Researcher’s journey in exploring ambivalence among closed ties: Addressing obstacles experienced

Pages: 1138-1143
Sweta Smita Dash (Department of Psychology, University of Delhi, Delhi)
Sunil K. Verma (Department of Applied Psychology, Vivekananda College, University of Delhi, Delhi)

The present paper explains researcher’s positionality in exploring the phenomenon of ambivalence and understanding the experiences associated. My doctoral research crafted in these years attempts to explicitly address how inevitable researcher’s positionality role is, in choosing a particular topic, frame interview schedule, approaching participants, collecting data, and in doing analysis. Failing to authenticate own understanding can reduce the credibility of qualitative work. But with continuous self-criticizing and evaluative mindset of the researchers a relatively bias-free qualitative inquiry can be achieved. Qualitative research demands to step down from being an objective seeker to an interpretivist researcher. Thus, ascertaining positionality helped to gauge the authenticity of the research we conducted at each step by being an insider as well as an outsider.