Where does bracketing occur in research?

You can find the practice of bracketing in studies that involve examination of cultural practices or interaction with human subjects. Descriptions of such phenomena are subjectively constructed, requiring a transparent accounting of the characteristics and sociocultural identifiers of the researcher collecting and analyzing the data. In qualitative health research, think about how sensitive topics like bereavement and palliative care touch on people's emotions. In a research setting involving terminal illness and death, accounting for and separating their subjectivities can be difficult for the researcher. Even advanced nursing practitioners would have trouble adopting a clinically neutral stance in the face of terminally ill patience. Asking the same of researchers collecting data for a qualitative study can be similarly challenging.

Why do we use bracketing in research?

The ultimate goal of research is to contribute to scientific knowledge, and the extent of that contribution depends significantly on the research being persuasive to scholars within the research community. Researchers need to believe (or at least find credible) the assertions being proposed in an academic journal, a formal essay, or a research presentation before they can consider it to be useful research. As a result, research should be considered credible before any researcher can accept the findings presented to them as well as the analysis from which those findings are generated. Even among scholars who accept the inevitability of subjective influences, there is an expectation that those influences are presented in a transparent manner that adequately contextualizes the analysis.