Reflexive research

Instead of treating reflexivity as a component of the methods section of this project, I consider it to be part of the methodology, necessary at each stage of the research process. The move towards reflexive methodologies is popular within feminist research, as it recognizes the “shifting positionalities of the researcher and participants ... [and] offers the opportunity for raising new questions, engaging in new kinds of dialogue, and organizing different kinds of social relations” (Hesse-Biber & Piatelli, 2007).

Considering feminist research to be reflexive research allows many different kinds of methodologies, both quantitative and qualitative, to find a home in feminist scholarship- a famously broad and variable field.

Reflexivity is an evolving topic, used and defined in many different ways. Since the purpose here is not to conduct a literature review on reflexivity, I outline the way I use the term and set aside other possible ways of considering it, not because they are without merit, but rather because this is outside the scope of this project. Loosely, I use reflexivity to mean positional reflexivity (Koch & Harrington, 1998; Macbeth, 2001), or an

examination of the social and individual contexts of researcher and participant as a means to deconstruct “dualities of power and anti-power, hegemony and resistance, and insider and outsider to reveal and describe how our representations of the world and those who live there are indeed positionally organized” (Macbeth, 2001, p. 38). The purpose of this kind of reflexivity is to seek “a critical understanding of ordinary worlds by reference to

larger but unnoticed arrangements and conditions” (Macbeth, 2001, p. 40). I think reflexivity is also important in considering the ways in which an individual’s position affects the way knowledge is constructed, and how the everyday world is interpreted, related to, and moved within.

Sharlene Nagy Hesse-Biber and Deborah Piatelli (2007) outline the purpose of reflexive research:

The purpose of research is not to validate a Truth, but to enable different forms of knowledge to challenge power. Multiple truths and diverse knowledges become the actual product of research when the subjectivity, location, and humanness of the knower are included. (Hesse-Biber & Piatelli, 2007, p. 498)

Koch and Harrington (1998) discuss academic reflexivity as providing the opportunity to consciously consider how, why, and when research decisions are made, and how these decisions affect the research process and product. They encourage researchers to “sign- post” their writing with reflexive decisions, allowing readers to engage with the

viewpoints of both the researcher and participants to decide if the research is plausible. Feminist reflexivity goes farther than this, interrogating not just personal and cultural views the researcher holds, but also how and why these viewpoints came to be, and the broader significance of this for how knowledge is generated. Taylor and White (2000) ask researchers to broaden this conscious consideration of how research decisions are made to consider how knowledge is generated; they call for researchers and practitioners to explicitly acknowledge the particular types of knowledge they use to make sense of situations and events, and to consider how various types of knowledge may be culturally constructed (Taylor & White, 2000).

Dorothy E. Smith (Smith, 1974;1987) invites feminist researchers to take a step farther back, to acknowledge our particular standpoint as individuals, and to consider how that standpoint affects the way we interact with the world (and the way the world interacts with us). She says that it behooves researchers to think about the individual standpoints of the participants in the research, and to engage with these individuals rather than observe them from an outside position. According to Smith (1987), this consideration of

standpoint is important because nothing (no academic discipline) and no one (no researcher) can avoid being situated, so Smith (1990b) calls for research that

acknowledges that situatedness and builds it into our methodological and theoretical strategies. Smith (1987) highlights the ways in which the researcher affects her data: she “is and must be an active participant in constructing the events she treats as data” (Smith,

1990b, p. 13). The ways in which the researcher constructs the data is one of the focuses of reflexive thought. This echoes Bourdieu’s instruction that critical theorists must examine their own relation to the research object, reflecting the scientific gaze back on themselves (Bourdieu 1993 in Hesse-Biber & Piatelli, 2007).

Smith’s methodology, like all reflexive research, challenges the unquestioning production of “objective” knowledge (Hesse-Biber and Piatelli, 2007). Smith’s goal (1987; 1990a; 1990b; 1993; 1997) is to elucidate a method of social research that is reflexive about the everyday experiences of people’s lives, and that asks what are the facts, how did they become facts, and how does factual knowing occur. This situated line of questioning requires a “dizzying change in perspective” (Campbell, 2003, p. 11) in pursuit of the goal of interrogating how people make sense of the world, and how particular meanings are constructed. Smith (1974; 1987) proposes to change the relationships between the researcher and the object of knowledge, creating a new relationship based on direct experience of the everyday world; she asks how else do individuals interpret information and events, if not through their direct experience? Reflexive research begins with the researcher’s original and immediate knowledge of everyday life (what Smith terms an 'insider’s' approach), and moves to an exploration of what passes beyond everyday life and how that particular way of understanding is deeply implicated in how everyday life is represented (Smith 1974, pg. 12).

An insider’s strategy takes concepts, ideas, ideology, and schemata as dimensions and organizers of the ongoing social process that we can grasp only as insiders, only by considering our own practices ... Taking up critique-as-inquiry or inquiry- as-critique as an insider adds a further dimension [to inquiries of knowledge of the relations and apparatuses of ruling]. Inquiry becomes an essentially reflexive critique. For the relations explored here can be grasped only as we are insiders

participating in them. At the same time, in exploring them we bring into view not just our actual practices of thinking, reasoning, reading, making sense of

accounts, and so forth, but the actual social relations we participate in by doing so. In this way, as insiders, relations that our own practices are embedded in can be made explicit and examinable through inquiry. ( Smith, 1990a, p.202-204) By approaching research from this angle, it is possible to link everyday subjectivities with underlying institutional structures (Doran, 1993). When approaching research in a way that inquires into the “way things work”, the actualities of our everyday social practices become visible and research becomes a necessarily reflexive activity: “critique is investigation and investigation is a reflexive critique, disclosing practices we know and use ... disclosing how our practices contribute to and are articulated with the relations that overpower our lives” (Smith 1990a p.204).

In light of these perspectives, the challenge becomes how to incorporate reflexivity into research in a concrete way. Hesse-Biber & Piatelli (2007) have created a unique method to increase researcher reflexivity adapted from Conner & Bliss-Moreau’s (2006)

experience sampling, of which I have adopted in an adapted form to increase my own reflexivity as a researcher. Experience sampling is a technique to document subjective experience in the moment, and over time. Participants are reminded through various technological means to stop and record their subjective experience based on questions offered by the researchers. Conner & Bliss-Moreau (2006) maintain that this resolves temporal issues such as lapses in memory or the loss of emotion when experiences are measured at a later date, or when a participant is asked to recall how they felt at a certain time. Hesse-Biber & Piatelli (2007) call this technique reflexive sampling. Reflexive

sampling involves periodic reminders throughout the project for the researcher to “check- in” with herself about how things are going. By using a reflexive diary, tape recorder, or notes on a portable data device, key questions can be answered at pre-determined times. These reflections can be used for reflexive thought later. Hesse-Biber & Piatelli (2007) suggest some of the key questions one might answer, including questions about

researcher and participant standpoint and positionality, relationship with participants, attentiveness to difference, and reflexive interrogation of data. Since I am not doing field

research, but collecting interview data in discrete chunks, I chose to use several events as markers to engage in reflexivity. I wrote a reflexive journal entry after conducting each interview, during or after transcribing each interview, when insights occurred to me during coding, and after each round of coding. I recorded my reflexive journal entries in the form of emails in to special research memo e-mail account and through handwritten entries in a research notebook. I have included an example of a typical journal entry as Appendix 1.

This technique was helpful because I have a hard time remembering to interrogate myself and my data without what Brookfield (1998) calls a critical incident, or what Smith (1987) terms a “point of rupture” (p.49) between my personal experience and social forms of consciousness. When I am working away and things are going well, it is hard to remember to stop and analyze. Sometimes writing these entries was difficult, and felt forced. This was especially the case later in data collection, when I felt like I was repeating some of the same ideas again and again. At other times, I was compelled to write and wrote freely. In practice, I found that my reflexive journal and analytical memos blended together, with many areas of overlap. I found these journal entries helpful in tracing analytical ideas through their progression and identifying possible topics for manuscripts. For instance, after transcribing Carrie's interview, I wrote a journal entry about the possible theme of information-seeking:

Transcribing this interview made me think that there's a real possibility for a paper about what information women would want in order to make a decision about prenatal screening, what they would find helpful in the pamphlet, when they want the pamphlet etc. For instance, there have been a number of women mention they would want to get the pamphlet before talking to the doctor so they

understand a little bit about what they're going to be offered and they can ask questions at that time, rather than getting all the information at once and having to make a decision without a chance to think about, it ask questions and then think about it again. ... A lot of the women are asking the why questions: why would I want to get this test? Why would I not want to get this test? what can I do with the information? Structuring the pamphlet to answer these questions might be

helpful... What is the test, why would I want to get it, why would I not want to get it, what what will the test tell me, what can I do with that information. I think that these questions would be helpful.

This idea catalysed a focused code for "information" and that coding produced the findings for manuscript 3, Chapter 7. More information about this analytical process is described in Figure 3, section 4.3.5.8.