ABSTRACT

Although much has been written about the centrality of reflexivity in qualitative research, the literature on researcher’s reflexivity in prison research is limited. I conducted a PhD qualitative study with a sample of 30 women convicted of murder from one female prison in Uganda. This paper demonstrates the value of reflexivity in research with respect to oppressed women. It does this by discussing what reflexivity is and at what stage of the research process reflexivity is deemed important. Most importantly, the paper discusses different forms of reflexivity that I exercised, which include personal reflexivity, feminist reflexivity, emotional reflexivity, methodological reflexivity and reflexivity on research context and participants. The paper demonstrates how these different forms of reflexivity helped in various research aspects such as the evolution of the topic that empowered women to tell their stories in a context that was without any research on women convicted of murder, in recruitment of participants, avoiding harming participants and in dealing with emotion during data collection.

摘要

尽管关于反思性在定性研究中的核心地位的文章很多，但有关监狱研究中研究者反思性的文献却很有限。我对乌干达一所女子监狱中被判谋杀罪的 30 名女性进行了一项博士生定性研究。本文展示了反身性在受压迫妇女研究中的价值。它通过讨论什么是反身性以及反身性在研究过程的哪个阶段被认为是重要的来做到这一点。最重要的是，本文讨论了我所运用的不同形式的反身性，包括个人反身性、女权主义反身性、情感反身性、方法论反身性以及对研究背景和参与者的反身性。