Over-Rapport

Over-rapport refers to the potential of the researcher to become over-engaged and too familiar with research participants. This situation can lead to a loss of distance and perspective that may impact detrimentally on the process of research. The term over-rapport is particularly associated with ethnography in which participant observation is usually employed as a research method in order to study groups and cultures. Over-rapport frequently involves the enculturation of the researcher within a social group that is the object of her or his study and thus loss of her or his capacity to see and note the social processes and interactions with the fresh eyes of an outsider.

Over-rapport is a particular problem within ethnography, where researchers may spend long periods in close contact with the groups that are the focus of fieldwork, perhaps living and working within the group. The prolonged immersion within the social context being studied in order to explore behaviors and meanings, may lead to a loss of objectivity, sometimes referred to as “going native,” involving the adoption of the values, customs, and practices of the group. An example of the way in which over-rapport might be demonstrated includes identification with participants and the introduction of value judgments about their behavior, perhaps uncritically praising their achievements in the report of the research. Another example might be the over-representation of one subgroup to the detriment or absence of another, where the researcher has become over-familiar with just a few of the participants within the field. More extreme examples include the conduct of a romantic or sexual relationship with one or more research participants, or even marriage between the primary investigator and a research participant.

More recently, with a postmodern take on ethnography, the notions of objectivity and distance from what one is studying have been challenged, with the consequence that a concept such as over-rapport becomes problematic, suggesting as it does that there is an ideal relationship or distance that as an investigator one should maintain with one's research participants. The introduction of postmodern perspectives results in interest in the cultural practices through which the product of the research process is rendered as an ethnographic text. Thus, the form as well as the content of ethnographic writing is open to interrogation and scrutiny. One way in which this challenge has been addressed is to reflexively write oneself into the research, acknowledging one's subjectivity, and the relationships and power dynamics existing between the researcher and those being researched.