While the importance of being reflexive is acknowledged within social science research, the difficulties, practicalities and methods of doing it are rarely addressed. Thus, the implications of current theoretical and philosophical discussions about reflexivity, epistemology and the construction of knowledge for empirical sociological research practice, specifically the analysis of qualitative data, remain underdeveloped. Drawing on our doctoral experiences, we reflect on the possibilities and limits of reflexivity during the interpretive stages of research.We explore how reflexivity can be operationalized and discuss reflexivity in terms of the personal, interpersonal, institutional, pragmatic, emotional, theoretical, epistemological and ontological influences on our research and data analysis processes. We argue that data analysis methods are not just neutral techniques.They reflect, and are imbued with, theoretical, epistemological and ontological assumptions ‐ including conceptions of subjects and subjectivities, and understandings of how knowledge is constructed and produced. In suggesting how epistemological and ontological positionings can be translated into research practice, our article contributes to current debates aiming to bridge the gap between abstract epistemological discussions and the nitty-gritty of research practice.

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Reflexive Accounts and Accounts of Reflexivity in Qualitative Data Analysis

ed summaries and general concepts can be formulated, which may, upon further investigation, be found to be germane to a wider variety of settings. Case studies, therefore are not necessarily restricted

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Qualitative research methods in health technology assessment: a review of the literature.

This article starts with a critique of Guba and Lincoln's outline of competing paradigms for research, in particular arguing that the constructivist position fails to account for experiential knowi...

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A Participatory Inquiry Paradigm

Milan Kundera's novel Immortality bears a close relation to contemporary social science debates about the production of the self. Commentators like Kleinman and Mishler seem to have introduced a ne...

Virginia Olesen

Papers

Feminisms and models of qualitative research.