How does my positionality affect the research process?
How does my positionality affect the research process?
Imagine you are an ethnographer who wants to examine any of the following groups:
- indigenous peoples
- people with religious beliefs
- sex workers
- refugees in war zones
Would these groups welcome you or treat you with suspicion? In turn, what kind of bias would you have when observing or interacting with these groups? How might the difference in perspectives affect your methodology and findings?
Positionality can also affect the more mechanical aspects of a study. Informed consent, for example, is critical to gathering data from participants, making the discussion of power dynamics in a positionality statement essential to explaining to the audience how consent was obtained for data collection.
How do you write a positionality statement for a research project?
In general, there is no specific form that positionality statements should take in a research paper or presentation. The main objective of expressing positionality is to provide the audience with the sufficient contextualization of your background and identity to allow them to understand how data was collected and analyzed.
That said, scholarly research has two main conventions for writing a positionality statement in a research paper. Positionality statements are often written as part of the research methodology, where the research context, data collection, and data analysis are discussed. Writing positionality statements make the research methodology more transparent.
In this sense, a positionality statement looks like a brief biography of the researcher(s). A few short sentences are usually sufficient, for example:
“The main researcher in this study has significant experience working with patients in hospice care. As a result, she has a familiarity with the issues facing teminally ill patients that informs her reflections of her observations while in the field.”
Alternatively, positionality need not be a formal or separate statement. In fields such as anthropology and sociology, and particularly fields where ethnography is commonly employed, research papers tend to resist a clinical structure (i.e., a paper with a strict background section, methodology section, etc.) in favor of a more literary narrative form. This means that positionality often accompanies the narrative developments when there is a relevant connection, for example:
“I observed how the students in class separated into groups according to whom they considered friends outside of formal activities. As a former classroom practitioner, I found this to be quite a natural development. I felt sympathetic toward the teacher, who tried to assign groups to establish more connections among classmates, as I would have done the same during my teaching days.”
In the example above, the researcher is explaining what they observed in the field. They are drawn to a particular development (i.e., the grouping of students), which they note because of their previous experience as a teacher.
In this case, their positionality informs how they collected the data, particularly in a dynamic social enviroment where countless developments can occur and the researcher can only document so much at a time. The description of positionality here points out what the researcher did focus on during their research.
Ultimately, the best way to write about positionality depends on the field of research you are in. It is important for you to conduct a literature review of studies relevant to your topic, not only to gain a sense of the current theoretical developments, but also to understand and emulate the writing practices of other researchers.
Keep in mind how positionality statements are written in studies that connect to your research so you can determine the writing style that journals and their peer reviewers find compelling.
