PhD Candidate Amanda Couture-Carron, in collaboration with Professors Arshia Zaidi and Eleanor Maticka-Tyndale, has published an article in Qualitative Sociology Review, entitled "Reflexive accounts: Exploring intersectionality and the fluidity of insider/outsider status on the impact on culturally and religiously sensitive post-positivist research." The article examines the implications of researchers' intersecting identities in qualitative research in the cultural and religious context.
Amanda Couture-Carron is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Sociology at the University of Toronto studying pathways to deviance across immigrant generations.
We have posted the citation and the abstract of the article below. The full text is available here.
Couture, A., Zaidi, A., & Maticka-Tyndale, E. (2012). Reflexive accounts: Exploring intersectionality and the fluidity of insider/outsider status on the impact on culturally and religiously sensitive post-positivist research. Qualitative Sociology Review, VIII(1), 86-105.
Reflexivity and acknowledging the role of the researcher in the research is a well-established practice in post-positivist research. In this paper we use reflexivity to examine our personal experiences in conducting qualitative research. We use reflexivity to understand how our intersecting identities and resulting insider/outsider status may have influenced the data collection phase of a study regarding the culturally and religiously sensitive issue of male-female intimate relationships. Using an intersectional approach, we explore the fluidity of our insider/outsider statuses resulting from our multiple and intersecting identities such as ethnicity, religion, age, and sex. The multiple identities a researcher possesses can cause him/her to be perceived as an insider and outsider simultaneously, which can play a significant role in shaping the interactions between the interviewer and interviewee. We present reflexive accounts on how our identities may have affected the data collection process and participants' comfort level when discussing sensitive issues, in this case sexuality. Overall, we seek to provide insight into the role of intersecting multiple identities and the resulting insider/outsider status in qualitative data collection when examining culturally and religiously sensitive issues from the perspective of the researchers.