Issues of Representation within Qualitative Inquiry

The author argues that the representation of the researcher in qualitative inquiries is inevitable, and the exclusion, or not, of theearcher from the text is a mere conventional agreement founded on a paradigmatic consensus.

Abstract

Although qualitative inquiry has developed into a popularized and very useful way of conducting research within the health sciences, there has been a relatively disproportionate amount of literature devoted to "who" is represented in such inquiries. It is most often assumed that the end text should present an objective, value-free, and accurate representation of the participants and therefore exclude by all means the researcher's presence from the study. Although this might hold grounds for some inquiries, it is not necessarily the norm of a qualitative research. In this article, the author argues that the representation of the researcher in qualitative inquiries is inevitable, and the exclusion, or not, of the researcher from the text is a mere conventional agreement founded on a paradigmatic consensus. He concludes with the notion that there is a correlation between issues of representation and the researcher's stated epistemological and ontological assumptions.