Reflexivity and Voice Define Reflexivity.

Reflexivity and Voice

Define reflexivity. Define voice.

How do ethical qualitative researchers include reflexivity and voice in their research?

Reflexivity is a form of self-analysis. From an academic researcher's standpoint, reflexivity is an integral part of the qualitative research process. A modern scholar must thoroughly understand his or her underlying assumptions, and how this affects the interpretation of seemingly objectively collected data. While the need for reflexivity might seem obvious in today's post-structuralist era, the pressures to 'publish or perish' and to make a splash with showy, new ideas can create a rush to judgment (Weber, 2003, v). The particularities and the 'messiness' of real life can be lost because of the attractions of an all-encompassing theoretical or meta-theoretical perspective. Simply understanding that 'we' as academics are not objective can be difficult and important in lived practice: "In some cases, a dominant worldview may permeate all aspects of our research -- for example, a belief that as researchers we have the most-informed, authoritative 'voice' to describe the phenomena that are our focus" (Weber, 2003, vi).

This sense of authority, of standing outside of the limits of his or her own culture, can cause the researcher to discount interesting anomalies in the information he or she is gathering. The great value of qualitative research is its ability to provide thick descriptions of human behavior through the use of more anecdotal, situation-specific research techniques like case studies, ethnographies, phenomenographies, ethnomethodologies, and hermeneutics that cannot be easily assumed into theories. Reflexive researchers understand both the benefits and limits of the qualitative approach, and constantly question the paradigm from which they approach a subject -- linguistic, textual, or otherwise (Weber, 2003, vi).

Qualitative research will not have the widespread generalizability of quantitative research, which can use statistical analysis to find "widespread regularities" (Weber, 2003, ix). But it can be used to elucidate a specific phenomenon and capture aspects of lived human experience statistical tabulations cannot. This is not to say that qualitative research must lack a theoretical basis, but that theories must be used creatively, to illuminate rather than limit thought. The voices of the participants should not be subsumed to theories. One good self-check regarding the appropriate use of theory is to ask one's self the question: "Does the research participant's voice dominate? Or does the researcher's voice dominate" the summary and analysis (Weber, 2003, x).

This does not mean that the subject must agree with everything that the researcher says, but if the researcher renders the subject into an object and does not present the subject's own perspective, in the subject's own words, the accuracy of the final report might be questionable. This problem is not limited to qualitative approaches, however: "even using the same data set, one researcher sometimes cannot replicate the statistical results obtained by another researcher. Somewhere an aspect of the analysis depends on a decision where the researchers, either explicitly or implicitly, have made different choices" (Weber, 2003, x).