Reflexivity

Jupp, Victor. (2006). Reflexivity. In V. Jupp (Ed.), The Sage Dictionary of Social Research Methods (pp….). London: Sage.

Jupp defines as reflexivity the process of monitoring and accessing all aspects of a research project, and asserts that it requires that the researcher provide sufficient detail about the process to allow readers to validate by themselves the knowledge that the research would have produced. For Jupp, the aspect of validity is influenced by judgment of ethics (has anyone been harmed?) and politics (whose side am I on?) from the researcher’s standpoint. What is more, as Jupp notes, reflexivity reflects upon the validity of a form of research itself, asking what is truth, how it is produced and disseminated, what impact it brings in society, and so forth. This speculation leads us to think of research as a social activity concerning the social production of knowledge.