Reflexivity in Qualitative Research: Examples & Template
Qualitati Research Team · 2026-08-08 · 10 min read
Last updated: September 28, 2026
Short answer: Reflexivity in qualitative research is the ongoing practice of examining how your own position, assumptions, and methodological choices shape the data you collect and the themes you report. It is not a bias disclaimer. It is a documented decision trail, usually kept in a reflexive journal, that lets a reader see how your findings were made and judge them accordingly.
Reflexivity in qualitative research is the question every methods chapter, ethics board, and journal reviewer eventually asks: how did you shape this study? This guide defines the term, separates the main types of reflexivity, shows three example reflexive statements, and gives you a reflexive-journal template you can start using on your next interview.
Key takeaways
- Reflexivity is a practice kept throughout a study; positionality is the starting description of who you are in relation to it.
- The most-used typologies split reflexivity into personal, epistemological, and methodological questions; the AMEE Guide No. 149 adds interpersonal and contextual reflexivity.
- A good reflexive statement names a position, its likely effect, and at least one decision it changed.
- Recent literature warns against "shopping list" positionality statements that disclose identity without showing any analytic consequence.
- A reflexive journal is the raw material: short, dated entries written after each interview and each coding session.
What is reflexivity in qualitative research?
The AMEE Guide No. 149 by Olmos-Vega, Stalmeijer, Varpio, and Kahlke defines reflexivity as a set of continuous, collaborative, and multifaceted practices through which researchers critique and evaluate how their subjectivity and context influence the research process (Medical Teacher, 2023). Three words in that definition do the work: continuous (not a paragraph added at the end), collaborative (teams reflect together), and multifaceted (it covers more than your demographics).
In an interview study, the researcher is part of the instrument. Your discipline, language, seniority, and expectations shape which questions get asked, which stories participants feel safe telling, and which quotes look important when you code. Reflexivity does not try to remove that influence. It makes it visible so a reader can weigh it.
Reflexivity vs positionality
The two terms are often used interchangeably, but they answer different questions.
| Positionality | Reflexivity |
|---|
| Question | Who am I in relation to this topic and these participants? | What did that position, and my choices, do to the study? |
| When | Stated at the start, revisited at the end | Practiced throughout design, fieldwork, analysis, and writing |
| Form | A short statement in the methods section | A journal, memos, team debriefs, and a written account of consequences |
| Failure mode | An identity list with no link to the analysis | Long self-reflection that never changes a decision |
A 2025 Qualitative Health Research essay by Sibbald, Phelan, Beagan, and Pride argues that identity-disclosure "shopping list" statements can become token performances, and can put researchers from marginalized groups at disproportionate risk without improving the research (Positioning Positionality and Reflecting on Reflexivity, March 28, 2025). The practical lesson: disclose what is relevant to the analysis, and show its consequences, rather than listing every identity marker.
Types of reflexivity
Carla Willig's widely taught distinction, from Introducing Qualitative Research in Psychology, separates personal reflexivity (how your values, experiences, and identities shaped the research, and how the research changed you) from epistemological reflexivity (how your research question, design, and analytic method defined what could be found). Many methods texts add methodological reflexivity for the concrete choices in between. The AMEE guide organizes the same ground into four domains: personal, interpersonal, methodological, and contextual.
| Type | The question it answers | Example prompt for your journal |
|---|
| Personal | How do my values, experiences, and identities shape what I notice? | Which participant did I agree with most, and did I probe them less? |
| Epistemological | How did my question, design, and method constrain what could be found? | What would a different analytic approach have made visible that mine hides? |
| Methodological | Why these sampling, interviewing, and coding decisions? | Why did I split or merge this code, and what evidence decided it? |
| Interpersonal | How did the relationship with participants shape what they said? | Where did power, rapport, or my role make a topic harder to raise? |
| Contextual | What in the setting made this reading plausible? | What institutional, cultural, or timing factors frame this data? |
Epistemological reflexivity is the one most often missing from student methods chapters. It is also the one examiners tend to probe hardest, because it asks whether your conclusions are artifacts of your design. If you used thematic analysis rather than grounded theory, for example, say what that choice made easier to see and what it made harder.
Three reflexivity examples
The examples below are illustrative composites written for this guide, not quotations from published studies. Each follows the same three-part pattern: position → effect → decision.
Example 1: Personal reflexivity (insider researcher)
"I worked as an intensive-care nurse for six years before this doctorate, and I share professional language with the nurses I interviewed. This made recruitment and rapport easier, but in early interviews I noticed I accepted shorthand like 'you know how nights are' without asking what it meant. From the fourth interview onward I asked participants to describe specific shifts in their own words, and I coded those later interviews separately to check whether my early data under-described workload."
Example 2: Epistemological reflexivity (research question and method)
"My research question asked how students 'cope' with remote assessment, which framed the experience as a problem from the start. Coding with a codebook built from coping theory made adaptive strategies easy to see and made positive accounts of flexibility harder to classify. After discussing this with my supervisor, I added an inductive pass over all transcripts and report the flexibility theme separately, noting that the original framing may still under-represent it."
Example 3: Interpersonal and methodological reflexivity (power)
"I taught some of the participants in a previous year. To reduce pressure to give favorable answers, a colleague with no teaching role recruited participants and obtained consent, and I did not interview anyone I had graded. I still expect my role as a lecturer shaped what participants were willing to criticize, so I treat the relatively mild criticism of teaching staff in the data as a possible effect of the interviewer rather than as evidence of satisfaction."
Notice what these statements avoid: "we acknowledge we may have introduced bias." That sentence names no position, no effect, and no decision, so it tells the reader nothing they can use.
How to keep a reflexive journal (template)
A reflexive journal is a private, dated record of your reactions, assumptions, and decisions as a study unfolds. It is the source you draw on when you write the reflexivity statement, and it is part of your audit trail. It differs from analytic memos, which develop ideas about the data; the journal is about you and your choices, though the two often cross-reference.
The Qualitati Reflexive Journal Template. Use one entry per interview, focus group, or coding session. Five to ten minutes is enough.
| Field | What to write |
|---|
| 1. Date and stage | For example "Interview P07" or "Coding round 2, transcripts 1–10" |
| 2. What happened | Two or three factual sentences: setting, length, anything unusual |
| 3. My reaction | What surprised, irritated, or pleased me, and which participant I identified with |
| 4. Assumption surfaced | What I expected to hear, and whether this session confirmed or challenged it |
| 5. Likely effect | How that reaction or assumption could have shaped questions asked, probes skipped, or codes applied |
| 6. Decision | What I will do differently: a new probe, a re-read, a second coder, a changed code definition |
| 7. Follow-up | A date or trigger to check whether the decision worked |
Prompts by study stage
- Before fieldwork: What do I already believe the answer is? Who would I be disappointed to hear from?
- After each interview: Where did I talk too much? What did I not follow up, and why?
- During coding: Which code did I create because I expected it rather than because the data required it? Which cases contradict my strongest theme? (See negative case analysis.)
- Writing up: Which entries changed a decision? Those, and only those, belong in the published statement.
Field 6 is the one that makes a journal useful. If no entry ever produces a decision, you are keeping a diary, not doing reflexivity.
Reflexivity in team research
Team projects need shared reflexivity, not one statement per person. Cook and Woodman's 2026 article in the International Journal of Social Research Methodology addresses data analysis and researcher reflexivity in team-based longitudinal projects, where different people may interview the same participants across waves (February 3, 2026). In practice, teams usually combine individual journals with regular debriefs where coders compare readings of the same transcript and record the disagreements that changed a code.
How to write the reflexivity section of a methods chapter
An August 2026 practical guide for novice researchers by John and Rashid covers the elements a positionality statement typically addresses: reflexivity, location and context, power dynamics, insider–outsider positioning, and the risks of disclosure (Education Sciences, August 6, 2026). Combining that with the journal above, a workable structure is:
- Position (2–3 sentences): only the aspects of your background relevant to this topic and these participants.
- Anticipated influence (1–2 sentences): what you expected that position to affect.
- Practices (2–4 sentences): journal, peer debriefing, second coder, supervisor review, member checking.
- Consequences (1–3 examples): decisions that changed because of those practices, drawn from your journal.
- Residual limits (1–2 sentences): what you could not correct and how readers should weigh it.
For most theses and articles this comes to roughly 250–500 words. Check your target journal's reporting guideline, such as COREQ or SRQR, and your institution's requirements.
If AI touched your analysis
When an LLM transcribes, codes, or summarizes your data, reflexivity has to cover the tool as well as the researcher. Wen Xu's "Doing Thematic Analysis in the Age of Generative AI" (International Journal of Qualitative Methods, February 2026) argues for an expanded reflexivity that interrogates the model's affordances and biases alongside the researcher's positionality. At minimum, record the model and version, the exact prompts, and every code you rejected, merged, or added by hand. We cover this in depth in Can AI support reflexivity? and Can LLMs do reflexive thematic analysis?
Where Qualitati fits
Qualitati is a European, budget-friendly qualitative research platform for universities and research companies, with GDPR and data privacy as central priorities. It does not write your positionality statement or decide which reading of a quote is right. It can make the record behind your reflexivity easier to keep:
- Stored instruments. AI-moderated interview outlines and moderator settings are saved with the project, so the instrument that produced the data is documented.
- Human-controlled coding. QDA Workspace supports inductive and deductive coding and codebook generation, with the researcher editing the codebook.
- Quote-anchored themes. ThemeLens maps codes to research questions across up to 100 transcripts and synthesizes themes with participant-anchored quotes you can trace back and challenge.
- Human in the room. Active Listener mode gives a human interviewer real-time prompts and section tracking, keeping the interview relationship with a person.
- Source-language work in 10 languages, so multilingual studies do not have to route interpretation through English.
Limitations and when not to use this approach
Reflexivity is not validation. A thorough journal can document a well-reasoned path to a wrong conclusion. Pair it with triangulation, member checking, and the broader trustworthiness criteria.
Disclosure has costs. As Sibbald and colleagues note, identity disclosure can expose researchers to risk. You are not obliged to publish personal details that have no bearing on the analysis.
Scale the apparatus to the stakes. A five-interview usability check does not need a formal journal. A doctoral thesis, a published article, or a policy-facing study does.
Methodology summaries here are based on published sources; for a thesis or regulated study, read the primary texts and follow your supervisor's and institution's guidance.
Frequently asked questions
What is reflexivity in qualitative research in simple terms?
It is paying systematic attention to how you, as the researcher, shape your study, and writing down what you did about it. The written record lets readers judge how your position and choices influenced the findings.
What are the types of reflexivity?
The most common split is personal reflexivity (your values and identities), epistemological reflexivity (how your question and method shaped the findings), and methodological reflexivity (specific design decisions). The AMEE Guide No. 149 also names interpersonal and contextual reflexivity.
What is an example of reflexivity?
An insider researcher notices they accepted professional shorthand without probing, changes the interview approach from the fourth interview, and compares early and later transcripts. The example names a position, its effect, and a decision it changed.
What should a reflexive journal include?
Dated entries covering what happened, your reaction, the assumption it surfaced, its likely effect on the data, the decision you took, and a follow-up. Write one after each interview and each coding session.
Is reflexivity the same as bias?
No. A bias framing assumes a neutral position you deviated from. Reflexivity assumes interpretive research has no such position and asks you to make your standpoint and its effects visible instead.
How long should a reflexivity statement be?
Usually around 250–500 words in a thesis or article: your relevant position, its anticipated influence, the practices you used, one to three concrete consequences, and any residual limits.
Bottom line
Reflexivity in qualitative research is a practice, not a paragraph. Keep a short journal from the first interview, tie every statement to a decision it changed, and cover personal, epistemological, and methodological questions rather than listing demographics. If a second researcher could read your record and see why your themes look the way they do, you have done it well.
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Last updated: September 28, 2026. First published August 8, 2026. This is an independent editorial summary; product descriptions reflect publicly available information as of that date.