A Difference That Makes a Difference? Reflexivity and Researcher Effects in an All-Foreign Prison

What is it about?

Today, researchers are expected to spend considerable energy describing and discussing their own social positions and personas in the field for at least two reasons: First, researchers always observe the field from a specific point of view. Their perspective is structured by their own social position and biography and is thus unique. Second, the people in the field react differently to the presence of different researchers. The field persona of the researcher is expected to impact the data she or he is able to produce. For these reasons, critically discussing one’s own field experiences is seen as an important part of the qualitative research process. This article will discuss the second part of this argument. Based on the experiences of two different researchers in the same field site, we ask whether it is true that different researchers necessarily produce different data. We conclude that in this case, at least, the differences between the two researchers did not seem to make much of a difference.

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Why is it important?

After reflecting on and discussing our separate findings from two different research projects conducted in the same field site, we are not all that certain that the substantial differences between our field personas mattered much at all in this case. Based on our different field experiences, we would like to start a discussion about the need for and the limits of a reflexive social science approach.