Author:

Keywords:

children, parents, games of chance, reflexivity

Abstract:

Previous literature on reflexivity in research has presented very few concrete guidelines on how to “critically examine the entire research process” and achieve a well thought “acknowledgment and identification of one’s place and presence in the research” (Underwood, Satterthwait, & Bartlett, 2010, p. 1585). By means of a post-hoc reflection on a mixed-method case study, we aim at distilling best practices and learn from failures and incrementally yet significantly contribute to the body of research on reflexivity in qualitative research. This study sheds light on the theme of reflexivity from two perspectives, including reflexivity from a researchers’ perspective as well as increased reflexivity as the primary objective of our research project. More particularly, we discuss the way we investigated and aimed to improve children’s (11-12 years old) and their parents’ reflexive thoughts on (online) games of chance and their positive and negative implications. On the one hand, our findings revolve around four content-related factors of which some have already been put forward in previous research as critical elements for researcher’s reflexivity (see e.g. Underwood et al. (2010)) such as gender and age-cohort. In our study, we add parenthood and familiarity with the topic under investigation (own experience) to this reflexivity package. On the other hand, we report on how our researcher reflexivity helped us improving the research protocol and gaining a more intersubjective perspective on the data. In particular, we will share our best practices and thoughts with respect to the technique of card-sorting, (see, for instance, Morville and Rosenfeld, 2006) that involves sorting a series of cards into groups that make sense to participants. These cards can be labeled with a piece of content or left blank to be filled in by the participants. Card sorting is a hands-on method that is meant to stimulate reflection-in-action (Schön, 1983) and, as such, provide insight into participants’ mental models with regard to a certain topic or theme. The findings of our study extend the insights into the usefulness of the method, because when combined with semi-structured interview techniques, we show how it can provide a stimulating prompt to encourage reflexivity among children as well as their parents on a topic that is part of their daily lives but probably has not yet been explicitly overtly reflected on before.