405800

hop and ShepherdQualitative Health Research

QHRXXX10.1177/1049732311405800Bis

Ethics
Qualitative Health Research

Ethical Reflections: Examining

XX(X) 1­–12
© The Author(s) 2011
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DOI: 10.1177/1049732311405800
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Narrative Paradigm

Emily C. Bishop1 and Marie L. Shepherd1

Abstract
Being reflexive and providing these reflections for public scrutiny is often considered a key element of ethical, rigorous
qualitative research. Prevalent conceptualizations of reflexivity, however, need interrogating and sharpening. We aim
to contribute to this by examining reflexive practice, and in particular researchers’ reflexive accounts, through the
lens of the narrative paradigm. Our aim is to demonstrate that acknowledging the role of narrative reconstruction in
reflexivity creates more ethical research, and that it is therefore crucial for researchers to more explicitly recognize
this. Both authors present an analysis of one particular exchange between interviewer and participant. This analysis
highlights that despite our best efforts at “doing reflexivity,” both immediately following and when reflecting back on an
interview, there are influential factors that escape our gaze. Reflections of the past are particularly imperfect. Without
fully recognizing this, we are not utilizing all the tools available for ensuring honest, ethical research.

Keywords
biographical analysis; narrative inquiry; reflexivity; research, qualitative; self

Emerging from key feminist analyses, it is now well
established in the research methods literature that qualita-
tive researchers’ subjectivity/standpoint/autobiography/
self-biography can “filter, skew, [and] shape” their research
(Armstead, 1995, p. 628; Cotterill & Letherby, 1993;
DeVault, 1996; Harding, 1987, 1991; Letherby, 2003, 2005;
Peshkin, 1988; Reinharz, 1992; Smith, 1987, 1990; Stanley
& Wise, 1983, 1993). Researchers are encouraged to iden-
tify, be sensitive to, and document how their “social back-
ground, assumptions, positioning and behavior” affect all
stages of the research process (Finlay, 2006, p. 21; Green,
Franquiz, & Dixon, 1997; Letherby, 2005; Poland, 2002;
Silverman, 2004; Willis, 2010). It is also widely accepted
that the temporal nature of self-biography precludes our
ability to replicate past research findings (see Arvay, 2003).
In this article, we aim to go beyond these conventional
ideas by further highlighting the utility of viewing reflex-
ivity through the narrative paradigm. Specifically, we
emphasize that acknowledging the role of narrative recon-
struction in the development of reflexive accounts cre-
ates more ethical research, and therefore it is essential
for researchers to more explicitly recognize this.
Although it is generally agreed that reflexivity, in some
form and to some degree, is necessary (see, for example,
Breuer, Mruck, & Roth, 2002; Knuuttila, 2002; Mauthner &
Doucet, 2003; St. Louis & Barton, 2002), the extent to
which research reports, including published articles, should
entail reflections on the impact of personal biography
remains contentious (see Kobayashi, 2003; Riach,
2009). Unfortunately, researchers must tread carefully
to avoid their work being criticized as self-indulgent
(see DeVault, 1997; Letherby, 2000, 2003; Mykhalovskiy,
1996; Sparkes, 2002).
Certainly, researchers should prioritize participants’
voices and avoid placing themselves at the epicenter of
their research interpretations and output (Alvesson, 2003;
Riach, 2009). It is only through systematic, ongoing reflex-
ivity, however—including a continuing examination of
personal subjectivity—that we can avoid self-indulgence,
that we can “avoid the trap of perceiving just that which
my own untamed sentiments have sought out and served
up as data” (Peshkin, 1988, p. 20). Through self-reflexivity
we gain awareness of the “political/ideological agendas
hidden in our writing” and insight (albeit limited) into
¹University of Tasmania, Launceston, Tasmania, Australia
Corresponding Author:
Emily C. Bishop, University of Tasmania, School of Sociology and
Social Work, Locked Bag 1340, Launceston, Tasmania, 7250, Australia
Email: Emily.Bishop@utas.edu.au

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2 Qualitative Health Research XX(X)
how factors such as our social location and personal assump-
tions shape research encounters and interpretations (Hertz,
1996, p. 7). Providing these insights alongside brief
expositions of personal biography for public scrutiny dem-
onstrates moral integrity (Kvale, 1996, pp. 241-242),
a commitment to honest, transparent, ethical research
practice (Finlay, 2002; Hertz; Pini, 2004). This should be
encouraged rather than disparaged.
With our position on the necessity of reflexivity articu-
lated, we introduce our key argument: that a more explicit
focus on the reconstructed nature of reflexive accounts is
required. This argument emerged through observations of
our own research experiences and observations of the
reflexive accounts of other researchers. Despite a synthe-
sis of systematic self-analysis and fieldwork analysis, we
sensed that there had still been various influential factors
at play that had escaped our awareness. When interview-
ing, for example, it was likely that we held certain assump-
tions that even deep sociological introspection (Sparkes,
2002) did not reveal, and that affected our interviewees in
ways that we did not (and could not) see. Furthermore,
we were conscious that we had affected different partici-
pants in different ways, and that even if we were to ques-
tion them about their thoughts on the interview experience,
such information is only imperfectly knowable.
We found that rather than often or overtly acknowledg-
ing this, researchers tended to present their reflexive analy-
ses as objective reports, or truth claims about the ways they
had shaped their research process and findings. This is
problematic for several reasons. It conflicts with qualita-
tive epistemologies; specifically, it conflicts with the idea
that truth can never be confirmed (Kvale, 1996), it fails to
fully appreciate the existence of forces that lie beyond our
grasp, and finally, it suggests a tendency for researchers
to position their reflexive accounts as more sociologically
informed and thus more accurate than participants’
accounts are typically considered.
As an entry point into our discussions, we briefly
overview key elements of narrative identity theory and
highlight the implications of this for reflexivity. Next, we
demonstrate why the idea of the benefit of hindsight is
problematic for reflexivity, and following this, both authors
provide a brief positioning account (see Arvay, 2003,
p. 163). These accounts outline the personal experiences
that motivated our respective research projects and provide
insight into how our current self-stories differ from how
we viewed ourselves during the data collection phases of
the research projects informing this article. We then each
analyze one interview excerpt, discussing some of the
possible ways in which elements of our social and per-
sonal identity might have shaped this exchange. Our chief
aim is to demonstrate some of the shortcomings of cur-
rent conceptualizations of reflexivity by highlighting that
despite our best efforts—both immediately following an
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interview and with the presumed benefit of hindsight—
when doing reflexivity, we can never be certain of our
conclusions.
Narrativity and Ethical Reflexivity
Whereas interviews often remain seen as portals to per-
sonal thoughts and subjectivities (Sarantakos, 2005), nar-
rative theorists have emphasized that participants’ accounts
are narrative constructions (see Atkinson & Delamont,
2006; Chase, 2005; Riessman, 1997, 2002, 2008). We
cannot know whether we access true subjectivity because
we cannot read people’s thoughts, and because interviews
can be opportunities for identity construction and perfor-
mance (see Langellier, 2001; Langellier & Peterson, 2004;
Riessman, 1991, 1993). The narrative approach has been
valuable for understanding the nature of our data and for
engaging reflexively with our role in creating this.
Postmodern perspectives view the self1 as fragmented,
incoherent, and multiple (see Castells, 2002; Featherstone,
1995; Turkle, 1984, 1995). Narrative theorists however,
recognize that we experience a coherent and unified self
(see Ezzy, 1998a; Lucius-Hoene & Deppermann, 2000;
Polkinghorne, 1991, 1996; Somers, 1994). The latter is far
more useful to the reflexive researcher, because it is only
through conceiving of the self as in some way locatable
that the role of the self in the research can be examined.2
For narrative theorists, identity is constructed through
experiencing life events, composing and telling a narra-
tive of these. Furthermore, although we tend to view our-
selves in terms of unified, fixed attributes, over time, and
in light of new experiences, we reconstruct our identities
(see Ezzy, 1998a; Ricoeur, 1984; also see Polkinghorne,
1991) and, related to this, our ideological frameworks
and subjective perceptions.
Social scientists are increasingly acknowledging the
narrative construction of identity3; that life, and the self, is
storied (see Ezzy, 1998a, 1998b, 2000a, 2000b; Hurwitz,
Skultans, & Greenhalgh, 2004; Mischler, 1992, 1999;
Plummer, 1995; Riessman, 1991, 2002, 2003, 2008). Also,
as noted earlier, the temporal nature of the self and the
consequences of this for replicating our research findings
are well recognized. The implications of narrativity for the
ontological status of researchers’ reflexive accounts are
yet to be fully examined, and require more focused atten-
tion, far beyond the account provided here.
Pertinent to our argument is the way that participants’
self-narratives have been increasingly referred to as per-
sonal myths4 to highlight their constructed and temporally
located nature (see May, 1975, 1991; McAdams, 1997; see
also Passerini, 1990). We suggest conceptualizing and dis-
cussing researchers’ reflexive accounts in similar terms.
Rather than stable, objective analyses, they too are tempo-
rally situated, often written some time after the completion
Bishop and Shepherd 3
of the research, subjective and constructed in part through
guesswork—albeit theoretically informed guesswork. There
is much we cannot know about our role in data produc-
tion, and our reflections can thus be thought of as mythical
constructions.
To further illustrate this, consider the interview process.
There is much to think about: careful observing and
active listening without leaving lengthy pauses; providing
encouraging responses but not interrupting; maintaining
positive, open body language; creating engaging probes;
and balancing the tension between staying on topic and
allowing the participant to speak what they consider rele-
vant (Minichiello, Aroni, Timewell, & Alexander, 1995;
Walter, 2006). We are also managing our own identity per-
formance. With so much to contemplate, we cannot simul-
taneously undertake a comprehensive deconstruction of
our impact on the interviewee and of how they are affect-
ing us, particularly because these socially shaped, inter-
personal factors and their outcomes are so dynamic. There
are also forces at play on an unconscious or embodied
level that, despite rigorous, ongoing analysis, we cannot
become fully cognizant of. Even reinterviewing partici-
pants to investigate their perceptions of us, seeking to
discover exactly how they see us as having affected them,
cannot address this gap in knowledge. This is because
their accounts would be both subjective and narratively
reconstructed. We cannot provide complete and accurate
reflections.
Social researchers seek to create valid, meaningful,
quality, and perhaps of most importance, ethical research.
Discussions of research ethics have often centered on
confidentiality, informed consent, opportunity to with-
draw, and not doing harm (see Habibis, 2010; Punch,
1994), and it has become taken for granted that honesty
and integrity (see Kvale, 1996) are fundamental to ethical
research. Reflexivity is particularly valuable to qualita-
tive research because it brings honesty to the fore, asking
us not to feign objectivity or reach post hoc conclusions,
but to acknowledge that multiple factors, including our
personal narratives, shape the data we produce and our
interpretations of this data (Kemmis & McTaggart, 2003;
Mays & Pope, 2000; see in particular McCorkel & Myers,
2003). Being completely honest about the situated, cocon-
structed nature of our research findings does not “dissolve
ethical tensions” (Cloke, Cooke, Cursons, Milbourne, &
Widdowfield, 2000, p. 133), but it does help to address
some of the “moral tensions in interpretation and repre-
sentation” (Riach, 2009, p. 367).
Although this aspect of the relationship between reflex-
ivity and honesty is established in the literature, a further
step forward is required. Within our reflexive accounts we
must be honest about the fact that even though we might
reflect deeply, analyze from multiple perspectives, and seek
industriously to unravel and explain the factors at play,
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we cannot. Presenting reflections as objective accounts, or
even failing to fully acknowledge their temporality and the
myriad factors that we cannot discern, is a form of fabrica-
tion—a key facet of unethical research. To adhere more
closely to the ideal of producing ethical research then, it is
important that as researchers we unambiguously engage
with and demonstrate a commitment to these ideas within
our reflections. Enduring beliefs in the benefit of hind-
sight, however, might be precluding this conceptual shift.
Hindsight and Insight
Mauthner and Doucet (2003) agreed that determining the
impact of the researcher on the research is difficult and
limited. We disagree however, with their explanation:
that many of these influential forces “only become
apparent once we have left the research behind” (p. 425).
They argued that hindsight brings greater insight; “more”
reflexivity:
Time, distance and detachment from our doctoral
work have allowed us to be more reflexive about
our processes. The security of a job, and a position
within academia make it easier to admit and articu-
late the confusions, the tensions we felt and how
these manifested themselves in our research . . .
hindsight has enabled us to understand and articu-
late . . . what is influencing our knowledge produc-
tion and how this is occurring. (Mauthner &
Doucet, 2003, pp. 418-420, emphasis in original)
Their use of the term detachment is peculiar. It conflicts
with qualitative epistemologies that contest objectivity and
detachment (see Finlay, 2002; Finlay & Gough, 2003; Pini,
2004), and with qualitative methodologies that encourage
intimacy and closeness to the data (see Birch & Miller,
2000; Denscombe, 1998; Lucius-Hoene & Deppermann,
2000; Oakley, 1981). Their account also conflicts with
relativist ontologies, which often underpin qualitative
research, because they suggest that with distance and
detachment comes an ability to capture the past—as
though the past exists “out there,” independent of our
subjective and dynamic view of this (Neuman, 1991).
Other authors have taken a similar stance when discuss-
ing their reflexive journey (see Carolin, 2003; Doane,
2003; McKay, Ryan, & Sumsian, 2003). Pini, for example,
argued: “Clearly, my reflexive journey on this issue is not
complete” (2004, p. 175). This suggests that she foresaw
an end to this journey; that at some point she would man-
age to accurately elucidate the myriad factors that shaped
her research. Certainly time produces greater detachment
from the data. Hindsight, however, does not make the
effects of the researcher–researched relationship more
apparent (Mauthner & Doucet, 2003). Rather, our
4 Qualitative Health Research XX(X)
memories and recollections become differently colored and
restoried by our new experiences in the social world, by our
newly acquired knowledge and attitudes, and by our shift-
ing personal and professional identities. Narrative episte-
mology thus helps illuminate that hindsight is not an open
window through which we can clearly review the past.
Reflections as Self-Stories
Even when seeking to access and scrutinize our own sub-
jectivity, our personal values and persuasions (Peshkin,
1988), and to make these accounts of the self public in
some form, elements of subjectivity remain beyond our
consciousness, “like a garment that cannot be removed”
(Peshkin, p. 17). This has implications for the status of
both self-biographies and our reflexive practices. Because
it is integral to identity development (Plummer, 1995, see
also Rankin, 2002), people find many contexts and oppor-
tunities for telling self-stories. Storytelling is “doing iden-
tity,” confirming an existing self or renarrating the self in
a different way (Lee & Roth, 2004; Warren, 2006; see
also Snow & Anderson, 1987; Snow & McAdam, 2000).
Researchers’ written reflexive accounts provide oppor-
tunities to position the self in a particular way. They are
as much stories of the present self as they are stories of
the past. Although true for all researchers, because iden-
tity is renarrated over time, early career academics such as
ourselves are perhaps more invested (either consciously
or unconsciously) in telling stories to construct a particu-
lar identity: that of the legitimate, competent, reflexive
researcher.
In light of the above, our brief self-biographical accounts,
presented below, can be considered reconstructions of the
past. Phrases such as “I remember” and “I recall” should
be interpreted from the narrative perspective. These
accounts nonetheless provide an indication of our personal
myth during data collection. We cannot be sure of our role
in shaping the excerpts analyzed. The factors that escaped
our perception then—in part because we could not access
our participant’s thoughts—we can no better explicate
now. Furthermore, our identities have changed, shading
our memories of these events. It is useful to know that we
are both at different stages in our personal and professional
lives. Emily Bishop is in her early 30s, completed her doc-
toral research in November 2008, and currently holds an
academic position. Marie Shepherd is in her 50s, has a
30-year background in nursing, and plans to complete her
postgraduate studies in February 2013.
Bishop’s Research
Research Outline
My research examined the stories told by young, rural
Australians to make sense of the risks they had faced and
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continued to face in their sex lives. I aimed to challenge
the stereotypical view of young, rural youth (in particular)
as “at risk,” and to highlight their risk-minimization strat-
egies. I interviewed 31 young men and women who spent
their childhood and adolescence in a rural area, and con-
ducted a narrative analysis of the data. Key findings
included the way participants avoided presenting them-
selves as “real” risk takers and sought to portray them-
selves as moral and cautious and that their interpretations
of risk and sex were highly moralized (Bishop, 2008).
My interest lies chiefly in the implications of this for
understandings of and approaches to preventing sexual
risk behavior among young people (Bishop, in press).
A Biographical Précis
My research was closely connected to, but not consciously
motivated by, my personal experiences. At age 18 I uninten-
tionally became pregnant and chose to become a young
mother. I remember that I felt negatively judged as lacking
self-restraint and ambition. Then, when my son’s father
left me, I constructed a particularly negative self-narrative
around tropes of betrayal, lost youth, and optimism.
However, in light of a newfound engagement with feminist
theory during my undergraduate studies, I crafted a more
positive story. During data collection for my PhD degree
I worked hard, however, to be cognizant of and to mini-
mize the impact of my feminist beliefs on the research
process. Through ongoing self-scrutiny, particularly dur-
ing data analysis, I was able to recognize that despite my
beliefs about broader gender relations, gender was not the
most salient variable within my participants’ stories.
I feel satisfied that I have arrived at my research knowl-
edge through a high degree of self-scrutiny. Nevertheless,
I believe that both my past experiences and my feminist
sympathies still permeated through to my research in
some way, particularly my interview encounters, which
I discuss further below. I have significantly redrafted
my self-narrative since achieving my doctorate and secur-
ing an academic position. No longer do I hear that “You’re-
a-disappointment” story playing in the background. This
identity shift, as well as time away from data collection,
has not, however, brought me closer to objective insights
into how I influenced my research. Rather, time and
distance have made for even murkier recollections of the
numerous hours spent talking to participants about their
pleasurable and problematic sex lives.
A Reflexive Account
Below are comments from 26-year-old Charlotte,5 who
discussed some of her sexual risk experiences. Prior to this
point, we had been discussing her enjoyment of sex gener-
ally, and teenage sex in particular. My question here was,
“So were you, like, thinking much about the risks when
Bishop and Shepherd 5
you were having sex, then?” [as a 16-17 year old]. Her
response:
I mean, I didn’t really think about the risks though,
like, intentionally “take” risks. It was just like, yeah
you’re hot! I’m gonna [have sex with] you! You
know what I mean. . . . Yeah it was only like, when
I got pregnant the first time, and I had to catch the
train all the way down to Bigtown that like, I really
sort of. I mean, that was awful . . . sitting in the
waiting room and going through it all [termination
of the pregnancy]. I mean, young guys, god even
older guys [ha-ha], they just don’t get that stuff.
They don’t have to deal with that stuff, you know
what I mean.
When interviewing Charlotte I could sense that somehow,
both my physical presence and my beliefs had some bear-
ing on our interactions. I reflected afterward on whether it
was my feminist standpoint—more specifically my belief
that men’s sexual pleasure remains privileged and that
feminine sexuality remains constructed as passive and
receptive—was breaking through, and encouraging her to
tell her story in this particular way. I reflected on the inter-
view many times. I had not said anything explicitly refer-
encing such ideas. Had I asked leading questions? I did not
think so. I actually asked very few questions, because the
interview flowed in a conversational manner (see Rubin &
Rubin 1995), and regardless, each line of questioning was
integral to pursuing the interview topics. I did manage to
identify some instances where I had assumed a shared
meaning, rather than following up on a potentially ambig-
uous answer. Even immediately following the encounter,
however, I could not isolate my ideological approach as a
key factor in shaping the data created.
Rather, there were multiple social, personal, and envi-
ronmental factors at play. Reanalyzing this encounter
from the present, I still cannot ascertain just how these
operated. In part, this is because many of these elements
are omnipresent, embodied (see, Ezzy, 2010; Sharma,
Reimer-Kirkham, & Cochrane, 2009), and to an extent
unknowable. We cannot step outside of the self, to view
the impact of the self. Also, because I cannot discover pre-
cisely how Charlotte perceived me, any argument I make
here regarding how I affected her account cannot be con-
firmed. Furthermore, our impact on each other was fluid;
it shifted throughout the interview as we both narrated fur-
ther chapters of our stories. My reflexive account of this
interview encounter is therefore closer to a mythical con-
struction than to an objective truth.
Interviewing is often described as being characterized
by a power imbalance (Karnieli-Miller, Strier, & Pessach,
2009). Some interviewees however, see academics as lack-
ing useful, real-world knowledge, and in these instances
researchers hold “little status and power outside the
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university” (Armstead, 1995, p. 631). We suggest—but
emphasize that we cannot confirm—that for this inter-
view, my age, and specifically my youthful appearance,
manner, and lexis, facilitated a relatively balanced dis-
tribution of power, at least more so than might have
otherwise been achieved. Like many of my participants,
Charlotte often punctuated her sentences with “you know
what I mean” and “you know what it’s like.” Based on my
journals and an intimate (hopefully attached, rather than
detached) knowledge of the data, Shepherd and I argue that
these were statements rather than questions. Had I appeared
older, part of a past when social norms and practices were
different, Charlotte might have been less likely to assume
that I knew what she meant. Had she viewed me as
more of an adult—a responsible authority figure—then it
is less likely that she would have considered me someone
with whom to laugh about her sexual exploits and prow-
ess. A different interaction, and a different account, might
have ensued.
I was (perhaps partly consciously) self-narrating and
performing a young, casual, nonacademic-type self-identity,
which was expressed through factors such as the way
I dressed, sat, spoke, laughed, drank, and smoked. It is
possible that Charlotte (even prior to any of my self-
disclosures, discussed below) viewed me as the kind of
person who had shared similar experiences to her own,
was comfortable speaking candidly about them, and was
young enough to recall these. We do not argue, however,
that my youth led directly to rapport with Charlotte, or
with any of my participants, because it did not. More than
just age was at play, and like other subgroups, young peo-
ple are diverse (see Cohen, 1997; White & Wyn, 2004;
Wyn & White, 1997, 2004). It is possible (but not verifi-
able) that some of the young rural participants (particu-
larly those who had never lived outside of their regional
areas) saw me as an urban, intellectual type, who could
not empathize with their experiences of growing up in an
isolated region. Indeed, this was evident in that, at times,
some of the participants were openly anxious, uncomfort-
able, and withdrawn, whereas others spoke comfortably
for hours, appearing to enjoy the experience. The impact
of my personal/social identity on my research was never
patent, uniform, or straightforward.
Age, of course, intersects with gender. If I was a man,
Charlotte might have been less likely to assume that I knew
what she meant by men “don’t get that stuff.” Her assump-
tion was also relatively accurate (as I clarified this with her
later in the interview). She was referring to the way that
young men often consider contraception to be the wom-
an’s responsibility, and that they lack intimate knowledge
of the stress and trauma women endure, more than even
the fear that an unprotected sexual encounter has led to
a pregnancy, and of the experience of termination. Even
though gender is therefore likely to have been an influen-
tial factor, we suggest that this worked in conjunction with,
6 Qualitative Health Research XX(X)
and cannot be disentangled from, the impact of some brief
self-disclosures I made during the interview, namely that
my (amazing) child was the outcome of an unintended
teenage pregnancy.
Researcher self-disclosure is a contentious issue
(see Cotterill, 1992; Dickson-Swift, James, Kippen, &
Liamputtong, 2007; Miller, 1998). Cotterill, for example,
has argued that participants do not necessarily want to
hear about interviewers’ private lives. Resistance to self-
disclosure, however, limits the relationship between two
people and increases the imbalance and distance between
researcher and interviewee (Wenger, 2002). I adopted
Oakley’s (1981, p. 49) idea that intimacy is important for
successful interviews and that there can be “no intimacy
without reciprocity” (see also Lucius-Hoene & Deppermann,
2000). We suggest that, given the private nature of the
topic, revealing to Charlotte (and to a number of other
participants) that I had engaged in the type of practices
that I was probing into, assisted her to voice her “risky”
(condomless/unprotected) behaviors, because it demon-
strated that I was unlikely to be shocked by or to judge
her for these. It is impossible, however, to determine the
extent to which I have reconstructed this rationale, how it
might reflect my current self-story. Perhaps I am uncon-
sciously seeking to justify my self-disclosures to under-
stand and present myself as an informed, thoughtful, and
capable researcher.
Although I was armed with self-knowledge and worked
hard to avoid expressing my various beliefs (feminist or
otherwise), it is inevitable that I also held certain assump-
tions that even this self-interrogation did not reveal, and
that these assumptions fashioned the questions I asked and
the responses that I gave to her comments. That I even asked
certain questions and therefore unconsciously excluded
others illustrates the inescapable and imperfectly know-
able role of the researchers’ personal myth in shaping
research data.
Charlotte and I have shared some similar experiences
(both having taken sexual risks and both becoming teen-
age mothers) and a similar social position (in terms of age,
gender, ethnicity, and income). Our shared knowledge
of this “invited intimacy” (Birch & Miller, 2000) was
therefore conducive to particular interactions and disclo-
sures. My reflections on this interview encounter are
clouded, however, through the very process of looking
back. Distance and time have not brought me closer to the
truth of exactly what happened.
Shepherd’s Research
Research Outline
In our society, good parenting is chiefly measured through
the application of expert knowledges that reflect and
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reinforce dominant, middle-class ideals. Within these par-
enting discourses, working-class (low socioeconomic)
values and practices are positioned as inferior. The aims
of my research are two-fold: first, to identify how par-
ticipants attribute meaning to parenthood, and second, to
better understand the ways in which these meanings are
shaped and negotiated through the interactions between
child health nurses and parents. I employed both partici-
pant observation and in-depth interview methods. My
ongoing analyses indicate first, that when nurses find
that their ideas about good parenting differ from those
expressed by the parents they encounter through their work,
to avoid appearing critical and judgmental, they rarely con-
front them outright with this. Second, that by utilizing par-
ticular strategies, nurses nevertheless impart their opinions
on the matter in question, and thus shape parents’ values
and attitudes.
A Biographical Précis
My research relates directly to my employment experi-
ences: 30 years of working as a nurse, the last 15 as a child
health nurse. Prior to taking on further study, I remember
holding on to a distinctly positive self-narrative, of a skilled
and experienced nurse. Returning to university, however,
I realized that my nursing practices lacked a critical, social
framework, and I came to see myself as a novice, an
interloper in the world of social research. I worked hard
to examine and challenge my biomedical assumptions,
and have also endeavored to minimize the possible impact
of my past on the research process. In my field journal
however, I documented a tendency during my early inter-
views to sometimes feel inadequate, and therefore return
to the more familiar nurse identity, which I discuss below.
A few years in, I have again recrafted my narrative. My
nursing practices are more critically informed, and I am a
capable, reflexive social researcher. Nevertheless, reflect-
ing our analyses of Bishop’s interview, we argue that two
key things confound my reflections, or more specifically
my ability to accurately portray these past events here.
First, that I am viewing these encounters through the prism
of my current self-narrative, and second, that I cannot
know how I was perceived by my participants. Researchers
might choose, within their reflexive accounts, to view the
past through the restricted lens of one or more particular
social or personal variables (such as age and gender), but
for the most part, there is a complex interplay between
multiple factors.
A Reflexive Account
My account further illustrates the difficulties researchers
face when seeking to meaningfully disentangle the factors
that might have influenced their interview encounters.
Bishop and Shepherd 7
One of my first interviewees was 26-year-old Emma. The
interview took place in her lounge room, as she breastfed
her baby, with the television on quietly in the background.
After settling in, one of my first questions to her was,
“What was life like for you before you had kids, family,
that sort of thing? What did you do?” Her response was
immediate and (I believe) frank:
Before I had kids? I was—Well, I moved out of
home when I was 15. Lived on the streets till I was
16, and then got heavily involved in drugs and alco-
hol and that. And like, it was only when I found out
I was pregnant with twins that I, well, at that
stage I was only [only knew I was] pregnant with
one of them, but I was like, “Wow. Okay. This is
not going to be good for my baby.” So um, just
gave it ALL up.
As noted, this excerpt is from one of my early interviews,
when my sense of being a novice researcher was a key
theme in my self-story. It is possible that my lack of con-
fidence in this new researcher identity was noticeable to
Emma in some way, and this actually helped to redress
the interview power imbalance. When reflecting on the
interview, I realized that I had also, however, at times per-
formed my child health nurse identity. Perhaps it was this
which chiefly shaped the confessional nature of her story,
as evidenced in the exchange above? As a nurse, I was
used to listening to people. This was usually undertaken,
however, to treat, to provide support, information, and
advice, and to develop a plan for the delivery of care,
which is obviously not the role of the social researcher.
I found that on occasions during this interview, when
asked specifically by Emma, I provided my professional
opinion and advice.
By disclosing my clinical background from the out-
set, I might have encouraged Emma’s questions to some
extent. Like Bishop, I had a sound understanding of exist-
ing debates over self-disclosure (see above), and had
sided with Eder and Fingerson’s (2002) position that first
and foremost, researchers have an ethical responsibility
toward reciprocity with their participants, particularly the
more vulnerable, because of the inherent power imbalance.
I nevertheless acknowledged Miller’s (1998, p. 62; see also
Liamputtong & Ezzy, 2005) point that we must consider
the possible implications of self-disclosures carefully; for
example, how might they affect what participants “feel
able to voice during an interview?” I considered the pos-
sibility that participants might have experienced a nega-
tive encounter with a child health nurse or related service
provider, and what this could mean for the encounter.
Ultimately, I determined that because my background was
such a key part of my self-identity, revealing that I was a
child health nurse and mother of three was the honest and
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thus ethical choice (see, Eder & Fingerson, 2002; Holmes,
2010). My embodied nurse/mother identity was likely to
become evident and to be an invisible force anyway—
whether I revealed it to participants or not. Perhaps, know-
ing I was also a nurse, Emma perceived me as a caring
professional, trustworthy enough to be told her story of past
bad behaviour, but also as someone who would maintain
her clinical distance.
It is also possible that my gender, or more specifically
the fact that we were both women, increased the likeli-
hood that Emma would tell her story in the way that she
did. Had I been a man, for example, Emma might have
felt less comfortable openly breastfeeding in front of me
as we spoke. Because I am a woman it is possible that she
viewed me through the prism of dominant constructions
of femininity; as more likely than a man to be caring and
a good listener, and that this contributed to her many dis-
closures (similar to those provided above). Emma might
have unconsciously assumed that, as a mother, I was more
likely than a man (or a childless woman) to have the capac-
ity to fully empathize with her sudden sense of connec-
tion to and desire to protect her unborn child.
Perhaps, however, Emma did not hold such assump-
tions about femininity (it was not my aim to investigate
these during the interview process). It might be that Emma
actually perceived me as too old to remember the pain and
beauty of childbirth and breastfeeding, or as too different
(in terms of education and social position) to empathize
with her. The forces that were at play are more likely to
have been a synthesis of multiple factors, including both
gender and age. I was not just any woman. I revealed
(both explicitly and through appearance and speech)
that I was an older woman, with great experience in a car-
ing profession. Maybe on some level she perceived me as
a kindly mother figure; someone with experiential knowl-
edge of life’s trials and tribulations; someone willing to
listen and likely to offer supportive congratulations for her
transformation from risk-taking teen to protective mother.
Ribbens (1998) however, has argued that it is unlikely for
an interviewee who is also a mother to believe that
researchers can avoid making judgments about them, so
maybe despite my assurances that I was not there to evalu-
ate her mothering practices in any way, Emma felt that a
level of judgment or appraisal was inevitable, and thus she
sought to make this a positive one.
It is also possible, of course, that the effects on Emma
of my novice researcher and older child health nurse iden-
tities were negligible. She might have seen me mainly as a
highly educated, professional researcher; someone with a
social status quite distant from hers. Later in the interview
I heard more of Emma’s story. She described feeling nega-
tively labeled as a single teenage mother, particularly
by hospital staff when her twins were born. It is pos-
sible that Emma was not at all concerned with who I was
8 Qualitative Health Research XX(X)
(or appeared to be). Maybe she was utilizing the interview
as an opportunity to challenge the negative labels she felt
imposed on her, and to document her story of redemption.
Rather than a coparticipant in the discourse, I was the audi-
ence, enabling the transformative power of telling self-
stories to flourish (Warren, 2006).
Presumably, we would have created different data had
I not disclosed that I was a mother and child nurse. My
age, gender, background, and self-story, however, were all
variables at play—all dynamically influencing our inter-
actions and the data produced. Bishop and I suggest that it
was the combination of “older/female/child health nurse/
interloper” that assisted me to form trusting relationships
with many participants. It is not possible to say in any
definitive way, however, what exactly it was about me (if
anything), or the interview scenario, that Emma perceived,
responded to, or was affected by—in part, because I do
not and cannot fully know what she thought about me.
This further illustrates the need to construct a more
nuanced conceptualization of reflexivity.
Ethical Reflexivity
Analyzing even the short interview excerpts above dem-
onstrates our key point: that we cannot say with certainty
which aspects of our past experiences, social background
and position, personal assumptions, self-narrative, appear-
ance, and behavior during the interview shaped our data
collection and research as a whole. We cannot unravel or
quantify which of the factors outlined above was more
influential than another. Nor can we speak objectively
about how exactly these forces functioned, or the precise
impact of these. This is because they are often omnipres-
ent and imperceptible, or embodied and difficult to articu-
late, and because of the way that we reconstruct narratives
of the past in light of new experiences and new identities.
Our analyses therefore illustrate our key argument: that a
more explicit focus on the reconstructed nature of reflex-
ive accounts is required. They support our claim that we
are ethically obliged to ensure that reflexive accounts
explicitly acknowledge that we cannot fully capture our
role in data production.
What we have provided above are particular, tempo-
rally bound accounts that are as much stories of the past
as they are stories of our contemporary selves. They are
inevitably (and to some extent strategically) attempts to
portray ourselves as insightful, qualified researchers and
academics. We hope to have made a modest contribution
to current understandings of the partial and mythical
nature of not only qualitative research findings, but of our
reflections on these. We have not, however, questioned
the importance of reflexivity for enhancing qualitative
research. Reflexivity is a necessity, helping us to better
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understand the cocreated, situated nature of research
findings. Although we do suggest that more advice on
exactly how researchers can come to identify their self-
story, their assumptions, and their epistemological stand-
point would be useful to early career researchers. Our aim
has not been to redress this gap or to provide “how-to”
guidelines, but to contribute to a more nuanced under-
standing of some of the issues reflexive researchers face,
and in doing so, to sharpen current perspectives on pro-
ducing ethical qualitative research.
It is one thing to know on an intellectual or intuitive
level that we have an effect on other people—that we
shape our research encounters and cannot be completely
objective in our interpretations of these; it is another thing,
however, to document when and in exactly what way. We
cannot know or articulate the effect we have on others
(which changes depending on the person). We cannot
know how we are being perceived by our participants, or,
of particular importance, exactly what self-stories and
assumptions they bring to the research. The researcher can
endeavor to make his or her comprehensive standpoint
and/or self-biography explicit for private and/or public
examination, but ultimately we cannot achieve this, and
we cannot evade its influence. Angen (2000, p. 383) artic-
ulated this:
We cannot step outside of our intersubjective
involvement with the lifeworld and into some
mythical, all-knowing, and neutral standpoint. . . .
By our very being in the world, we are already mor-
ally implicated. Our values and beliefs will show
themselves in our actions whether we stop and think
about them or not.
Hindsight and distance do not allow us to see the past.
They provide a different view of this. Our memories are
obscured and reimagined over time. Narrative epistemol-
ogy helps us to open up a space where we can recognize
this; where we can be explicit about what we can and can-
not achieve through our reflexive accounts. To improve
our research skills and to enhance researcher transparency,
we should continue to be reflexive; to throw as much light
as possible onto our research practices and processes. We
should do so, however, within a framework that more
overtly recognizes the reconstructed nature of our reflec-
tions. This will contribute to creating more nuanced and
ethical accounts of our qualitative research endeavors.
Authors’ Note
This article is based on our doctoral research studies, undertaken
in the School of Sociology and Social Work at the University of
Tasmania. Ethics approval was granted by the University Ethics
Committee.
Bishop and Shepherd 9
Acknowledgments
We thank all of the participants who graciously shared their
private stories with us.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declared no conflicts of interest with respect to the
authorship and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The authors received no financial support for the research and/
or authorship of this article.
Notes
1. Postmodern approaches to identity are of course widely
varied (see Butler, 1993a, 1993b; Danet, 1998; Halbers-
tam, 1998; Harraway, 1991; Heelas, Lash, & Morris, 1996;
Touraine, 1997). Furthermore, it is not our aim to examine
the varied attempts to distinguish “self” from “identity”
(see Ashmore & Jussim, 1997; Gergen, 1968; Jenkins,
2004; Swann & Read, 1981). In line with most narrative
approaches to identity, we use the terms self and identity
interchangeably.
2. Nevertheless, some researchers have tried to capture the
ways that their multiple or fragmented selves shaped their
research, depending on which self was given prominence in
a particular context (see, for example, McDowell, 1998; Pini,
2004; see also, Etherington, 2004).
3. Although in the literature different authors have used slightly
different terms, they are referring to the same idea: the self-
narrative (Gergen & Gergen, 1984, 1988; Polkinghorne,
1991); narrative identity (Ezzy, 1998a; 2000a; Lucius-
Hoene & Deppermann, 2000; Somers, 1994); and narrative
self-understanding (Rosenwald & Ochberg, 1992).
4. Accounts of the utility of thinking of identity as a “personal
myth” initially arose, and continue to be discussed, within
psychoanalytic and social-psychological frameworks (see
May, 1975, 1991; McAdams, 1997). These terms however,
have been adopted and extended by narrative theorists
working within the social sciences. We argue that narrative
understanding and terms such as mythbiography (Passerini,
1990) and personal myth capture the same meaning. This
view is in part shaped by the subtlety of accounts of narra-
tive truth (see Bruner, 1987).
5. Pseudonyms are used throughout. Ethics approval was
received for both research projects from the combined univer-
sity and health department Social Sciences Human Research
Ethics Committee.
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Bios
Emily C. Bishop, PhD, BA, is a lecturer in the school of
Sociology and Social Work at the University of Tasmania,
Launceston, Tasmania, Australia.
Marie L. Shepherd, BHSc, BN, RN, is a PhD student in soci-
ology at the University of Tasmania, School of Sociology and
Social Work, and a child and family health nurse for the
Department of Health and Human Services in Launceston,
Tasmania, Australia.