Researcher reflexivity

3.8.1 Reflecting on my ‘insider’ position

Researchers are considered to occupy an ‘insider’ position “when we share some identity with our participants” (Braun & Clarke, 2013, p. 10). This position is not fixed and, informed by Le Gallais’ (2008) work, Table 2 considers my positions on an insider/outsider continuum (also see section 1.5). Understanding my ‘insiderness’

has been facilitated by using a reflective journal, discussing my research in clinical and research supervision, using my ‘internal’ supervisor, and trying to be reflexively aware throughout the entire research process. Inevitably, my fore-structures have changed and, like other ‘insider’ researchers, “I have taken these shifting meanings back with me into the on-going research process” (Ballinger, 2012, p. 91).

Table 2

My insider/outsider researcher continuum

Positions on the continuum Potential benefits and pitfalls Constructivist researcher involved in the

co-creation of the research findings. Intersubjective meaning-making process.

The extent to which I can ever

understand another is limited because I am not that person. Fore-understandings may obscure seeing the ‘new’.

Shared experience of PT. May facilitate empathy. May lead to researcher bias.

Therapist who has experience of my own clients’ prematurely terminating

Researcher able to draw on therapist skills to facilitate the research. Share a common vocabulary. Danger of creating a sense of ‘being the same’ –

“overrapport” (Hong & Duff, 2002, p.

194). Danger of slipping into ‘therapy’

rather than ‘research’. Danger of being

‘invited’ into interviews as a therapist.

Researcher as a therapist seeking to improve practice engaged in a cyclical process of sense-making.

Meeting the aim of the study. Creating new knowledge. Researcher’s voice becoming ‘too loud’. Researcher reaching premature conclusions.

Knowledge of PT literature. Able to identify a gap in the literature to inform study and argue for the value of the research. May obscure seeing the

‘new’.

Knowledge of the process of therapy. Provides insights to interpret the research. All knowledge is practical, conceptual and situational – possible to create bias.

Knowledge of the research process. Potential to adopt a ‘superior’ position.

Professional Doctorate student. Researcher also has an objective to write a thesis. Possible for participants to experience the process as an ‘hit and run’

(West, 2002). Who does the research

‘belong’ to? Participants may ‘defer’ to researcher.

Adapted from Le Gallais (2008, p. 151).

Appendix 10 provides some insights into how I negotiated moving between these positions (also see section 3.8.2). At points in the interviews I made conscious decisions to foreground my therapist identity. While I sometimes felt the ‘pull’ of an invitation from participants to discuss the experience as a ‘fellow therapist’, I was mindful of focussing on participants’ experiences and of not trying to foreground my voice.

3.8.2 Reflexive comments about methods

The online survey was successful in terms of recruiting participants but I was aware that it excluded those not online. Increasingly this limitation bothered me, particularly given that my research involves those who may have felt disappointed by therapy, and the literature suggests that premature terminators often have a low socio-economic status, unlike the online population (Gosling & Mason, 2015). Was I discriminating against the very population I wished to include by denying access to my research by particular groups? These are no easy answers to this dilemma. It is unclear how much of my failure to recruit ‘non-therapist clients’ in the first place was because I am not ‘pushy’ enough. Undoubtedly the process of undertaking this Professional Doctorate has changed me, and I would be more confident in future research projects in terms of following up requests to counselling services to advertise my research. I remain fascinated with my research question, and intend to extend this research by finding a way to include those who may have been denied access to this project.

In terms of analysis of the survey data, it was difficult for me to see beyond the answers to questions, to develop the themes to answer my research question, and to come up with a system to facilitate this process. Part of this struggle was that in previous research I used narrative methods, which allow participants’ stories to remain comparatively ‘intact’. Like Ballinger (2012), I struggled with the ‘butchery’

of participants’ texts. This was more pronounced in the analysis of the rich interview data, and I worried about the integrity of my interpretations. Discussing my research

‘out loud’ in supervision, with other researchers, and keeping a reflexive journal helped me to challenge my thinking. For example, as I reviewed the IPA narrative I realised that the theme ‘poor therapy has good aspects’ was a step too far, and renamed this ‘experiencing good aspects of therapy’. The analysis of the interview data was a messy process and a number of tensions arose, for example data could be coded in numerous ways; themes overlapped; it was difficult to decide which rich data to use; and it was challenging to ‘clean up’ rich data and also to remove it from its context. The findings present a compromise, a moment in time, and an insight not a truth. I wish to disseminate my research and the thematic analysis will enable me to comply with the word count restrictions for journal articles. I hope that by giving voice, albeit thematically, to my participants makes a contribution to acknowledging

their experiences and informing practitioners. I can write the stories of my research in other ways for different audiences.

As an ‘insider’, I tried to avoid imposing my experience on participants through, for example, questions asked or probing. In the interviews, I was conscious of remaining in my researcher role, and I was mindful of being fully present and empathic, and treating participants with dignity and respect. While Internet research avoids the intrusion of ‘cues’ which may influence participants, it is possible that being empathic, even in a non-verbal way, influenced participants. I tried not to make assumptions about participants’ meanings. For example, when Caroline spoke about her need for safety, I explored her meaning as follows:

Researcher: “How do you decide if something is safe or not, what happens?”

Caroline: “I feel a sense of freedom. I think when I feel safe, I feel free. If I don’t feel safe I feel confined, as if I’ve been boxed, as if I’m chained, and I need to be alert. If I feel safe then I feel free to be able to say whatever it is that I want to say. And also there’s a freedom of being able to say exactly how I want to be able to say it and not having to worry about how it’s going to be received at the other end”.

I did not disclose my experience of PT as a client, but the following presents an example of other choices I made:

Olivia: “We [therapists] get to the end of some sessions and we think ‘oh I don’t know if that went alright’. Well I do [laughs]”.

Researcher: “I do too”.

My conscious decision to ‘meet’ Olivia was based on ethical considerations. I had no wish to replicate her experience of therapy so that I could pursue a research agenda at all costs. I attempted to foreground ethical considerations at all times, and tried to remain aware of my power as a researcher during the interviews. I did not ask participants why they had sought therapy to avoid causing unnecessary distress but some participants spoke of this anyway, and I tried to be as sensitive as possible in the timing of my questions to refocus on the research question. I tried to avoid creating a “hit and run” experience (West, 2002, p. 264).

3.9 Summary

This chapter has identified the philosophical considerations informing this research, and outlined the role of the researcher. The methodology and methods used to carry out this research have been presented, and attention has been given to quality, ethical, and reflexive issues. The next two chapters present the findings of stage one and stage two of this research respectively.