Research Methods · Simplified
Reflexivity and Alternative Themes
Same six people, same six extracts. Change what you are asking and how you are reading, and a different analysis appears.
The pairing
Two questions, two lenses, four accounts
Nothing here analyses anything. Four accounts were written in advance, one per pairing. Selecting a pairing selects a prepared account, because no software analyses qualitative data and pretending otherwise would teach the opposite of the point.
Key terms
- Theoretical lens
- The set of assumptions an analyst reads with: what counts as an explanation, and what kind of object the account is about.
- Reflexivity
- Treating the analyst's position as part of the analysis rather than as contamination to be removed from it.
- Coherence
- Whether the question and the lens are asking after the same kind of object. A mismatch is visible from outside and does not depend on judging the analyst's skill.
- Central, supporting, at the margins
- How much weight an extract carries in a given account. The same extract can be the whole argument under one reading and a passing detail under another.
The six extracts
Invented interview material about asking for help at university. The same six every time. Read them once; there is nothing to do with them here except look.
The themes this pairing supports
Where the six extracts sit
The same six extracts, weighted differently.
What this shows
Several readings, not any reading
Two of these four pairings are strong and two pull against themselves. The difference is not the analyst's skill and it is not a matter of taste: it is whether the question and the lens are asking after the same kind of object, and a reader can see it from outside.
Key idea: The account a qualitative analysis produces is not sitting in the transcript waiting to be found. It follows from what was asked and from the position it was read from, and changing either changes which extracts are central, which recede, and what the analysis can conclude. That is not a licence for anything: an account that answers a question nobody asked is visibly incoherent, which is what makes reflexivity a standard rather than an excuse.
Nothing here analysed anything. Four accounts were written in advance and selecting a pairing selects one of them. Two questions and two lenses is a teaching simplification: there are many more of both, and a narrative, psychosocial or feminist reading would produce accounts again different from these. The extracts are invented and no participant, interview, institution or study is represented.
The longer version has three questions and three lenses, nine prepared accounts, and an accountability check in which five claims are tested against the reading currently selected. It is at Reflexivity and Alternative Theme Builder in the main collection.