Reflexivity: Should It Be Mandated for Qualitative Reporting?

Reflexivity

It is the assumption of this author that bracketing to remove the influence of the researcher on the qualitative research process is an exercise in futility. Therefore, it is imperative that the researcher be aware of the manner in which they influence the research process. This can be accomplished through reflexivity. “Reflexivity refers to the continuous process of self-reflection that researchers engage in to generate awareness about their actions, feelings and perceptions” (Darawsheh, 2014, p. 561). Furthermore, it is an awareness of the influence of these actions, feelings, and perceptions on not only the participants but also the researcher. According to Probst (2015), “reflexive engagement while planning, conduction, and writing about research promotes an ongoing, recursive relationship between the researcher’s subjective responses and the intersubjective dynamics of the research process itself” (p. 37). It is used everywhere in the research process from the development of the initial question to the dissemination of findings. Although Probst (2015) described the pitfalls of reflexivity including the facts that the process can be overwhelming, consumes precious time, and not being valued by colleagues, she also spoke of the advantages. Those advantages are that it lends itself to transparency and rigor, provides a framework for having insight into the research process, and allows others to find blind spots in the researcher. In the mind of this author, reflexivity gives readers insight into the researcher, who is the filter through which findings are generated. Having knowledge of this insight is imperative since it is the researcher who acts as an instrument of data collection, much as a questionnaire does for quantitative research. One must know if a questionnaire is reliable and valid since it influences the statistical findings of a quantitative study and one must come to know the qualitative researcher since they filter the spoken word and create narrative findings.

So how does a researcher capture notions while being reflexive? Treharne and Riggs (2014) suggested the use of regular journaling that can become part of an audit trail. These can be created in different formats, such as a diary or communication e-mails. Additionally, audio recorders can be utilized to grasp the actions, feelings, and perceptions of researchers as they participate in the process. These notations should be of an epistemological or methodological nature since the idea of reflexivity is not about just listing personal characteristics. In other words, the researcher needs to be thinking of how actions, feelings, or perceptions “have informed or limited what was found” (Treharne & Riggs, 2014, p. 61). Furthermore, Treharne and Riggs suggested that “a useful rule of thumb is only to journal things that you would be happy to be seen publicly” (p. 61).

An example of reflexivity can be seen in the article by Florczak and Lockie (2019) when they wrote:

What spurred us to study the phenomenon of losing a partner was twofold. First, we were finding among our family and friends who had lost husbands or wives that connections to the deceased remained strong and provided solace for them. We wondered about these bonds since our education about loss and grief was grounded in stage theory. We had been taught that there was a certain time period, usually a year, in which the bereaved suffered and at the end of that time they would move on with their lives cutting all ties to the deceased. The idea of continuing bonds directly contradicted what we had learned. Second, we were concerned about our profession since nurses continue to be taught the stage theory of grief and it remains on our licensure exam for practice. Furthermore, the majority of our nursing students made judgments about the bereaved based on the theory. When we began this study, we assumed that all bonds were comforting. However, as we dialoged with our participants it became apparent to us that bonds do not necessarily bring solace which was a complete surprise to us. However, when we considered bonds from the perspective of the humanbecoming paradigm, the ideas that they could bring both solace and sorrow all-at-once and that the bereaved determined the value of bonds began to emerge. (p. 284)

From this notation of reflexivity, the reader comes to know that the authors have intimate knowledge of the loss of a partner, which is one facet of the lens through which the authors filtered conversations with participants. It is also apparent that they both are members of the discipline of nursing and teach students. The beliefs that students had about the grief experience along with each other’s actual lived experiences of grief, in addition to that of family and friends, was incongruous and spurred on the research question about continuing bonds. It is also made explicitly apparent that the humanbecoming paradigm was critical to making sense of the findings where both solace and sorrow were found among the participants when considering bonds they held with deceased partners. Personal biases were acknowledged because of the surprise that some bonds bring sorrow when the authors believed that all continuing bonds were comforting. All of this explicit information lends itself to transparency and thus increases the rigor of the study.

Reflexivity Within Standards of Qualitative Research

Since research standards are meant to guide researchers so that their studies do no harm to individuals or to the science of the discipline, such standards for qualitative research should include a mandate for reflexivity. Although there are specific standards for each of the different methodologies in qualitative research, the author of this article considers only the ones pertinent to qualitative research in general. These standards include ones created by Burns (1989), Critical Appraisal Skills Programme (CASP) (n.d.a.), Levitt et al. (2018), Lincoln and Guba (1985), Lincoln, Lynham, and Guba (2011), Lockwood, Munn, and Porritt (2015), and O’Brien, Harris, Beckman, Reed, and Cook (2014).

One of the first standards for qualitative research was developed by Lincoln and Guba (1985), and they listed the criteria as credibility, transferability, dependability, and confirmability. Authenticity was later added to the criteria by Lincoln et al. (2011). It is in the definition of dependability that the idea of reflexivity can be inferred. Under the definition of dependability, audit trails were discussed. According to Carcary (2009), an audit trail allows a reader to be able to discern the actions of researchers as they move through the process of conducting a study. The purpose is so that the findings can be confirmed and lack error. According to Lincoln and Guba (1985), the six categories of information that should be collected include raw data, notes related to analysis and synthesis, process notes, intentions, and preliminary development information. Although the term reflexivity is not specifically mentioned, the spirit of this process can be inferred since an audit trail is meant to increase transparency and thus the credibility of the findings.

Reflexivity, although not specifically stated, can also be inferred from the standards for qualitative research as developed by Burns (1989). She created five standards and dimensions. Standard I concerns descriptive vividness and Standard II with methodological congruence and its dimensions of rigor in documentation, procedural rigor, ethical rigor, and auditability. Standard III is analytical preciseness, and Standard IV is about theoretical connectedness. Finally, Standard V speaks to heuristic relevance with its dimensions of intuitive recognition, relationships to an existing body of knowledge, and applicability. It is under the dimension of auditability that one can find a specific sense of reflexivity. The dimension of methodological congruence under Standard II concerns reporting all of the decisions made while the data are transformed through higher levels of abstraction. “This reporting should be in sufficient detail to allow a second researcher, using the original data and the decision trail, to arrive at conclusions similar to those of the original researcher” (Burns, 1989, p. 49). Being able to follow such an audit trail brings more credibility to the findings. However, the dimension of auditability is not the only section under which reflexivity can be inferred. Burns stated under Standard I, descriptive vividness, that the researcher’s thoughts while describing the site, participants, and the experience of data collection should be explicit enough to give the reader a clear picture of the phenomenon under study. Again, under the dimension of rigor in documentation, it is highly suggested that researchers present any threats that include underrepresentation of undesirable participants and any biases arising from a distortion of the phenomenon of interest or involvement with participants that alter the data. Finally, under the standard of analytical preciseness, Burns (1989) stated that the researcher is required to “make intense efforts to identify and to record the decision-making processes through which transformations were made. The processes by which the theoretical schema are cross-checked with data must also be reported in detail” (p. 50).

It can be seen that the idea of disclosing the thoughts of a researcher in the decision-making processes of conducting a qualitative study is readily apparent in the standards developed by Burns (1989). It seems to this author that reflexivity is central to much of what these standards are instructing researchers to do in order to validate their findings and increase credibility.

The aforementioned standards for qualitative research are abstract in nature and not very specific. However, to be able to judge the merits of an article submitted to a journal, more specific standards were needed. Therefore, Levitt et al. (2018) developed a very prescriptive set of guidelines for evaluating qualitative work. The working group that developed the standards was born out of a feeling of frustration when trying to discern the merits of a qualitative submission by quantitative standards. Information that reviewers were to find included the broad categories of a title page, introduction, study participants or data sources, participant recruitment process, data collection, recording and data transformation, findings/results, and discussion. A table was developed with three columns: one designating the section, a second to describe the information to be reported, and a third with recommendations for authors to consider and notes for reviewers. Each of these sections has exquisite detail to assist authors and reviewers. Reflexivity is specifically mentioned under notes for reviewers in the study participants or data sources section. Reviewers are reminded that each researcher differs in reflexive self-description as the requirement to fulfill a description of their backgrounds as to understanding of the phenomenon of concern and how this understanding influenced the research at hand. Again, the term reflexivity is used under information to be reported for “describing the management and use of reflexivity in the data collection process as it illuminates the study” (Levitt et al., 2018, p. 36). Although reflexivity is not specifically stated, its inference can be seen in the recommendation for authors to “illuminate analytic choices in relation to the study goal” (Levitt et al., 2018, p. 36) under data analytic strategies and again under methodological integrity when researchers are asked to describe how their perspectives were managed to limit the influence on the study. In reviewing the standards, reflexivity itself is not a standalone category only mentioned as information that needs to be reported or recommendations for authors. Making it a standalone standard would give more credence to the important nature of reflexivity.

Although reflexivity was not made a standard of its own, O’Brien et al. (2014) did make it a specific dimension in their standards for reporting qualitative research. The standards were similar to the ones developed by Levitt et al. (2018), since they included information related to title, introduction, methods, results/findings, and discussion, although there is much less detail. Under the methods standard, the dimension of researcher characteristics and reflexivity is listed. O’Brien and colleagues define this as the “researchers characteristics that may influence the research, including personal attributes, qualifications/experience, relationship with participants, assumptions, and/or presumptions: potential or actual interaction between researchers’ characteristics and the research questions, approach, methods, results, and/or transferability” (p. 1247). This dimension captures the researcher’s influence on the whole research process from the question asked to the results instead of inferred in other standards and dimensions as aforementioned standards have done.

The final two standards for qualitative research to be considered are ones involved in the evidence-based practice process. The first one to examine qualitative studies as to their reflexivity is the CASP (n.d.a) and specifically the Qualitative Research Checklist (CASP, n.d.b). The CASP was developed in the 1980s to facilitate research being placed into practice, and a series of checklists were developed to assist clinicians (CASP, n.d.a). The Qualitative Research Checklist has a series of 10 questions related to the validity of the results, the results specifically, and if the results will help a local population. Reflexivity is not mentioned per se but implied under the question, “Has the relationship between researcher and participants been adequately considered?” (CASP, n.d.b, p. 4). This question asks the clinician whether or not the researcher has revealed potential biases that may have influenced the study and how the researcher reacted to events while conducting a study and if there were implications to the research design. The second set of standards was developed to determine the quality of qualitative research by the Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI). Once again, these standards are to be used to ascertain whether or not qualitative findings should be used as evidence to change practice. The JBI Checklist for Qualitative Research has 10 questions for an evaluation of a qualitative study. Among these are two that concern reflectivity. Question 6 asks, “Are the beliefs and values, and their potential influence on the study declared?” (Lockwood et al., 2015, p. 4). Under the guidance portion of the question there is the explanation that the researcher plays a significant role in generating evidence so the reader needs to know the researchers’ cultural and theoretical positions. Question 7 also has to do with reflectivity. It asks, “Is the potential of the researcher to influence the study and for the potential of the research process itself to influence the researcher and her/his interpretations acknowledged and addressed?” (Lockwood et al., 2015, p. 4). The guidance for this question is about whether or not researchers disclose their relationship with the participants, their potential influence on collection of data, and responses to events that occurred during the study. Both the CASP and JBI standards have a different purpose for evaluating qualitative research than the aforementioned standards but nonetheless acknowledge that reflexivity is important to be able to assess qualitative studies.

Conclusion

So it seems that reflexivity is of such importance in evaluating qualitative studies that it has made its way into the standards for judging findings evolving from the process. The notion has evolved from an inference into directly having a designation in the recent standards. However, in this author’s mind, it should have a dimension that is all its own because of the researcher’s importance in all parts of the qualitative research process from the choice of phenomenon to study right through the discussion. The researchers are everywhere, and since personal perspectives cannot be put aside, their influence through bracketing, disclosing their thoughts through reflexivity, is imperative. However, there needs to be a change in writing style to accomplish this reveal of self. Instead of the passive voice in scholarly writing, an active voice should be used. Use of the active voice emphasizes the personal nature of the researcher, which is necessary for reflexivity to make influences clear. In some ways, it also makes the writing more interesting and provides even more context about which the reader may ponder. In the end, reflexivity is critical to quality studies, and all researchers including ones who do quantitative research should be required to disclose personal thoughts while conducting a study.