What would I change the next time? A confessional tale of in‐depth qualitative data collection

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to discuss how fieldwork impacted the author's own and one participant's positioning; the author's reflexivity, experiences and feelings of alterity; the participant's performances and conversations between the author and participant.

Design/methodology/approach

The author uses a confessional tale to describe the time spent with the participant and confesses how it impacted on the author as the researcher. The author examines her biases, feelings, and vulnerabilities, and explores some of the methodological and positioning issues with which she struggled.

Findings

The author ponders on what she learned while being in such close quarters with a participant and discusses what she should keep in mind about herself as the researcher during subsequent data collection forays. Researchers should know themselves well before attempting such closeness because when we are researchers, we can’t change who we are as people.

Originality/value

It is believed that the extreme researcher/participant closeness was unique but was, at the same time, an extremely useful form of data collection.

Citation

Smith, C. (2012), "What would I change the next time? A confessional tale of in‐depth qualitative data collection", Qualitative Research Journal, Vol. 12 No. 1, pp. 98-110. https://doi.org/10.1108/14439881211222769