Reflexivity

Reflexivity refers to the process of acknowledging and critically examining one's own characteristics, biases, and insights, particularly as they influence participants and evaluation processes and findings. Reflexivity involves various efforts to identify the evaluators’ impact and either control it or document and account for it. Ideally, evaluators keep an audit trail or fieldnotes documenting their methodological choices, their reactions to people they study, their intentions, and their interpretations. These records reflect evaluators’ efforts to understand roles they play and can be helpful in interpreting the directions their studies take, how they influence the evaluand, and how they are influenced by the evaluand.