This is a post particularly for those in the social sciences and humanities who may be doing a form of ethnographic research within the context in which they work or study – in other words, doing ‘insider research’ to use Paul Trowler’s term. Researching a context with which one is intimately familiar and in which one has a vested interest can create possible bias and ethical dilemmas which need to be considered by researchers in these situations. The last thing you want, in presenting your completed research, is for your findings to be called into question or invalidated because you have not accounted clearly enough for issues of insider bias, and your own vested interests.

Insider bias and vested interests

In the article cited in this post, Trowler considers issues of bias in data generation. Bias in research can be defined as having only part of the ‘truth’ in your data but treating that part as a whole, ignoring other possibilities or answers because you are prejudiced towards the ones that best represent your interests or investment. If you are working in a context with which you are familiar, especially your own department or faculty, or an organisation in which you have worked or do work, you will have a vested interest in that context. Either you want everyone and everything to look amazing, or perhaps you are unhappy about certain aspects of the ways in which they work and you want your research to show problems and struggles so you have a basis for your unhappiness. Either way, you have to acknowledge going in that you cannot be anything but biased about this research.

However, acknowledging that you are biased, and detailing what that bias might entail for readers and examiners, does not undermine your position as researcher. By making yourself aware of potential blindspots in your research design – for example the participants you have chosen, or the cases you are including and excluding from your dataset (and why) – you can better head off possible challenges to the validity of your data later on, and you can strengthen your research design choices. Be honest with yourself: there is a balance to strike here between being pragmatic and strategic in choosing research participants, sites, or cases that will be accessible and that will yield the data you need to make your argument, and between choosing too neatly and risking one-sided or myopic data generation. Why these participants, these cases, these sites? Are there others that you know less well that you could include to balance out the familiarity, and increase the validity of your eventual findings? If not, how might you maintain awareness of your ‘insiderness’ and account for this in analysis and discussion later on?

You need to account for these decisions and questions in your methodology, and discuss what it means for your study that you are doing insider research, and that this does imply particular forms of bias. I don’t think you can get away from being biased in these cases, but you can think through how this may affect your data generation processes, and your analysis as well, and share this thinking with your readers frankly and reflexively.

Insider bias and ‘intuitive analysis’

Another point Trowler makes concerns insider ‘intuition’ when analysing the data you have generated and selected for your study. You may be analysing a policy process you were part of, or meetings you sat in on, or projects you were involved in. You have insider knowledge of what was said, the tone of the conversations, background knowledge (and perhaps even gossip) about participants – in other words, you have a kind of cultivated ‘intuition’ about your data set that you reader will not be privy too. Accounting for bias here is crucial, because if you cannot see it, you may rely too much on this insider intuition in analysing your data, and too much of the language of description you are using to convey your theorised findings will be tacit and hidden from the reader. They will then struggle to understand fully on what basis you are claiming that X is an example of poor management, or that Y means that the department is doing well in these particular areas.

It is thus vital that you get feedback here on whether it is clear to your reader why you are making particular claims, and whether they can see and understand the basis on which you are making such claims. Do they understand your ‘external language of description’ or ‘translation device’ to use Bernstein’s and Maton’s terms respectively? If they do not, you may be relying too much on your insider view of your case or participants, and may need to find a way to step back, and try to see the data you are looking at as more strange and less familiar. Getting help from a supervisor or critical friend who can ask you questions, and expose and critique possible points of bias is a useful way to re-interrogate your data with fresher eyes.

Ethical dilemmas

An ethical dilemma is defined as ‘a choice between two options, both of which will bring a negative result based on society and personal guidelines’. In research, this definition could be nuanced to suggest that an ethical dilemma presents itself when you have to make a decision to protect the interests of your research or the interests of your participants or study site. For example, in an interview with a senior manager you learn information that may be better off staying private and confidential, yet would also add an important and insightful dimension to your findings. What do you do? A participant in your study asks you for help, but to help might be to prejudice that participant’s responses in a later survey or interview, possibly skewing your data. Yet it is your job to help them. Study first, or job first? These are the kinds of dilemmas that can arise when you do research in the same spaces in which you work, and with people you work with and have other responsibilities to outside of your research.

As researchers we have a duty to be as truthful and ethical in our research as possible. We are working to create and add to knowledge, not to simply maintain the status quo. In your study this may mean being carefully but resolutely critical, reflective and challenging, rather than only saying the palatable or easy things to say. This work is always going to present difficulties and dilemmas, but accounting as far as possible for your own bias and vested interests, and for your own relevant insider knowledge, can create space in your study for the development of your own reflexivity as a researcher, and can bolster rather than undermine the validity and veracity of your findings.

Trowler, P. (2011) Researching your own institution: Higher Education, British Educational Research Association online resource. Available online at [http://www.bera.ac.uk/files/2011/06/researching_your_own_institution_higher_education.pdf]