Introduction

Qualitative inquiry is an inherently human and, thus, subjective endeavor. The meaning of a particular concept or phenomenon will invariably differ from one person to the next, dismissing any assumptions that the research process is or should be an objective process. Addressing methodological challenges, researchers employ a concept called bracketing to mitigate or at least address potential critiques of research rigor for the purpose of establishing and determining validity. What bracketing means will depend on the research orientation you adopt and the research methods you employ. In this article, we'll look at bracketing in qualitative research and what considerations you should keep in mind when accounting for subjectivity.

Subjectivity in qualitative research

Before we fully talk about bracketing, let's first address where subjectivity comes from. Researchers may come to qualitative research thinking it must be a clinical, almost sterile process more often seen in chemistry, physics, or the other natural sciences. As a result, there is always a sustained push to mitigate or even eliminate any "biases" that can be seen as skewing the qualitative analysis. In practice, positivist scholars critique the presence of preconceived notions that are formed without any engagement with existing scholarship. Under this paradigm, an analytical lens that is primarily developed from personal beliefs may not be sufficiently rigorous or connected to the overall dialogue in research. That said, there is a competing school of thought that asserts that assumptions are a natural element of human analysis that can never be completely divorced from the research process, nor should they. Instead of looking to build an impenetrable wall between personal bias and analysis, sociocultural researchers look to develop a nuanced and contextualized understanding of the social world through a transparent accounting of personal subjectivities. Bracketing is the product of this tension. Its origins lie in phenomenology, but bracketing has since expanded to other qualitative methodologies. While there are competing processes for bracketing interviews, observations, and other kinds of data, the overall goal is to address how the subjectivities that researchers may bring to the process can influence the data and the analysis.

Phenomenology

There is no straightforward definition for bracketing, because how we address this subjectivity also depends on the orientation we adopt when conducting research. Most broadly, qualitative researchers can exist on a continuum defined by two approaches to phenomenology, or ways of looking at and interpreting the social world.

Transcendental phenomenology

On the objective side of this continuum, a transcendental approach, in simple terms, asks researchers to look at the world from a sterile lens, like an alien visiting a new world. The goal is to avoid bringing any preconceived judgment of the subject they are examining and to focus on the core essence of the social and cultural practices and customs they observe. The reasons for this approach stem from a desire to capture how the social world is perceived at the moment of consciousness before any personal beliefs inform and transform how social phenomena are understood. Transcendental phenomenology thus looks for a description of events and practices that are as free of biases as possible.

Interpretive phenomenology

Some researchers look at the challenges presented by transcendental phenomenology and consider them to be all but impossible to meet. After all, ignoring any preconception about a research context, let alone ignoring all preconceptions, seems to be an unrealistic objective. Indeed, those who take a grounded theory approach, where all data analysis arises from the researcher's interpretation of the data alone, find it more feasible to fully account for, rather than completely disregard, the thought processes that govern the analytical lens of the researcher. Rather than try to define a research participant's intended meaning, those who take an interpretive approach to understanding phenomena examine how people make sense of the world around them. The goal of an interpretive approach, then, is to view the interaction between a person's subjectivities and the phenomenon that the inquiry focuses on.