Five Lenses for the Reflexive Interviewer

Five Lenses for the Reflexive Interviewer

Reflexivity has been defined as “disciplined self-reflection” (Wilkinson, 1988, p. 493).1 It is employed in various guises in clinical and research practice as explicit, self-aware reflection and analysis toward increasing richness and integrity of understanding.

This chapter focuses specifically on research applications, although the ideas can be imported into all practice. Mason (1996) explains that reflexive research requires researchers to take “stock of their actions and their role in the research process” and subject these to the “same critical scrutiny as the rest of their ‘data’” (p. 6). More than being a tool to improve the quality, rigor, and validity of research, reflexivity can be used to expose relational and ethical dilemmas that permeate the entire research process.

The reflexive interviewer looks through a critical lens at the process, context, and outcomes of research and interrogates the construction of knowledge. Aided by tools such as field notes, reflective diaries, and supervision, the interviewer is a “thoughtful and ever-present subject who throughout has an impact on the what, why and how of the research” (King & Horrocks, 2010, p. 140). Key questions asked include the following: What am I trying to do? Why am I carrying out the interview this way? How is my approach affecting the research?

Beyond offering a way to reflect on the interviewer's role and the research process, reflexive analysis can also form part of the data to be analyzed. In phenomenologically oriented interviews, for example, an interviewer may use his or her [Page 318]own understandings along with bodily/emotional intuitions to shed light on the interviewee's experience. In discursively focused interview research, the “rhetorical strategies,” “discursive repertoires,” and culturally situated understandings of both interviewer and interviewee can be scrutinized.

In this chapter, I propose five “lenses” through which researchers can reflexively evaluate interviews at several levels: (1) strategic reflexivity looks through a lens focused on methodological/epistemological aspects; (2) contextual-discursive reflexivity examines situational and sociocultural elements; (3) embodied reflexivity focuses on the researcher's embodied felt sense and the gestural duet between interviewer and interviewee; (4) relational reflexivity examines the intersubjective, interpersonal realm; and (5) ethical reflexivity monitors processual aspects and power dynamics, enabling the possible ethical implications to be revealed.

Each of these lenses will be theoretically explored and research examples provided to demonstrate the concepts in practice. Extracts from my own interview dialogues, research diaries, and published reflections will be used as illustrations. I interject a further reflexive voice (RV) related to writing this chapter to make my own choices explicit and thereby acknowledge the constructed nature of this chapter (Steier, 1991).