Qualitative researchers are increasingly utilising reflexive practices to ensure transparency and assure quality. Current researcher reflexivity, we show, often hinges upon a set of assumptions about reflexivity itself. Through a critical literature review combined with reflexive vignettes, we offer an epistemological critique of reflexivity. We advocate for robust reflexivity , a practice that critically reflects on reflexivity itself. We thus encourage qualitative researchers to critique their reflexive practices in four ways: (1) we challenge the idea that reflexivity leads to revelation, and show the ways this idea reintroduces positivist notions of Truth under a constructionist guise; (2) we challenge simple binaries within many positionality statements, nuancing ideas of insider and outsider status, affinity and difference, and the dynamism of identity over time; (3) we show how reflexivity is a socially and culturally embedded practice, rather than a neutral and universal cognitive practice; and (4) we foreground the power dynamics of reflexivity, cautioning against the co-option of reflexivity in ways that perpetuate social inequities and mask hierarchies within research. To support robust reflexive practices, we offer a toolkit of questions that can act as prompts for critical engagements with reflexivity, and argue for the creation of more robustly reflexive methodological resources.
Trundle et al. (2025) studied this question.