Entry
Reader's guide
Entries A-Z
Subject index
Reflexivity
Reflexivity is the process of becoming self-aware. Researchers make regular efforts to consider their own thoughts and actions in light of different contexts. Reflexivity, then, is a researcher's ongoing critique and critical reflection of his or her own biases and assumptions and how these have influenced all stages of the research process. The researcher continually critiques impressions and hunches, locates meanings, and relates these to specific contexts and experiences.
Critical Overview and Discussion
The intellectual work in case study research involves researchers in making meaning based on observation. Researchers are part of the world they study and thus are closely involved in the process and product of the research. By being reflexive, case study researchers self-critique their frame of reference, cultural biases, and the ethical issues that emerge in field work. Reflexive case study research also requires researchers to demonstrate in their written reports and conversations their interactions with participants, from initial contact to when they leave the field. This makes visible not only the knowledge that was discovered but also how it was discovered. This transparency strengthens the rigor of case study research and enables the researcher and reader to ascertain the validity of the study results.
Techniques for documenting the researcher's reflexive process might include, for example, keeping a reflexive journal, which should show the researcher's study-related decision-making processes. The reflexive journal can also be used to make explicit the researcher's prior understandings about the research. After data collection, these pre-understandings can be checked for accuracy or inaccuracy when compared with the transcribed interviews. Being more transparent about their presence in the research requires that researchers step out from behind the wall of anonymity.
From an ethical standpoint, case study researchers need to be sensitive to cultural, class, race, and gender difference. Reflexive case study researchers engage in a critical consciousness whereby their position of power relations in society and within the research–researcher relationship is unveiled. Reflexive case study researchers also attend to an ethic of care for those who participate in the research. Researchers acknowledge and reflect upon their obligations and care for participants but demonstrate these through engaging in mutual dialogue and understanding.
Application
Reflexivity is operationalized when researchers can articulate their awareness of the interconnectivity between and among themselves, the participants, the data, and the methods they use to interpret and represent their findings. Natasha Mauthner and Andrea Doucet, in their study of postnatal depression, began analyzing their interview data by recording their emotional and intellectual responses to the words of the participants. The researchers then discussed the role that their personal and academic histories had on their responses and thus on their interpretations of the participants' comments. Once each researcher was more aware of the various influences, they could balance their accounts by examining the difference between their interpretations and those of people with different biographical influences.
John Michael Roberts and Teela Sanders compared two ethnographic case studies to illustrate dilemmas from entering the field to leaving it. Roberts's study explored individuals' perceptions of the “Speakers' Corner” in Hyde Park, London. Individual interviews were conducted with past and present speakers, members of the police, and employees of the Royal Parks Agency. Roberts also engaged in activities at the Speakers' Corner and obtained archival data about the Speakers' Corner from archive centers in London. Sanders's study, on the other hand, focused on occupational risks for women in the sex industry and how women managed these risks. Sanders observed a number of contexts, including sex markets, licensed saunas, the street, and brothels. Informal conversations were conducted with more than 200 women; more formal conversations took place with another 55 women, including managers and owners of indoor sex businesses.
In reflecting upon their research, Roberts and Sanders acknowledged how each researcher's personal biography had influenced their negotiation processes for accessing participants. For example, Roberts's father had been a regular speaker at the Speakers' Corner and was well known locally; this history served as a gatekeeper function for Roberts. However, this familiarity led some Speakers' Corner regulars to view Roberts as a friend, which compromised Roberts' independent researcher role. Furthermore, Roberts, in his reflexive process, uncovered some of his assumptions that free speech was a right at the Speakers' Corner: These assumptions proved incorrect after data collection revealed that some people were excluded from this right. Sanders had lived near two saunas that ended up being key sites for data collection. Sanders admitted to having preconceptions about her topic from casual observations of men and women who entered the sex establishments. As another example, Sanders acknowledged the importance of some self-disclosure in the research relationship to establish rapport; however, she was not prepared for the intimate questions that participants asked of her. She avoided mentioning her social work experience to participants because of negative connotations participants had about social workers and social control. Sanders's reflexive accounts continued following field work that contributed to new intellectual and emotional understandings of the research experience, including shifting power structures she had encountered.
Critical Summary
Reflexivity is an issue in establishing the quality/validity/trustworthiness of findings, in ethics, and in addressing power imbalances in a case study project. Researchers are advised to declare their stance pertaining to the topic and to participants; this includes laying out their preconceptions and biases so that readers might consider the findings in light of researchers' particular situatedness in their life story and its circumstances.
Further Readings
- Case Study Research in Anthropology
- Before-and-After Case Study Design
- Agency
- Abduction
- Action-Based Data Collection
- Activity Theory
- Case Study and Theoretical Science
- Analytic Generalization
- ANTi-History
- Case Study Research in Business and Management
- Blended Research Design
- Alienation
- Bayesian Inference and Boolean Logic
- Analysis of Visual Data
- Actor-Network Theory
- Chicago School
- Audience
- Case Study as a Teaching Tool
- Case Study Research in Business Ethics
- Bounding the Case
- Authenticity and Bad Faith
- Bricoleur
- Anonymity and Confidentiality
- ANTi-History
- Colonialism
- Authenticity
- Case Study in Creativity Research
- Case Study Research in Education
- Case Selection
- Author Intentionality
- Case-to-Case Synthesis
- Anonymizing Data for Secondary Use
- Autoethnography
- Constructivism
- Concatenated Theory
- Case Study Research in Tourism
- Case Study Research in Feminism
- Case-to-Case Synthesis
- Case Study and Theoretical Science
- Causal Case Study: Explanatory Theories
- Archival Records as Evidence
- Base and Superstructure
- Critical Realism
- Conceptual Argument
- Case Study With the Elderly
- Case Study Research in Medicine
- Case Within a Case
- Contentious Issues in Case Study Research
- Chronological Order
- Audiovisual Recording
- Case Study as a Methodological Approach
- Critical Theory
- Conceptual Model: Causal Model
- Collective Case Study
- Case Study Research in Political Science
- Comparative Case Study
- Cultural Sensitivity and Case Study
- Coding: Axial Coding
- Autobiography
- Character
- Dialectical Materialism
- Conceptual Model: Operationalization
- Configurative-Ideographic Case Study
- Case Study Research in Psychology
- Critical Incident Case Study
- Dissertation Proposal
- Coding: Open Coding
- Case Study Database
- Class Analysis
- Epistemology
- Conceptual Model in a Qualitative Research Project
- Critical Pedagogy and Digital Technology
- Case Study Research in Public Policy
- Cross-Sectional Design
- Ecological Perspectives
- Coding: Selective Coding
- Case Study Protocol
- Closure
- Existentialism
- Conceptual Model in a Quantitative Research Project
- Diagnostic Case Study Research
- Decision Making Under Uncertainty
- Ideology
- Cognitive Biases
- Case Study Surveys
- Codifying Social Practices
- Families
- Contribution, Theoretical
- Explanatory Case Study
- Case Study Research in Tourism
- Deductive-Nomological Model of Explanation
- Masculinity and Femininity
- Cognitive Mapping
- Consent, Obtaining Participant
- Communicative Action
- Formative Context
- Credibility
- Exploratory Case Study
- Case Study With the Elderly
- Deviant Case Analysis
- Objectivism
- Communicative Framing Analysis
- Contextualization
- Community of Practice
- Frame Analysis
- Docile Bodies
- Inductivism
- Ecological Perspectives
- Discursive Frame
- Othering
- Complexity
- Critical Pedagogy and Digital Technology
- Comparing the Case Study With Other Methodologies
- Historical Materialism
- Equifinality
- Institutional Ethnography
- Healthcare Practice Guidelines
- Dissertation Proposal
- Patriarchy
- Computer-Based Analysis of Qualitative Data: ATLAS.ti
- Cultural Sensitivity and Case Study
- Consciousness Raising
- Interpretivism
- Experience
- Instrumental Case Study
- Pedagogy and Case Study
- Ethics
- Pluralism and Case Study
- Computer-Based Analysis of Qualitative Data: CAITA (Computer-Assisted Interpretive Textual Analysis)
- Data Resources
- Contradiction
- Liberal Feminism
- Explanation Building
- Intercultural Performance
- Event-Driven Research
- Power
- Computer-Based Analysis of Qualitative Data: Kwalitan
- Depth of Data
- Critical Discourse Analysis
- Managerialism
- Extension of Theory
- Intrinsic Case Study
- Exemplary Case Design
- Power/Knowledge
- Computer-Based Analysis of Qualitative Data: MAXQDA 2007
- Diaries and Journals
- Critical Sensemaking
- Modernity
- Falsification
- Limited-Depth Case Study
- Extended Case Method
- Pragmatism
- Computer-Based Analysis of Qualitative Data: NVIVO
- Direct Observation as Evidence
- Dasein
- North American Case Research Association
- Functionalism
- Multimedia Case Studies
- Extreme Cases
- Researcher as Research Tool
- Concept Mapping
- Discourse Analysis
- Decentering Texts
- Ontology
- Generalizability
- Participatory Action Research
- Healthcare Practice Guidelines
- Terroir
- Congruence Analysis
- Documentation as Evidence
- Deconstruction
- Paradigm Plurality in Case Study Research
- Genericization
- Participatory Case Study
- Holistic Designs
- Utilitarianism
- Constant Causal Effects Assumption
- Ethnostatistics
- Dialogic Inquiry
- Philosophy of Science
- Indeterminacy
- Pluralism and Case Study
- Hypothesis
- Verstehen
- Content Analysis
- Fiction Analysis
- Discourse Ethics
- Pluralism and Case Study
- Indexicality
- Pracademics
- Integrating Independent Case Studies
- Conversation Analysis
- Field Notes
- Double Hermeneutic
- Postcolonialism
- Instrumental Case Study
- Processual Case Research
- Juncture
- Cross-Case Synthesis and Analysis
- Field Work
- Dramaturgy
- Postmodernism
- Macrolevel Social Mechanisms
- Program Evaluation and Case Study
- Longitudinal Research
- Decision Making Under Uncertainty
- Going Native
- Ethnographic Memoir
- Postpositivism
- Middle-Range Theory
- Program-Logic Model
- Mental Framework
- Document Analysis
- Informant Bias
- Ethnography
- Poststructuralism
- Naturalistic Generalization
- Prospective Case Study
- Mixed Methods in Case Study Research
- Factor Analysis
- Institutional Ethnography
- Ethnomethodology
- Poststructuralist Feminism
- Overdetermination
- Real-Time Cases
- Most Different Systems Design
- Fiction Analysis
- Interviews
- Eurocentrism
- Radical Empiricism
- Plausibility
- Retrospective Case Study
- Multimedia Case Studies
- High-Quality Analysis
- Iterative Nodes
- Families
- Radical Feminism
- Probabilistic Explanation
- Re-Use of Qualitative Data
- Multiple-Case Designs
- Inductivism
- Language and Cultural Barriers
- Formative Context
- Reality
- Process Tracing
- Single-Case Designs
- Multi-Site Case Study
- Interactive Methodology, Feminist
- Multiple Sources of Evidence
- Frame Analysis
- Scientific Method
- Program Evaluation and Case Study
- Spiral Case Study
- Naturalistic Inquiry
- Interpreting Results
- Narrative Analysis
- Front Stage and Back Stage
- Scientific Realism
- Reporting Case Study Research
- Storyselling
- Natural Science Model
- Iterative
- Narratives
- Gendering
- Socialist Feminism
- Rhetoric in Research Reporting
- Number of Cases
- Iterative Nodes
- Naturalistic Context
- Genealogy
- Symbolic Interactionism
- Statistical Generalization
- Outcome-Driven Research
- Knowledge Production
- Nonparticipant Observation
- Governmentality
- Substantive Theory
- Paradigmatic Cases
- Method of Agreement
- Objectivity
- Grounded Theory
- Theory-Building With Cases
- Paradigm Plurality in Case Study Research
- Method of Difference
- Over-Rapport
- Hermeneutics
- Theory-Testing With Cases
- Participatory Action Research
- Multicollinearity
- Participant Observation
- Hybridity
- Underdetermination
- Participatory Case Study
- Multidimensional Scaling
- Participatory Action Research
- Imperialism
- Polar Types
- Over-Rapport
- Participatory Case Study
- Institutional Theory, Old and New
- Problem Formulation
- Pattern Matching
- Personality Tests
- Intertextuality
- Quantitative Single-Case Research Design
- Re-Analysis of Previous Data
- Problem Formulation
- Isomorphism
- Quasi-Experimental Design
- Regulating Group Mind
- Questionnaires
- Langue and Parôle
- Quick Start to Case Study Research
- Relational Analysis
- Reflexivity
- Layered Nature of Texts
- Random Assignment
- Replication
- Regulating Group Mind
- Life History
- Research Framework
- Re-Use of Qualitative Data
- Reliability
- Logocentrism
- Research Objectives
- Rival Explanations
- Repeated Observations
- Management of Impressions
- Research Proposals
- Secondary Data as Primary
- Researcher-Participant Relationship
- Means of Production
- Research Questions, Types of Retrospective Case Study
- Serendipity Pattern
- Re-Use of Qualitative Data
- Metaphor
- Rhetoric in Research Reporting
- Situational Analysis
- Sensitizing Concepts
- Modes of Production
- Sampling
- Standpoint Analysis
- Subjectivism
- Multimethod Research Program
- Socially Distributed Knowledge
- Statistical Analysis
- Subject Rights
- Multiple Selfing
- Spiral Case Study
- Storyselling
- Theoretical Saturation
- Native Points of View
- Statistics, Use of in Case Study
- Temporal Bracketing
- Triangulation
- Negotiated Order
- Storyselling
- Textual Analysis
- Use of Digital Data
- Network Analysis
- Temporal Bracketing
- Thematic Analysis
- Utilization
- One-Dimensional Culture
- Thematic Analysis
- Use of Digital Data
- Visual Research Methods
- Ordinary Troubles
- Theory, Role of
- Utilization
- Organizational Culture
- Theory-Testing With Cases
- Webs of Significance
- Paradigm Plurality in Case Study Research
- Utilization
- Within-Case Analysis
- Performativity
- Validity
- Phenomenology
- Practice-Oriented Research
- Praxis
- Primitivism
- Qualitative Analysis in Case Study
- Qualitative Comparative Analysis
- Quantitative Single-Case Research Design
- Quick Start to Case Study Research
- Self-Confrontation Method
- Self-Presentation
- Sensemaking
- Sexuality
- Signifier and Signified
- Sign System
- Simulacrum
- Social-Interaction Theory
- Storytelling
- Structuration
- Symbolic Value
- Symbolic Violence
- Thick Description
- Writing and Difference
- Loading...