude, the individual-turned-social-scientist
brackets out that attitude and adopts the posture of
objective, disinterested, empirical theorist.” (p.248)
– interpretivists cannot engage in critical evaluation of the social reality they
want to portray
• Contrast with feminist scholarship which emphasises
identification, trust and empathy, which brings out a
relationship between researcher and researched based on
cooperation and collaboration (Punch, 1998).

12. ‘
Feminist’ interviewing model
• Strives for intimacy and self-disclosure
• hierarchy and equality between the researcher and
the researched (Oakley, 1981, Oleson, 2000);
• the notion of the interviewee being actively involved
in constructing data about their lives, rather than
passively manipulated (Graham, 1983);
• interviewee-guided interviews (Sandelowski and
Pollock, 1986) where the interview becomes an
interviewee-guided investigation of a lived
experience

13. Interpretation
•
•
•
my stance did not allow for objective or neutral interpretation
– would appear to negate the importance of gaining understanding through direct
personal experience (Hirschman and Holbrook 1986) and the value of the researcher
(Oleson, 2000).
Rather, the personal characteristics of the researcher, the “cultural self”
(Scheper-Hughes, 1992) that every researcher brings to his or her work
should “no longer be seen as a troublesome element to be eradicated or
controlled, but rather a set of resources”. (Oleson, 2000, p.229)
Hirschman and Holbrook (1986) emphasise the importance of becoming
“as personally involved with the phenomenon as humanly possible”
(p.238)
– Empathy and intuition are suggested as a means to interpret the results

14. The Role of the Researcher
• Lincoln and Guba (2000) make the case for self interrogation
regarding the ways in which research efforts are shaped and
staged around the complex circumstances of the researcher’s
own life and they point out that the process of research itself
leads to the researcher gaining self knowledge
• Acknowledging the significance of the role of the (reflexive)
researcher in the creation of the research, Mauthner and
Doucet (1998) see the analysis and interpretation stage as
being a point where “the voices and perspectives of the
respondents are particularly vulnerable.” (p138)

15. A Response
• Mauthner and Doucet’s (1998) response to these challenges
is to: “think of the research process as involving a balancing
act between three different and conflicting standpoints:
– (1) the multiple and varying voices and stories of each of the
individuals we interview;
– (2) the voice(s) of the researcher(s);
– (3) the voices and perspectives represented both within existing
theories or frameworks in our research areas and which researchers
bring to their studies” (p.140)

16. The Power of Language
•
•
•
unbiased language
– “Emily, upon whom this article is based, is one of the subjects of the author’s
current research. She has participated in an extensive and ongoing study
into aspects of compensatory consumption behaviour currently being
undertaken by the author.”
one of my personal objectives in undertaking research is to escape from
the confines of the subject and object, the researcher and the researched.
“Emily is one of the people with whom I have interacted during the course
of my research. Far from being merely a participant, engaging with Emily
and others has helped me to shape both the research process and my own
understanding.”

17. Language
• Using unconventional terms in place of traditional terms such
as ‘subject’ is seen by some feminists as a signal that the
researcher is operating within a feminist framework that
includes the power to name or re-name (Eichler, 1980).
• A view which neatly encapsulates much of what has been
discussed in this chapter is put forward by Reinharz (1992),
who avers that “eschewing standardization in format allows
the research question, not the method, to drive the project
forward”. (p.22)

18. Sharing
• Interactive Introspection
– Actively sharing my own experiences with others during the
interview process with the aim of getting deeper insights from them.
(Wallendorf and Brucks, 1993)
• Feminist writers (Stanley, 1992, Birch, 1998) have
talked about this idea in terms of ‘auto/biography’,
not as narcissistic self exploration but, rather the
“telling about yourself and your experiences” (Birch,
1998, p.178) as a tool in understanding and relating
to others.

19. Concluding comment
• this paper represents my own ‘auto/biography’ of
the research process which provides a “practical tool
to bring the process of constructing research to the
surface.” (Birch, 1998, p.174)
• it attempts to document some aspects of what being
a reflexive researcher actually means in practice,
from a personal perspective.

20. •
“It is clear that for critical practice there is a need to reflect upon our own
actions in the world as researchers, to interrogate our own practices as
knowledge makers and to produce better accounts. Abdication of this
responsibility results in action and knowledge which acts upon the social
and cultural world with little or no (real) accountability or responsibility.
However, there is a recognition that the reflexive researcher teeters
between the chasm of methodological confusion, multiplicity and mess
and the vortex of narcissism, pretentiousness and infinite regress…… In
addition to these matters of thought, practical issues, for example, the
reluctance of, and constraints on, journal editors restrict the extent to
which reflexive research can find a public outlet. Academic institutions
frequently privilege research output published in journals less likely to be
sympathetic to reflexive experimentation...”
– Shona Bettany & Helen Woodruffe-Burton (2009) Working the limits of method: the
possibilities of critical reflexive practice in marketing and consumer research, Journal of
Marketing Management, 25:7-8, 661-679