reflexivityasking

Reflexivityasking is a practice within qualitative inquiry and related fields that centers on eliciting reflection about how social position, power, norms, and prior assumptions influence knowledge production. It combines reflexivity—the awareness of one’s own influence on research—with extracting responses that reveal how respondents’ own identities and contexts shape their views. In use, researchers design prompts and discussion tasks that invite participants to articulate how their backgrounds and surroundings influence their perspectives, while researchers disclose their own positionalities and potential biases.

Common methods include scripted meta-questions at the start or during interviews, such as: What assumptions are guiding this question? How might your answer be interpreted differently in another context? How has the interviewer’s presence influenced what you say? Researchers may also encourage participants to compare interpretations across groups or to imagine alternative viewpoints.

Applications span anthropology, sociology, education, user research, and organizational studies, where reflexivityasking is used to surface multiple viewpoints, challenge taken-for-granted narratives, and enhance transparency. Critics note that reflexivity prompts can become performative or burdensome, and that power dynamics between interviewer and interviewee shape responses. Proponents argue it improves trustworthiness and depth when applied thoughtfully, with clear boundaries and ethical safeguards.

The term is typically discussed in relation to broader reflexivity in qualitative methods and to related concepts such as positionality, bracketing, and self-interpretation.