Research Methods
Reflexivity and Alternative Theme Builder
One small fictional dataset, three research questions and three theoretical sensitivities. Each pairing produces a different defensible account of the same six extracts — and two of the nine pairings do not hold together at all.
Fictional — the same invented extracts used across this module's qualitative tools
Learning objective
By the end you should be able to show how a research question and a theoretical position shape which themes become available.
About 30 minutes. Nothing you do here is saved or sent anywhere.
Several readings, not any reading
That more than one account is defensible does not make all accounts defensible. Every reading here must be traceable to the extracts, coherent with the question it answers, and explicit about its own assumptions. The "hold this reading to account" section exists to show claims failing that test, including under the reading that produced them.
- Answer the opening question to unlock the builder.
- Choose a research question and a theoretical sensitivity.
- Read the account at the top of the stage and the foregrounding map.
- Save it, build a second, and compare the two.
First, a judgement
The builder
The same six extracts every time. What changes is which of them the analysis is looking at, and what it is looking for.
Key terms
- Theoretical sensitivity
- The conceptual position you read with. It shapes which readings are available to you.
- Foregrounding
- What an account brings to the front, and therefore what it leaves in the background.
- Coherence
- Whether the research question, the theoretical position and the resulting account hold together. It can be judged.
Six extracts, nine possible accounts
Four pairings are strong, three are workable with a caveat, and two pull against themselves. Each one says which and why.
The account this pairing produces
What this reading does
The two accounts side by side
| Saved account | Current account |
|---|
The six extracts
Hold this reading to account
Five claims someone might write up from this dataset. Judge each one under the reading you currently have selected, then check. Two of them fail under every reading, and one depends entirely on which lens you chose.
What this demonstrates
The question decides which extracts are data
Nothing was added to or removed from the dataset by any choice made in this tool. What changed is which extracts sit at the centre of the analysis and which recede. Toby is a marginal case for a question about the felt moment of deciding, and the single most important participant for a question about what the setting does. Same six people, different studies.
A theoretical position is not a bias to be removed
Every reading here needs one. Without a position there is no basis for treating "I'd rather it stayed the one who's fine" as being about anything in particular. Reflexivity is not the removal of the analyst's position but the statement of it, so that a reader can see what it made visible and what it cost.
Coherence between question and lens is assessable
Two of the nine pairings pull against themselves: the question asks about one kind of object and the lens is built to see another. The resulting accounts are not incompetent, they are beside the point, and the mismatch is visible without any appeal to the analyst's skill. This is one of the clearest standards available in qualitative work and it is rarely taught as one.
Several readings, not any reading
Two of the five claims in the accountability check fail under every reading available here — one imports a disposition nobody reported, one attributes an intention to an organisation nobody interviewed. A third is supported by exactly one participant and stated as though it were about a group. Pluralism about interpretation is not permission.
For teaching elsewhere: take this activity as one self-contained block of HTML, on the clipboard or as a file. Either way it is styled so that it will not disturb the page you put it into.