Researcher-researched Relationship Research Articles

To Whom Does the Knowledge Belong? The Researcher-Researched Relationship and Vulnerability in Refugee Studies

Research ethics address concerns related to power imbalances. These dynamics are particularly prominent in refugee camps, where the contemporary ‘protracted’ state (UNHCR, 2004) turns them into quasi-laboratories, where refugees are subjected to scrutiny, measurement, observation, and analysis by researchers, NGOs, and governmental organizations. Researchers typically conduct brief field trips to perform predetermined scientific activities, limiting their comprehensive understanding of the subject under study. Fieldwork conducted in Nakivale Refugee Settlement (Uganda) since 2019 has highlighted an often-one-way communication dynamic between researchers and refugees, where refugees rarely receive feedback on the information they provide. Consequently, refugees develop a lack of trust towards researchers, impacting their subjectivity and self-esteem. They perceive themselves as information providers rather than owners, lacking simultaneous access to that information. The concept of power-knowledge (Foucault 1980) is instrumental in understanding this issue and reflecting on researchers’ responsibilities in studying vulnerable populations.

Rethinking the researcher-researched relationship

This article critically examines the conventional researcher-researched relationship thatempowers the researcher over the researched. The orthodoxy of objectivity – claimed to locatethe researchers as neutral observer – is here argued to be a power relation that has an excludingeffect where subject communities are concerned. By means of an archaeological case study thatincluded mapping and interpretation of ancient rock engravings we offer a new way of negotiatinginterpretations. This new way involved four members from a Bushman community who helped usnavigate spiritual, ontological and environmental dimensions in making sense of rock art.

Care and Migration: A Reflexive Account of a Researcher with a Migration Background

The importance of a researcher’s positionality has been well documented in prior studies. Yet, reflections on cross-cultural research from the positionality of a researcher with a migration background are rare. In this paper, I respond to this knowledge gap through a reflexive account of my positionality as a researcher with a migration background who has conducted cross-cultural research concerning dementia care. Following critiques of “ethnic matching,” I apply a reflexive approach in which researcher positionality is understood as intersectional. I illustrate how both commonalities and differences within the researcher-researched relationship impact rapport-building and power dynamics. Also, I highlight how a researcher’s experienced emotions can impact the content and analysis of the collected data. The insights from my reflexive account may help improve research strategies in culturally diverse settings. Moreover, I argue for a reflexive approach – rather than a deployment of “ethnic matching” – throughout future research in this field.

Re-visioning Academic Medicine Through a Constructionist Lens.

Constructionism in academic medicine matters. It encourages educators and researchers to question taken-for-granted assumptions, paying close attention to socially and historically contingent meanings. In this Invited Commentary, the authors explain what constructionism is; examine its ontological, epistemological, and axiological underpinnings; and outline its common methodologies and methods. Although constructivism favors the individual, constructionism privileges the social as the controlling force behind the construction of meaning. Where micro-constructionism attends to the minutiae of language, macro-constructionism focuses on broader discourses reproduced through material and social practices and structures. While social constructionists might situate themselves at any point on the relativist-realist continuum, many constructionists focus on constructionism as epistemology (the nature of knowledge) rather than ontology (the nature of reality). From an epistemological standpoint, constructionism asserts that how we come to know the world is constructed through social interaction. Constructionism thus values language, dialogue, and context, in addition to internal coherence between epistemology, methodology, and methods. Constructionism similarly values the concepts of dependability, authenticity, credibility, confirmability, reflexivity, and transferability. It also embraces the researcher-researched relationship. Given the privileging of language, qualitative methodologies and methods are key in constructionism, with constructionist-type questions focusing on how people speak. Here, the authors encourage the reader to develop an understanding of constructionism to re-vision academic medicine through a constructionist lens.

Theorizing Research Ethics for the Study of Psychological Phenomena from Within Relational Everyday Life

How to investigate psychologically relevant phenomena in the most ethical ways possible is an enduring question for researchers not only in psychology but also in adjacent fields that study human subjectivity. Once acknowledging that both researchers and the people whose lives they want to study are human beings acting in a common world, also inhabited by non-human beings, the relationship between researchers and participants touches upon fundamental questions not only about what it means to do research together, but also what it means to conduct life in this world together. This implies that questions regarding what counts as ethical conduct need to be accentuated and also profoundly re-drawn given the encompassing complexity of these relations. In this article, we will shortly review the theoretical foundations and associated problematics of the dominant view of the researcher-researched relationship in current psychological (and other) research ethics. We then present and discuss what we mean by a relational ethical position from within practice and for practice. We will also shortly introduce how the other contributions to this special section advance the theoretical debates on research ethics.

Placing emotion and fantasy at the heart of the researcher-researched relationship

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to introduce psychosocial research methodology as a method that makes use of the emotions of researcher and researched and goes well-beyond empathetic understanding.Design/methodology/approachThis short piece critically introduces the recently published book Further Researching Beneath the Surface (Volume 2): Psycho-social Research Methods in Practice, Eds Cummins, A.-M., and Williams, N., and analyses the psychosocial approach to qualitative research that emphasizes research as an emotional activity and makes use of the researcher’s and the researched’s emotional responses to each other in drawing interpretations about organizational phenomena.FindingsBy analysing transference and counter-transference, researchers can draw valuable insights into organizational phenomena that remain unseen by more conventional research methodologies.Originality/valueEmotions, far from being the enemy of the researcher, can, if recognized properly, be valuable resources in social research.

2. El aprendizaje, sus momentos y estrategias: una construcción social intersubjetiva de los estudiantes de Educación Comercial

La investigación realizada tuvo como propósito generar un corpus de conocimiento teórico sobre el aprendizaje, sus momentos y estrategias, a través del conocimiento  e interpretación de los discursos evocados por un grupo de estudiantes de Educación Comercial de la UPEL-IPB. La perspectiva de investigación seguida fue la cualitativa, el paradigma el construccionismo social y los referentes ontológicos: la fenomenología social y la hermenéutica. Epistemológicamente, el intercambio de información fue posible a través de la relación intersubjetiva investigador-investigados. Fueron empleadas como técnicas de investigación social la entrevista en profundidad y el grupo de discusión; y los procesos de triangulación y la teorización para la producción del conocimiento. Del estudio emergió la categoría: Los momentos de aprendizaje y sus estrategias: un continuó recursivo temporo-espacial; y tres subcategorías. La aproximación teórica nos condujo a apreciar las actividades cotidianas, reflexionar sobre las prácticas espontáneas, los gustos y deseos particulares, a fin de construir estrategias propias de aprendizaje que pueden ser reinventadas cada día y no responder a esquemas o lineamientos preestablecidos que alejen a estudiante del placer de aprender. 

Interpretación ontoepistemológica de Jaspers y Heidegger desde Holzapfel

This article intends to interpret the thoughts of Karl Jaspers and Martin Heidegger with the parameters amalgam and synergy of Cristobal Holzapfel in order to propose an ontoepistemology of the social and human sciences. For this objective, a comparative analysis is carried out between the main existential structures of the existential enlightenment present in Philosophy II of Jaspers and the existential analytic present in Being and time of Heidegger. From the amalgams evidenced between the two analytics, certain existential are deduced that are analyzed in their epistemic synergy and projected towards the outline of a possible ontoepistemology based on the structures: concept of human being, subject-object relationship (conscience) and researcher-researched relationship (research ethics). It was obtained a situated and projective conception of the human being, a subject-object relationship as a complex cleavage and a researcher-researched relationship founded on an existential communication framed in the discursive tradition of their respective semiotic community.

A Pedra, a Informante e o Etnógrafo: ou sobre quando as expectativas das nossas idas a campo não se realizam

Resumo O objetivo deste artigo é refletir sobre a relação pesquisador-pesquisado durante a prática da pesquisa etnográfica. Busca-se problematizar questões tais como as relações de intersubjetividade entre pesquisador e nativo, a agência do nativo durante a pesquisa de campo e a experiência de “ser afetado” (Favret-Saada 2005), que é passível de ser experimentada pelo pesquisador no decorrer do trabalho de campo. O ponto de partida da reflexão é um fato ocorrido comigo durante pesquisa de campo sobre um dos rituais das romarias de Juazeiro do Norte, Ceará, Brasil, conhecido como “visita ao Horto”. Como é relatado no texto e já explicitado no título, o fato em questão envolveu a mim (etnógrafo), umas das minhas principais informantes e uma pedra.

The insider–outsider role of a Chinese researcher doing fieldwork in China: The implications of cultural context

The discussion and debates regarding researcher’s insider–outsider role in qualitative methodologies is not new in Western academia. But it remains to be ascertained and subjected to sustained analysis within Chinese sociological studies. This article addresses the influence of the relation-oriented nature of Chinese culture on researcher’s identity in qualitative methodologies that require reflexivity. Confucianism considers proper human relationships as the basis of society and assumes that man exists in relationship to others. Considering such cultural characteristics, I analyzed the interactions between my interpersonal relationships with the research participants and my professional status in the fieldwork. I also uncovered how I moved from seeing myself as an insider to reconceptualizing the researcher-researched relationship as a dynamic one. This article maintains that a researcher’s identity in Chinese context is subject to constant negotiation and re-negotiation through interaction between researcher and research participants as the research process proceeds.

Volunteer Research Subjects’ Experience of Participation in Research on a Novel Diagnostic Technology for Breast Cancer

Although volunteer research subjects play a crucial role in the development of new health technologies, there have been relatively few in-depth studies of what participation in research means to them, and how they manage and make sense of the research encounter. Using constructivist perspectives we analyze data from 15 United States-based women taking part in tests of prototype instrumentation with potential for cancer diagnosis, comparing their responses with findings from a larger study (using the same interview methodology) on United Kingdom-based women participating in a similar program. For both groups the prime concerns emerging at interview related to the social rather than the physical challenges of participation. Both deployed similar discursive strategies to manage these tensions.We suggest that, at least within the limits of the kind of low-risk, nontherapeutic research studied, lessons can be drawn for research management, particularly the key role of the researcher-researched working relationship in assuring mutually satisfactory outcomes.

Ethics and ethnography: an experiential account.

In this article, the authors discuss an ethical dilemma faced by the first author during the fieldwork of an ethnographic study of expertise in anesthesia. The example, written from the perspective of the first author, addresses a number of ethical issues commonly faced, namely, the researcher-researched relationship, anonymity and confidentiality, privacy, and exploitation. She deliberates on the influences that guided her decision and in doing so highlights some of the elements that combine to shape the data. The authors argue that this process of shaping the data is a symbiotic one in which the researcher and the community being studied construct the data together.

Making sense of methodologies: A paradigm framework for the novice researcher

Methodologies abound in the field of health and social science research, making a confusing terrain for new researchers. In this article, we offer order out of confusion. Drawing on our work as postgraduate teachers, we outline a paradigm framework which proposes that methodologies are similar or different because of their underlying assumptions and values. We identify four major paradigms, explain the distinctive assumptions which underpin them, and show how each figures the researcher and the researcher-researched relationship. Along the way, we place a variety of methodologies into their paradigm of origin and offer some illustrative examples of health research.

Using the theory of social representations to explore difference in the research relationship

This article explores how the question of difference can be addressed within the research relationship. The first part of the article analyses the consequences of difference in one particularly compelling research encounter where accusations of racism damaged the research relationship. The author argues that we need to examine the researcher-researched relationship in detail and investigate the recognition of difference that structures this relationship in order to analyse material drawn from research. The second part of the article shows how this may be done within a particular social psychological perspective - that of the theory of social representations. This enables an exploration into the relationship between what is said, who said it and to whom, or, in other words, an analysis of the relationship between representations emerging and identities being played out in the research context. The value of this approach is illustrated by studying an example from the author’s own research. The final part of the article demonstrates that difference in the researcher-researched relationship is not simply a problem of methodology but needs to be analysed as a feature of human relations. The article argues that an understanding of the relationship between social representations and identities illuminates the question of difference in qualitative research and demonstrates the value of difference.

Reflections on the researcher-researched relationship : A woman interviewing men

The enactment of gender in interviews with the men in my recent study of divorced fathers is the focus of this paper. Neither the role of gender in the qualitative research process nor its influence on research products has been given much descriptive or analytical attention, especially with respect to studies of men by women. While contextually situated, the relationships which evolve during the research process are influenced by the identities and histories of those involved, including those of gender. Such questions about the researcher-researched relationship and interactional dynamics which emerge during interviewing are ones of reflexivity. This paper, then, retrospectively examines men's assertions of gender identities and the gender hierarchy during interviews with me, and suggests that the negotiation of gender in research warrants much more attention.

A feminist perspective on the researcher-researched relationship

This article emphasises the traditional androcentric ‘scientific’ approach to the relationship between the researcher and the researched. It then progresses to justify the feminist perspective on this issue; evaluating if a distinctive feminist methodology exists regarding this relationship. The term ‘researched’ is used to describe the subject of a research study.