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The PI as Participant

The question is: Can you or should you be a participant in your own research project? After consideration, this does not seem to be as odd as it sounds. Obviously, researchers select a topic because the topic itself interests them. They have perhaps experienced it directly (such as feeling bereft following the death of a loved one, or being trapped in an abusive relationship). Perhaps as a result of that experience, the researcher may know first hand the loneliness, or observed gaps in care, or whatever the experience is that will become the research topic. Documenting such experiences would ensure that these topics were examined, allowing victim–researchers to make a valuable contribution toward understanding those with similar experiences and helping to alleviate distress. Also, being a participant in this research would certainly ensure that the experiences/perceptions/agenda of the victim–researcher were included in the research, and that the project would be off to a good start in the desired theoretical direction. Does this sound dangerous? Phenomenologists would say not. In phenomenology, reflecting on your own experience is integral to developing the essence of the phenomenon. But note—this is selfreflection. Phenomenologists do not interview themselves and enter that experience into the database, but they may add a story from their own experience as an example. Phenomenologists are concerned with “bias” extending from their own preconceptions, and recommend that their own ideas be recorded at the beginning of the study. Here, the goal is reflection, and understanding meaning. Traditionally, we have recommended that researchers not study topics that they are close to. For instance, we recommend that you do not study bereavement if you are in the midst of bereaving. We argued that qualitative research was not a method for working out your own problems, and if your problem was making you miserable, why dwell in it all day long? There is also the question of how your own experience should actually be incorporated into the dataset. Obviously, if as a researcher you are trying to be objective, you should probably be interviewed by another member of your research team—and then at least the interview process would be similar to other interviews, and produce comparable data. This strategy would be better than simply speaking into the recorder, or making a diary entry. But the issue of the content, of possible bias, still remains. Researchers may consciously or unconsciously distort the analysis by overly attending to their own interview and overweighting its significance in the analysis. They may use their own experience to drive the analysis. When autoethnography emerged, then, unashamedly, all of the data in the study is one’s own experience. Autoethnographers not only ask, Can you include your own experience in your study?—it is the study. Autoethnographers do not hesitate to get right to the heart of their own problems, and some do not even hesitate to share intimate, personal information with readers. It will be interesting to see, in a few decades, if these researchers experience regret at such disclosure; my feeling is that it makes voyeurs of all of us. But using your own experience in your grounded theory or your ethnography is a different matter. You are supposed to be fair and balanced in your representation of the topic. You must chase down negative cases, but if you yourself are that negative case, you may place too much emphasis on your own experience, irrevocably distorting the results. Ethnographers used to insist that the secret of a good ethnography was to be an outsider, and that culture was not always visible to those who were a part of the culture. Certainly ethnography has changed, but the fact remains that it is easier to see what is there if you are an outsider and not a part of the group. Some may say that being a part of the group makes “getting in” easier and faster; that may be so in our impatient world. But remember, there is a cost. The final issue related to being a part of your own study is the matter of ethics. “No man is an island,” and once you are writing about yourself, adding a little autoethnography within ethnography, do you conceal your own data, as you did for everyone else? Or do you use your own identity? How can reviewers evaluate your study for a balanced report if you conceal the author’s own contribution? My recommendation? Leave your own experiences to your authoethnography, and maybe to your phenomenology, but otherwise leave your life at home.