Maintaining Objectivity and Reflexivity in Narratives and Case Studies

Qualitative research, and narrative and case study research in particular, asks the author to do something the conventions of academic writing were not originally designed to accommodate: to be present in the research and accountable for that presence at the same time. The researcher in a narrative inquiry or a case study is herself an instrument of the study, and an instrument with a point of view. She has a history. She also has a relationship to the phenomenon she is studying and a set of interpretive commitments that shape what she notices and how she makes sense of it.

Pretending otherwise does not produce objectivity. It produces unexamined subjectivity dressed in objective language, which is more dangerous than acknowledged subjectivity because the reader cannot evaluate what the author has left undisclosed.

Reflexivity is the methodological response. It is the practice of examining and disclosing the researcher's position — her relationship to the participants, her prior experiences with the phenomenon, her theoretical commitments, and the ways all of these may have influenced the research process and the interpretation of findings. In a dissertation, reflexivity is typically addressed in the methodology chapter, in a researcher positionality statement, and in the limitations section. It may also surface in the findings. That happens when the author's interpretive choices are especially consequential.

What reflexivity asks for. Reflexivity is an analytical disclosure: a clear, specific account of the ways the author's position may have influenced the research, accompanied by a description of the strategies used to manage that influence. Confession works against it. So does an extended personal narrative about the author's relationship to the topic, and so does a disclaimer that casts doubt on her capacity for honest analysis, which undermines the very findings it was written to frame.

Bracketing in phenomenological research. Phenomenological approaches typically require bracketing: the deliberate suspension of the researcher's prior assumptions and experiences with the phenomenon, to the extent possible, so that the participants' experiences can be encountered as freshly as the methodology requires. Describe the process specifically. Which assumptions were identified, and how were they set aside? Which reflective practices — journaling, member checking, peer debriefing — maintained the bracket throughout data collection and analysis?

Member checking and trustworthiness. Case study and narrative research typically employ member checking, the practice of returning interpretations to participants for verification, as one of several trustworthiness strategies. The dissertation should describe how member checking was conducted, what participants' responses revealed, and how the author's interpretations were modified or confirmed as a result. Report the disagreements. An account in which participants agreed with everything the author interpreted is less credible than one that records both the confirmations and the instances where participants pushed back.

The objectivity that qualitative research actually requires. Qualitative research asks for a view from a specific and disclosed somewhere, with full accountability for how that somewhere shaped the seeing, which is a harder standard to meet than the pretense of a view from nowhere. On the page, the author meets it by writing about her positionality with analytical precision, describing her trustworthiness strategies with enough specificity that a reader could check them, and presenting each interpretation with the epistemic humility its evidence warrants.