Researchers are human, and humans have an inherent set of experiences, perceptions, and biases that they bring to any work they undertake including research. While the scientific endeavour is generally considered to be and aims to be an objective exploration of the conditions of the real world, research conducted by humans can never be truly objective. While undertaking measures to help us get closer to objectivity may be beneficial, we must also acknowledge the reality in which research is conducted.
Research on humans has a long history of being conducted by the privileged in ways that harm and further disadvantage the unprivileged. The classic example of this for me is research on Autism, which so often centres the reports of doctors, parents, and caregivers over the lived experiences of Autistic people. In disability communities, this pattern has given rise to the policy/battle cry, “nothing about us without us.” Applying that idea to research would mean that members of the community under study would be the ones conducting that research, rather than those outside the community. Not only centring the voices of Autistic people when conducting research, but having Autistic researchers lead those projects.
Many people have raised concerns about this approach, suggesting that objectivity would suffer. People conducting research on and within communities of which they are members are by necessity close to the topic they are researching, which could colour their interpretation of their results. They might insert their own experiences into the interpretation of the experiences of others in ways that reflect more on themselves than their study participants. When communicating research results to others, these researchers might have blind spots in assessing what needs to be communicated versus what the audience of the research outputs may already know or believe.
However, none of those concerns are alleviated by having the research conducted by an “independent” outsider. Outsiders are just as capable of injecting their own views and having shortcomings in their communication of research outputs. Moreover, many of those concerns can be addressed with practices such as positionality statements and reflexivity journals that document the experience of conducting the research as an insider. Both of these can be incorporated into the research outputs to help provide grains of salt for future readers to more accurately assess and interpret the study and its findings.
The benefits for the insider-researcher and the study are many. The research output is likely to more accurately reflect the experiences of the community under study when it is conducted by someone with lived experience. Participants in studies are more likely to engage more deeply and honestly with researchers who share their identities and experiences, and are more likely to participate if they believe their experiences will be understood and reported accurately and honestly. These researchers are also more likely to choose topics and design studies that more closely align with the needs of their community. They can also draw on their own experiences when providing context for the study’s intentions and potential impact.
Requirements for positionality statements, reflexivity journals, and other measures could be integrated into the ethics process for studies regardless of whether the researchers are members of the community under study or not. Future research could explore the differences in how insider and outsider researchers study the same topic, their results, and their respective impacts as interpreted by the communities they study. Required or not, I intend to include such self-reflection in my own research processes.