In qualitative research, it is important for the researcher to be aware of their positionality in their relationship with the participants as well as the data that comes from the study. For colleagues, please comment on the practical and theoretical implications of this reflections in terms of data analysis. Thank you.
There's the dilemma. (1) If you are the participant observer (and covert researcher), then you are raising ethical issue; if you are participant observer, your respondents will respond artificially which raises questions of validity and reliability. Another dilemma is in reporting your findings i.e to value free/value neutral or value laden. If you are value free, you are depriving users with your experiences; and if you are value laden, you are ignoring the reality. To me it is you (as a researcher) have to decide what to do/how to establish a balance.
I can only formulate an answer from my limited experience (PhD-research). I worked with several strategies that proved helpful in my case - although they can of course not provide an easy solution to these difficult questions! First I tried to get my research interests explicit - especially at those point, where "neutral" research interests intersected with my own (feminist, political) ideas, aims and wishes. And I shared these interests with those that participated in the study (giving interviews, discussing preliminary results etc.) and also tried to formulate them in writing. Second in data analysis I tried to pay attention to my own emotions towards the data - of course not in order to let emotions guide the analytic process, but in order to be aware of these emotions and the effects they might have on my interpretations. This problem might be mitigated if you can do group interpretations, but my guess is that it will arise again in the presentation of results. Third I tried to share my analysis with participants of the study, i.e. showing them a draft-version of the work and giving them a chance to comment on results. Of course this is in itself a tricky process as it cannot mean to change your analysis in order to accomodate participants wishes, but it might be helpful to sharpen the distinction between participants interpretations of the world and your own.
I don't know if any of these strategies might be helpful in your case, but I would be very interested in your experiences!
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