Reflexivity in Action: A Qualitative Study on How Researchers Interpret and Practice Reflexivity

Reflexivity is a key principle for research integrity and while well-known in the qualitative literature, reflexivity has rarely been studied in the action of doing research. In a researching-the-researcher design, we explored how seven junior researchers interpreted and practiced reflexivity within an interview study. Using reflexive thematic analysis, we analysed researchers’ concrete questions and responses in their interviewing, and their understanding of reflexivity as expressed in a post-research focus group. The researchers conceptualized reflexivity as an ongoing process of self-examination, encompassing their selves, lives, and lived worlds; demonstrating that a researcher’s being in the world goes far beyond the research. Their definition of reflexivity depended on their stance on what we call the paradigmatic ‘objectivist-subjectivist spectrum’ (outlined in detail in the introduction), which led to marked differences in how and why researchers pursued specific reflexive actions. In action, they used different practices, from spontaneous to instructed and supervised, which were all aimed at managing the interrelatedness with the participants that had to be reinvented with each participant. Our findings emphasize reflexivity as an idiosyncratic, (inter)personal and continuous process, that should be explicated and refined individually and collectively both before and throughout the study, to avoid using the same word for very different actions. We recommend the systematic adoption of Reflexivity Labs , in which the benefit of collective reflexivity is maximised to encourage critical self-reflexivity and facilitate ethical research. From our findings, we iteratively derived nine (non-exhaustive) ‘key questions’ that can be used as starting points for readers’ own reflexivity labs.