Researcher’s positionality and reflexivity in researching girls and violence in India

• In Event: Roundtable Session (Tuesday IV)
  In Refereed Round-Table Session: Re(questioning) critical concerns through qualitative research

Proposal

Gender based violence is recognised as a public health and human rights problem worldwide. In India, schools are often envisaged as institutions that challenge social injustices, in addition to being a safe place for girls. However, schools are increasingly being identified as sites where disproportionately high levels of gender based violence can occur against girls. This is likely to have a wide range of adverse consequences on girls’ wellbeing and educational attainment. This paper is based on a research project that explored how violence is conceptualised by 64 girls’ students and 8 school teachers in India. The data sources include students’ questionnaires, focus-group discussions and interviews.

Researching the ways in which girls conceptualise, experience and use violence raises several dilemmas due in part to the sensitive nature of the research topic. It also raises ethical issues in addition to the demands of ‘good research practice’. Asking research participants about their views and experiences necessarily entails the disclosure of sensitive material. The data collected in this research project has thrown up a myriad of painful disclosures, including domestic violence, eve-teasing, bullying, harassment, and other forms of physical and sexual abuse. Many of the research conversations were emotionally draining.

This paper brings together personal accounts from the fieldwork and explores the roles of emotion, violence, identity, and positionality within the process of doing research, and the complexity of methodological choices. Acknowledging the sheer intensity of the emotions involved in the study of violence is vital for researchers as it enables them to analyse the differences between the values of the self and those of the other reflexively.

Reflexivity was a useful strategy for understanding the methodological insights, challenges, techniques and tools that were utilised to aid the process of the telling and sharing of the participants’ experiences. It also helped to minimise the ethical implications, issue of the researcher’s positionality in order to enhance the validity of data gathered. Researcher’s positioning is based on personal characteristics, which includes, gender, race, ideological stances, beliefs, and biases. In this research, the researcher’s cultural position as an Indian, experiences and female identity influenced her views and interactions during the research.

Researcher positionality and reflexivity thus refined five themes: (1) meaning of participation, (2) trust in the researcher, (3) relationship with participants, (4) shifting comfort, (5) strategies to increase participants’ comfort. Although pupil research with girls on violence is challenging and messy, this paper shares dilemmas in researching about children and violence. It also sheds light on critical self-reflection that provide significant insights for any scholar or practitioner working in similar environments across the globe.

Author

• Kusha Anand, UCL Institute of Education