Reflexivity vs Positionality Dissertation Example
Dreading the reflexivity section? This reflexivity vs positionality dissertation example gives you definitions, full adaptable paragraphs, sentence starters, and exactly where to put them to satisfy your supervisor.
If you are a qualitative student staring at a supervisor comment that says “add reflexivity” or “clarify your positionality” and feeling your stomach drop, you are not alone. Most students dread this section because no one ever explains the difference clearly, and textbooks make it sound like therapy rather than methodology.
Here is the simple version this reflexivity vs positionality dissertation example will unpack: positionality is who you are in relation to your research. Reflexivity is what you did about it. One is a snapshot. The other is an ongoing audit of your assumptions, power, emotions and decisions — and how they shaped the generation of knowledge in your study.
In this guide you will get a clear definitions table, an explanation of what is included in a reflexivity section, two full adaptable example paragraphs (one positionality statement, one reflexivity paragraph), a sentence-starter bank to beat writer’s block, exactly where to integrate reflexivity in methods, findings and limitations, and the classic mistakes that make examiners roll their eyes. If you want the theory in more depth, see our guides on reflexivity in qualitative research and trustworthiness in qualitative research.
Reflexivity vs Positionality: The Difference in 60 Seconds
Supervisors use the terms interchangeably, but examiners do not. Pillow (2003) famously called reflexivity “uncomfortable” for a reason: it is not a confessional list of your identities, but a critical interrogation of how you produced knowledge. Finlay (2002) similarly distinguishes between reflection (thinking back on) and reflexivity (immediate, dynamic self-awareness during the research).
Think of it this way: positionality answers “Where do I stand?” Reflexivity answers “How did where I stood change what I asked, heard, coded and claimed — and what did I do to check that?”
| Feature | Positionality Statement | Reflexivity Section / Thread |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Declaration of your social, professional and theoretical location relative to participants and topic | Ongoing critical examination of how your assumptions, power, emotions and decisions shaped data generation and interpretation |
| Key question | Who am I as insider / outsider here? | How did I influence the study, and how did the study influence me? |
| Focus | Identity: age, gender, ethnicity, profession, beliefs, prior experience with topic | Process: sampling choices, interview probes, coding decisions, surprises, power dynamics |
| Timing | Mostly written upfront in Methodology | Starts before fieldwork and continues through analysis and writing; often revisited in Limitations |
| Example sentence | “As a former secondary-school teacher researching teacher burnout, I occupy a partial insider position.” | “I noticed I probed burnout stories more deeply than resilience stories, so I revised my interview guide and recoded for positive cases.” |
| Examiner test | Can I see your relevant social location? | Can I see a specific decision you changed because of self-awareness? |
You need both. Positionality without reflexivity is just a biography. Reflexivity without positionality floats without context. Together they show confirmability — a core criterion for trustworthiness in qualitative research.
What Is Included in a Reflexivity Section?
Students often ask what is included in a reflexivity section beyond “I am a 24-year-old female student.” Examiners expect five analytic moves, drawing on Finlay’s (2002) mapping of reflexivity as introspection, intersubjective reflection, mutual collaboration, social critique and ironic deconstruction. You do not need all five, but you need more than introspection alone.
1. Relevant background and starting assumptions
Name only the identities and experiences that plausibly matter for this topic. A nursing student interviewing nurses about moral distress should name clinical experience and prior views on staffing. Your love of hiking is irrelevant unless you are studying outdoor education. State 2–3 a priori assumptions explicitly, for example: “I assumed participants would describe management as unsupportive.” This lets the reader later judge whether you tested or simply confirmed that view.
2. Insider / outsider position and power
Use Berger’s (2015) insider-outsider continuum rather than a binary. Are you a partial insider (shared profession but different setting), an outsider with proximity, or a complete outsider? Then analyse power: who had more institutional power, linguistic power, or gatekeeping power? A student interviewing senior managers, or a teacher interviewing her own students, must explain how voluntariness, anonymity and interview location were managed.
3. Methodological decisions and turning points
This is the heart of generation of knowledge reflexivity: show how you, as instrument, co-produced the data. Which interview questions did you add or drop after piloting? Why did you sample purposively? When did you change a code because supervision challenged you? Examiners award marks for “I did X because I noticed Y” chains, not vague “I remained reflexive throughout.”
4. Emotional responses, surprises and stuck points
Pillow argues good reflexivity stays uncomfortable. Name one moment you felt defensive, over-identified, bored or shocked. For example: “When two participants criticised newly qualified nurses, I felt protective as a recent graduate and caught myself moving quickly to the next question. I noted this in my reflexive journal and returned to the point in follow-up interviews.” Emotion is data about your lens.
5. Strategies to manage influence (your audit trail)
Close the loop: reflexive journal, bracketing memos, peer debriefing, supervision logs, member checking, negative case analysis, audit trail in NVivo. Link this directly to trustworthiness: “These steps support credibility and confirmability (Lincoln and Guba, 1985; see our trustworthiness guide).” Without strategies, reflexivity reads as confession. With strategies, it reads as rigour.
Golden rule: every identity you disclose must connect to a decision or interpretation. If it does not affect the generation of knowledge, cut it.
Positionality Statement Example (Copy and Adapt)
Below is a full reflexivity vs positionality dissertation example for a common scenario: a former teacher interviewing teachers about burnout. Replace the bracketed details. At 180–220 words, this length fits most Masters methodology chapters.
Positionality statement. I approach this study as a [26-year-old British-Pakistani woman and former secondary-school English teacher with four years’ classroom experience in state schools in Manchester]. I therefore occupy a partial insider position: I share professional language and lived experience of workload pressures with participants, but I am an outsider to their specific schools and current policy context, having left teaching in [2023] to pursue postgraduate study. Theoretically, I work from an interpretivist paradigm and bring a prior commitment to teacher wellbeing shaped by my own experience of early-career exhaustion. I recognise this may incline me to empathise more readily with accounts of institutional failure than with accounts emphasising individual resilience. I have no supervisory or assessment relationship with any participant, and none were recruited from schools where I previously worked. I state this position not to claim privileged insight, but to make transparent the experiential lens through which I designed the interview guide, heard participants’ stories, and interpreted their meanings.
Why this works: it is selective (only relevant identities), places the author on an insider-outsider continuum, names a theoretical lens, anticipates a directional bias, and clarifies power/relationships. It sets up the reflexivity paragraph that follows.
Reflexivity Paragraph Example (Copy and Adapt)
This second paragraph shows ongoing reflexivity — assumptions, power, decisions and generation of knowledge. Aim for 250–350 words in a dissertation. Notice the three “noticed → action → effect” chains.
Reflexivity. Throughout data generation and analysis I maintained a reflexive journal and discussed extracts fortnightly in supervision to interrogate how my position shaped the generation of knowledge. Prior to fieldwork I recorded three assumptions: (1) that workload, rather than relational conflict, drives burnout; (2) that participants would be reluctant to criticise leadership on record; and (3) that my teacher identity would facilitate rapport. Early journal entries confirmed the third assumption — shared jargon shortened explanations — but challenged the first two. In interviews 1–3 I noticed I probed workload narratives with multiple follow-ups (“Can you tell me more about marking?”) while allowing brief mentions of collegial support to pass without probing, risking confirmation of my own burnout narrative. Following supervision, I revised the interview guide to add a balanced prompt (“Tell me about a time work felt sustainable”) and deliberately sampled two participants who had scored low on the burnout screening for negative case analysis. Power dynamics also required active management. Although I held no authority over participants, two interviewees positioned me as an “expert researcher” and asked, “Is this what you want?” I responded by restating that there were no preferred answers, sharing my question areas in advance, and conducting interviews off-site or online at their chosen times. During thematic analysis in NVivo, I kept bracketing memos alongside coding memos; for instance, when coding “lack of appreciation,” I noted my own residual frustration with a former headteacher and tested the code against two transcripts where appreciation was present to avoid over-attribution. I do not claim to have eliminated influence — following Pillow (2003), I treat reflexivity as uncomfortable and incomplete — but these practices make visible how my presence, probes and coding decisions co-constructed the findings presented in Chapter 4, strengthening confirmability.
It names concrete artefacts (journal, supervision logs, NVivo memos), shows change over time, addresses power in both directions, cites Pillow and Finlay to frame reflexivity theoretically, and explicitly links reflexivity to generation of knowledge and confirmability. That is analysis, not confession. For the wider reflexivity framework, see our reflexivity in qualitative research guide.
Sentence Starter Bank: Never Stare at a Blank Page Again
Steal these starters and finish the sentences honestly. Pick 6–8 across the categories — that is a full section.
Positionality starters
- “I approach this study as a [identity/profession] with [X years] experience of [context], placing me as a partial insider because…”
- “While I share [language/experience] with participants, I am an outsider to [specific setting] in that…”
- “My theoretical starting point is [interpretivism/critical theory/feminism] which leads me to foreground…”
- “Prior to fieldwork I held the assumption that… shaped by…”
Reflexivity on assumptions and decisions
- “I noticed in my reflexive journal that I probed [Topic A] more deeply than [Topic B], which risked…”
- “After supervision on [date/transcript], I revised [interview question / code / sampling] to…”
- “An early surprise was…, which challenged my assumption that… and led me to…”
- “When coding [theme], I wrote a bracketing memo about… and tested it by…”
Reflexivity on power and relationships
- “Although I held no formal authority, power emerged when participants… I addressed this by…”
- “To reduce perceived coercion I… [shared questions in advance, chose neutral location, reiterated right to withdraw].”
- “My [age/gender/ethnicity/profession] appeared to facilitate… but also to close down… evidenced by…”
Reflexivity on generation of knowledge
- “This illustrates how knowledge in this study was co-constructed: my probe about… invited a particular account that…”
- “An alternative reading, which a researcher with [different position] might foreground, is… I retain my interpretation because…”
- “Following Pillow (2003), I do not claim transcendence of my position, but…”
Where to Integrate Reflexivity: Methods, Findings, Limitations
One isolated paragraph is the minimum. Strong dissertations thread reflexivity in three places:
1. Methodology Chapter (main home — 400–800 words)
Create a sub-section titled 3.X Positionality and Reflexivity after Research Paradigm / Design and before Data Collection or Data Analysis. This is where both example paragraphs above live. End with your rigour strategies and a forward pointer: “Reflexive decision points during analysis are noted alongside themes in Chapter 4.” This signals to the examiner that reflexivity is structural, not bolted on.
2. Findings / Discussion (micro-reflections — 1–2 sentences per theme)
Do not interrupt every quote with autobiography, but add brief reflexive footnotes where your lens most plausibly shaped interpretation. Example: “I coded this extract as ‘performative resilience’ rather than ‘professionalism’; a clinician-researcher might read it differently. I retain this reading because three participants explicitly contrasted performing coping with feeling supported.” This demonstrates Finlay’s intersubjective reflection and strengthens confirmability without derailing the narrative.
3. Limitations and Future Research (honest return — 150–250 words)
Revisit what remains unresolved. Example: “Despite purposive sampling for variation, all participants were women aged 25–40 recruited via my professional network, reflecting my own demographic location. A male researcher or one outside teaching may have accessed different narratives around help-seeking. A reflexive journal cannot fully bracket embodied experience.” Examiners reward this humility far more than “more time and money would have helped.”
Mistakes That Lose Marks: Confession vs Analysis
The most common feedback on reflexivity drafts is “descriptive, not analytic.” Here is how to fix the top five errors:
| ❌ Confession (low mark) | ✅ Reflexive analysis (high mark) |
|---|---|
| Long autobiography irrelevant to topic (“I grew up in Leeds, I like netball…”) | Selective positionality where each detail links to a design or interpretive risk |
| “I bracketed all my biases to remain objective.” | “Following Pillow, I treat bracketing as partial; I used memos and supervision to surface rather than erase influence.” |
| “Being an insider was an advantage.” Only upside. | Both affordances and costs: insider access plus risk of assumed understanding, leading to specific checks |
| “I was reflexive throughout.” No evidence. | Dated artefacts: journal entry 12 March, supervision 20 March, guide revision v2, recoding example |
| Apologising for subjectivity (“Unfortunately qualitative research is biased…”) | Reframing subjectivity as resource: co-construction of knowledge managed transparently to enhance trustworthiness |
Other quick fails: writing in third person (“the researcher felt…”) which distances you from responsibility — use first person; placing reflexivity only in limitations as an afterthought; and citing no methodology literature. Even two citations — Finlay (2002) on types of reflexivity and Pillow (2003) on uncomfortable reflexivity, plus Berger (2015) on insider-outsider fluidity — signal that you understand reflexivity as epistemology, not diary-keeping. Link these moves to credibility and confirmability and your methodology mark climbs quickly.
Checklist Before You Submit
- ☐ Have I stated only relevant identities and named my insider/outsider position on a continuum?
- ☐ Have I recorded 2–3 starting assumptions in past tense so change is visible?
- ☐ Have I described at least two specific “noticed → action → effect” chains (probe change, sampling change, recoding)?
- ☐ Have I analysed power in both directions and named concrete mitigations?
- ☐ Have I explained how reflexivity shaped generation of knowledge, not just rapport?
- ☐ Have I named artefacts (journal, memos, supervision, audit trail) with enough detail to audit?
- ☐ Have I cited Finlay / Pillow / Berger (or equivalents) and linked to trustworthiness?
- ☐ Have I threaded 1–2 reflexive notes into findings and returned honestly in limitations?
- ☐ Have I used first person (“I”) and cut any identity detail that does not affect interpretation?
If you can tick all nine, your reflexivity section will read as rigorous, uncomfortable in the productive Pillow sense, and fully integrated — exactly what qualitative examiners hope to find.
Frequently Asked Questions
Positionality is your starting point — who you are in relation to the research (insider/outsider, background, values). Reflexivity is the ongoing process of examining how that position, your assumptions, power and decisions shaped the generation of knowledge throughout data collection, analysis and writing.
Include your relevant background and assumptions, your insider/outsider position, power dynamics with participants, key methodological decisions and why you made them, emotional reactions and surprises, and concrete steps you took (reflexive journal, supervision, member checking, audit trail) to manage influence.
Put your main positionality statement and reflexivity subsection in Chapter 3 Methodology, usually after research paradigm and before or after data analysis procedures. Then weave brief reflexive notes into Findings/Discussion and return to unresolved influences in Limitations.
For most qualitative Masters dissertations, 400-600 words is enough. For PhD theses using phenomenology, ethnography or autoethnography, 800-1200 words plus reflexive threads in findings is normal. Quality of analysis matters more than length.
In qualitative research knowledge is co-constructed, not discovered. Reflexivity makes transparent how your questions, probes, coding choices and interpretations generated particular knowledge, which strengthens confirmability and trustworthiness rather than claiming bias-free objectivity.
Final Thoughts
Reflexivity is not about confessing who you are and hoping the examiner moves on. It is about proving you watched yourself generate knowledge — and changed course when you needed to. Use the reflexivity vs positionality dissertation example above as a skeleton: keep the structure, swap in your context, keep the “noticed → action → effect” chains, and thread the thinking into findings and limitations.
If you do that, the section students dread most becomes one of the easiest places to gain critical-analysis marks, because so few candidates do it analytically. And if you are still stuck staring at a blank page the night before submission, get help before you submit a purely descriptive paragraph.
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