Problematising voice in qualitative health professional education research
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.11157/fohpe.v23i2.660Keywords:
qualitative research, quality, voiceAbstract
Qualitative research is inherently relational, thus paying attention to subjectivities is important. As researchers, we are fundamentally entangled in the research through the decisions we make about design, the rapport and shaping of interviews to construct the data and the lenses we bring to interpretation and sense making. This is a multivoiced project, including at the very minimum, the researcher(s)’ voice and those of the participants. And yet we see several practices that either elide our role in the research and/or labour under the misapprehension that only the participants’ voice matters. This paper unpacks common practices that misrepresent the multivoicedness of qualitative research and presents strategies that acknowledge and work with the complexities of representing voice in research. E.B. White aptly said, “I have yet to see a piece of writing, political or non-political, that does not have a slant. All writing slants the way a writer leans, and no man is born perpendicular.”
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