Evolving Reflexivity: Negotiating Meaning of Women’s Midlife Experience

Abstract

After embarking on a research project, the author realized that her midlife experience would influence the way in which she interpreted her fieldwork with midlife women. However, the author was not prepared for the ambivalence, contradiction, and discomfort that she experienced in response to doing this research project. It was only when she discovered the concept of reflexivity, which enabled her to articulate the liminality of her position, that she came to understand that such feelings were critical elements of the research process. In this article, the author illustrates the ways in which interpretation and representation of ethnographic meaning emerge from the researcher’s position as a deliberate, self-reflexive participant observer.