Researcher Positionality in Cross-Cultural and Sensitive Research

Abstract

The status of the insider and outsider is an important concept for cross-culturaland sensitive research. In recent years, the concept of placement of the researcherhas received much attention. Until a few generations ago, researchers who sharedthe same cultural, social, and linguistic background with those of the researchparticipants mainly conducted research. However, over the last two decades, wehave started to witness researchers who have different characteristics to that of theresearch participants conduct research in health and social sciences. In currenttimes, this has led to the debates of insider versus outsider status of theresearchers, as the way research participants “place”the researchers, and vice versa, is vital for the success of any research. In this chapter, we shall introducethe concept of researcher positionality. We will look at the debates on researcherpositionality in cross-cultural and sensitive research and discuss “placing”issuessuch as gender, age, culture and ethnicity, social class, and shared experiences.