Positioning Positionality and Reflecting on Reflexivity: Moving From Performance to Practice

Abstract

Researcher reflexivity and acknowledgement of positionality are emerging as key concepts for evaluating the quality of qualitative research. Collectively, we explore the relationship between reflexivity and positionality statements as reflexive practice, considering who benefits, who has authority, and our expectations of each other as qualitative researchers. Moving between examples of doing reflexivity in practice and what is often requested of authors during the peer review and editorial processes, we challenge the idea that positionality statements in the form of identity disclosures ought to be taken as the token performance of reflexive work, despite their frequent use as such. We begin by outlining the role and purpose of reflexivity in qualitative research and follow by examining the turn toward identity disclosure as fulfilling this purpose. Following, we examine the ways in which a “shopping list” positionality statement can create disproportionate risk, reinforce stereotypes, and homogenize researchers identifying with marginalized groups, without necessarily benefiting the research process or how research is communicated. In addition, we present alternative ways of doing and communicating reflexivity in qualitative research that, although not without their own challenges, allow reflexivity to take up the space it deserves during the research process and dissemination.

Introduction

Researcher reflexivity and acknowledgement of positionality have recently become standards of quality in qualitative research. Given the inherently interpretive nature of qualitative inquiry, the purpose of researcher reflexivity is to heighten awareness of how the researcher as a person has affected the research itself. It is the act of interrogating one’s situatedness in society, geography, history, and culture in relation to one’s assumptions, preconceptions, experiences, training, judgments, values, beliefs, commitments, and opinions to bring to light how all of these nuances shape the research (Alvesson & Sköldberg, 2017; Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992; Finlay, 2002). Positionality involves actively engaging in reflexivity to locate or situate the researcher, and the research, in relation to the phenomenon under investigation, the research participants, the research context and process, and the researcher’s “worldview” or ontological, epistemological, and axiological assumptions, all of which are influenced by one’s social locations, intersecting identities, and experiences (Folkes, 2023; Holmes, 2020; Martin et al., 2022).

Positionality may open the path for reflexivity as examining the researcher’s position in relation to the research and its social context promotes reflexive analysis of how biases, experiences, and positions in hierarchies of power may influence all elements of the research process. Considering positionality, as part of reflexive practice, is a component of rigor in qualitative research, ensuring the interpretations and analyses produced do not simply mirror the pre-existing opinions and beliefs of the researcher (Alvesson & Sköldberg, 2017; Finlay, 2002; Tracy, 2010).

However, more recently, positionality has been demonstrated in publications as a statement of identities intending to own the many ways our social locations—our relative positioning in hierarchies of power and oppression—shape our experiences and perspectives and affect interactions with research participants. More troublingly, an acknowledgement—or, more provocatively, a disclosure—of one’s positionality has come to be understood as “enough,” a representation of reflexive practice in and of itself without further discussion.

Rather than positioning each individual author, which would not only require researchers to reveal aspects of their self-identities with questionable voluntariness but also would misrepresent our intersubjective understandings, we will position ourselves as a collective contributing to critical conversations about positioning positionality and reflecting on reflexivity. We are, among us, disabled, neurodivergent, Indigenous, queer, women, and of working-class origins. We, among us, are also white, settler, nondisabled, neurotypical, heterosexual, cis-gender, and middle class. Equally as relevant, among us, we are trained in psychology, sociology, philosophy, health promotion, kinesiology, and occupational therapy. We, among us, engage in research concerning ableism, sanism, anti-racism, colonialism, heteronormativity and cis-gender binarism, and classism—as well as other things. We, among us, have about 70 years of experience doing research, most of it qualitative. This experience of researching, writing, and reviewing, while navigating representation of our own identities, those of our participants, and the relationship between the two, has led us to interrogate the ways in which reflexivity and positionality are involved in research—considering what is done, what is written, and that is taken to symbolize. Collectively, we explore the relationship between reflexivity and positionality statements as reflexive practice, considering who benefits, who has authority, and our expectations of each other as qualitative researchers.

Why Reflexivity?

Some argue that awareness of the “self” is essential to “bracket” out preconceptions, reducing researcher bias (Finlay, 2002, 2008; Husserl, 1970). Others argue that research bias is inevitable, and the goal of reflexivity is to surface biases, allowing the researcher to take them into account—at best, make use of them—and allow readers to hold the researcher accountable for those acknowledged biases (Braun & Clarke, 2023; Tracy, 2010). Others extend this argument, arguing that making their lenses transparent—owning one’s lenses—through reflexivity, strengthens the research, akin to Harding’s notion of strong objectivity or strong reflexivity (Harding, 2013). Multiple models and frameworks for reflexivity highlight how numerous factors, including onto-epistemic, sociocultural, sociopolitical, and socio-historic (Boveda & Annamma, 2023); in combination with identities, experiences, opportunities, and journeys (Hampton et al., 2021); impact many elements across the research process including research topic, epistemology, ontology, methodology, relation to participants, and communication (Secules et al., 2021). Thorough attention to reflexivity throughout the research process examines the impacts of the researcher at every stage—question development, team composition, research ethics, recruitment of participants, data collection, interpretation and analysis, and dissemination. When research is understood as co-produced through the interactions of researcher and participant, knowing how the researchers have “written themselves in” to the study is critical to the appraisal of ethics, quality, and use of the research itself. This is what we have come to know as good qualitative research. To do this well, the researcher must engage in a considerable amount of invisible work, which does not necessarily get “written in” to the genre of a research paper explicitly. One might ask, are positionality statements meant to make this work explicit? If so, should we take the author’s word for it?

And while reflexivity is important for good qualitative research, some have been critical of positionality statements, arguing that they are insufficient, often unnecessary, and potentially harmful for demonstrating reflexivity in research (Boveda & Annamma, 2023; Folkes, 2023; Hampton et al., 2021; Holmes, 2020; Massoud, 2022; Savolainen et al., 2023; Secules et al., 2021, among others). For example, one of us recently received a request to submit a positionality statement to be included in a book in which they had co-authored a chapter. The request indicated that as part of the collective’s commitment to transparency about the positioning of contributions and ideas expressed in the book, all authors were required to write a positionality statement of approximately 25 words in length. Notably, the request for separate positionality statements came after the chapters were submitted. Should such a statement be considered a sufficient demonstration of researcher reflexivity? Is it possible to craft a statement of positionality in 25 words or less without engaging in reflexivity at all? If we were to venture a guess, yes. If reflexivity is what we believe it to be, does a positionality statement, presented as a list of discrete and seemingly concrete terms, located outside of the research itself, constitute evidence of reflexivity?

The Troubling Turn to “Shopping List” Positionality

We are troubled by a turn we have seen in peer reviews of qualitative research concerning reflexivity and positionality. This includes peer reviews of manuscripts we submit for consideration, as well as the comments of other reviewers when we conduct peer reviews of manuscripts. We also see it arising in other forms of writing that are subject to review, such as in academic biography statements and in conference presentations. The concern is about the demand that, as authors, we must lay ourselves bare in positionality statements to prove the credibility of the research we have conducted or the analyses and interpretations we have produced. Some journals have begun requiring positionality statements in every manuscript, regardless of methodology or topic (Martin et al., 2022). Other journals recommend reflexivity statements if researchers from high-income countries are collaborating with researchers from low-income countries (Morton et al., 2022). And whether explicitly required or not, it is often informally expected that these statements appear in individual researchers’ biographies, often extraneous to any one piece of research. However, what these statements ought to contain, where they belong, how they are related (or not) to particular bodies of research, and whether they are fulfilling their intended purpose are much less consistent.

Reflecting on our own research, we have committed to integrating researcher reflexivity into our manuscripts and not limited to just within our methods sections. We contend it is not enough to say, “researchers engaged in reflexivity”; there are ways to demonstrate reflexivity through the storying of the research process and carefully making sense of the findings in ways that resonate with the reader. And yet, we are routinely asked to expand on that information. Sometimes, these are requests genuinely about reflexivity—asking what we did, why, how we decided, and so on. These are valid concerns, though extremely challenging to address in papers of 5000 words or less (the norm in health fields). In limited space, we must lay out the background, the methodology and methods, the results (with quotations, not statistics), and a fulsome discussion. Expanding on reflexivity means taking away from other parts of the paper, usually the results. Every word we write about reflexivity is one less we can give to the words of our study participants—always a frustrating negotiation.

Increasingly, reviewers contribute to the conflation of reflexivity, positionality, and positionality statements. Often, they ask for more evidence or examples of reflexivity, then make clear that they are looking for statements about positionality. At the same time, privacy and anonymity are arguably overlooked in the process. Although some fields are attempting to increase diversity among members, in the health professions, for example, many people still report being the “only one” with their identity, through their education, into practice, and into research (Beagan et al., 2022; Mohamed & Beagan, 2019; Pride, 2023). If a researcher identifies as a “white settler woman who is an occupational therapist,” they could be one of thousands in a country such as Canada; identifying as an “Indigenous woman who is an occupational therapist researcher” narrows the pool to fewer than a dozen, across the country. The more identities disclosed and the more unique they are in the field, because of histories of exclusion and prejudice, the more identifiable authors become. If not redacted for peer review, these statements may undermine blind peer review, particularly for those identifying with marginalized groups (Savolainen et al., 2023). And, if redacted for peer review, it would imply that this information is not integral to determining the quality of the research and its suitability for publication by peer reviewers. In some of our experiences, the absence of identity statements in manuscripts while undergoing peer review has, in itself, led to recommendations that a paper not be published. Particularly for those who may be identifiable in their field by their identity alone, this leads to the dilemma of either risking identifiability during peer review by including this information or risking rejection because it is redacted.

Alternatively, researchers may choose to provide a reflexive account about how the researchers’ identities collectively relate to, or are intentionally written into, the research process itself without specifically attaching an identity list to any individual author, much like we did earlier in this paper. This positions the research rather than positioning each individual by their social location. However, this “workaround” is often met with requests to quantify “who is who” and “how many,” ironically, in qualitative research. For example, once, in a paper about queer topics, reviewers asked (over and over again) how many of the authors identified as queer, in what ways they identified, and how that affected the research. The manuscript already said the team included queer members, explaining its importance to study conceptualization, recruitment, interviewing, and analysis. Reviewers wanted a more explicit discussion of individual identities. But what if some team members’ gender identities are in flux? Do we describe the shifts during the 2 years of study involvement? What if someone’s gender identity has changed even more by the time of publication? What if someone on the team identifies as queer but is not out to everyone on the team, or in their work more broadly? Must we all “out” ourselves? Is a team member who does not identify as queer less valuable, even if they are the one most likely to challenge assumptions and preconceptions internal to queer communities? Beyond queer identities, how safe is it within academia to position oneself (in published work) as negotiating mental health, disability, or substance use? With Indigenous identities hotly contested, must one prove Indigeneity in each publication?

Journals recommending and requiring positionality statements and those arguing for their inclusion repeatedly stress that in these statements, the goal is not to make anyone disclose anything they do not want to disclose (Martin et al., 2022; Savolainen et al., 2023). However, when reviewers are asked to complete a rubric or checklist indicating if particular elements are present or not, disclosure of identity may be perceived as “ticking a box” for an efficient check of quality. This may occur without reflection on what the research is about, how systems of privilege and oppression influence decisions about disclosure, the energy it takes to negotiate disclosures, and considerations of identifiability. In practice, we have found that disclosure is often demanded, and it requires significant cognitive and emotional labor to legitimize the right to self-identify or not, requiring a well-articulated manifesto with evidence in order to effectively resist—sometimes unsuccessfully.

Assumptions, Stereotypes, and Risk: What Does a Positionality Statement Do?

To be clear, we recognize the importance of positionality—some of us would be quite uncomfortable with a study situated in marginalized communities that included no community members. For example, in the contemporary context, Indigenous research that does not involve Indigenous community members, collaborators, and/or researchers is unacceptable, unlikely to receive funding, and likely to perpetuate significant harm. Yet, in many cases, identities are neither static nor homogenous. For example, if we are writing about disability, certainly first-hand experience of disability is desirable. Considering the disability rights edict of “nothing about us without us,” who is the proverbial “us”? (Katzman, 2023). Does physical disability convey enhanced insight into the experiences of study participants labelled with intellectual disability? Is disability a shared experience? If disability is episodic, does that change the validity of disability identity? Is the researcher “sometimes-disabled,” and does that make them an insider or an outsider?

While reflecting on these questions, one of us shared their recent experience with requested revisions to a reflexive excerpt in a book chapter. Taking an experiential and relational theoretical approach to disability in the research, the author described their own experience with disability as such—continuously being negotiated and renegotiated contextually and relationally. The editor responded that while they appreciated what the author was trying to do with reflexivity, the result was unclear and confusing, and to please overtly address your disability status in a statement. Despite self-positioning within a theoretical framework directly related to the research, arguably a reflexive practice, this was not “clear” enough. As Savolainen et al. (2023) argue, people with similar biographies can have vastly different experiences and dissenting views. Stating membership in an identity group in itself does not necessarily convey ideas about ideology, epistemology, experience, or bias and rather may reproduce or invoke harmful stereotypes. Yet, if reviewers and editors are looking to identity disclosures as “clear” indicators of reflexivity, the purpose and impact of reflexivity in the context of the particular research presented is lost.

Nor are identities inevitably a source of epistemic privilege. People with ostensibly very similar positionalities or social locations (when appearing in “shopping list” format) may have vastly differing experiences. Experiences of racism, for example, may vary widely in connection with social class, gender, geographic location, moment in history, as well as gradations of skin color. How much of that does a researcher need to disclose for reflexive purposes? If membership in a particular group is assumed to equate to personal authority over a truth claim, that would counter paradigmatic positions endorsing the recognition of multiple truths, realities, and ways of knowing. In addition, how a “group” is defined may convey more about assumptions about that group than their experience. For example, although a researcher may identify as Indigenous, that does not necessarily mean the researcher shares the same experiences as the research participants, can collaboratively work with others who are Indigenous, or can effectively speak to or teach all things Indigenous (Pride, 2023). Assuming so does a serious disservice to the vast diversity, unique experiences, perspectives, and worldviews among the various Indigenous Peoples and communities (Pride, 2023). When stated membership in a group is expected to do the work of locating the researcher, it can support the construction of a false homogeneity and stereotypes, and reinforce assumptions among very diverse groups of people, depreciating the value of reflexive work. Often, paradoxically, reflexive work involves detangling inaccurate stereotypical and homogenized assumptions, whereas positionality statements without reflexivity and contextual nuance reify them.

Perhaps most importantly, some identities and positionalities are stigmatized. As mentioned above, most of our research is about oppressions and marginalization—in short, stigmatized identities. Of course we are drawn to this work because of our positionalities and our social locations. But consider the asymmetrical nature of demands for reflexive statements about researcher positionality. To write that a researcher is a cis-gender, heterosexual, middle-class, second-generation white settler man is an honest accounting. It is important. But it does not carry the social risk faced by the researcher who is asked to disclose in writing that they are gender non-binary, or were raised in poverty, or have mental health issues. Stigma does not vanish at the gates of academia, and disclosures have the potential to impact not only a researcher but also their family and others with whom they associate. It should not go unnoticed that disclosures carry social risk and demand hidden labor. For example, a researcher may be faced with negotiating feelings of dis/honesty while deciding to what extent to disclose identities, to whom, and to what or whose benefit. Is the demand for statements of positionality equivalent for those of us with social privilege and those of us living multiple oppressions? Or rather, as Massoud (2022, p. S64) argues, are “the burdens of positionality … being carried unevenly by a tiny minority of researchers,” where these statements are expected to be documented more often and more thoroughly for people identifying with marginalized groups?

We are aware that silence maintains and reproduces stigma, but at the same time we question who should bear the costs of breaking silence to reduce stigma. During our past and ongoing research, we have these discussions routinely among our research teams, but when asked to engage with them—in writing—by peer reviewers—they move beyond reflexive interrogation of our work to insistence on self-disclosure. And it is not always apparent how that will help the work. Martin et al. (2022) argue that positionality statements do carry risks, but the overall intent is to lead to more just research. But, if these risks are accruing to those who are already members of identity groups often defined by the injustice and oppression they experience, and if there are marginal (or no) benefits to the dissemination of the research, we question if these risks are justifiable.

At the same time, attention to intersecting identities reminds us that privilege in one aspect of a researcher’s social location may mediate the stigma they risk in another. In other words, a researcher who is white, male and masculine of center, and heterosexual might be freer to risk strategic disclosures about his mental health issues than a racialized researcher, or a queer woman, for example. How do intersecting axes of privilege and oppression alter the political landscape upon which expectations of reflexive self-identifications of positionality are expected (or demanded)? The risks for a tenured full professor versus a graduate student or early career researcher just embarking on an academic career are also profoundly different (Ross et al., 2020). Is it fair to ask an author with no job security to disclose their stigmatized identities? Even if those were highly relevant to the research process? We have often reported that as a research team we identify with a range of positionalities, collectively, and together our lived experiences influence all aspects of our work. As proponents of reflexive research, we have taken care to describe the kinds of reflexive discussions and practices we engage in on our research teams. But still, we are asked (repeateadly) to itemize identities for each individual as if, without a list, our practices are less clear or legitimate.

Doing Reflexive Practice

Reflexivity is often intentionally built into the study design itself, through reflexive methodology (Alvesson & Sköldberg, 2017). For example, the integration of researcher-driven reflexive writing or creative or arts-based reflexive practices can be used as data to be directly analyzed or as alternative ways to process thoughts, support analysis, and translate reflexive insights (Harasym et al., 2024a, 2024b; Lyle et al., 2024; Skukauskaite et al., 2022). The materials generated from individual researcher reflexivity can also be used to facilitate or elicit reflexive dialogue among members of the team to be included as data for analysis, establish resonance (Tracy, 2010), or situate knowledges, to name just a few generative possibilities.

Other ways we have integrated reflexive practices in our research include, for example, researchers, graduate students, and research assistants interviewing each other at the outset, both for training and practice, but also to surface unexamined axiological assumptions regarding study topics, ways of knowing, and ways of doing the research we set out to do. We have all been part of research teams where we meet regularly for ongoing discussion about the study intent, our experiences during interviews, our thoughts and reactions to interviews and relations to participants, the codes and themes that are developing during analysis, how we are applying codes, our analytic musings about the data, our ideas about theories we may bring to bear on the data at some point, and our own (lived) experiences of the topics we are studying. Kohl and McCutcheon (2015) describe this as “kitchen table reflexivity,” where researchers use “everyday talk” with one another to complicate and engage with the fluidity of positionality and its relationship to the research and “not simply reduce identity to a laundry list of perceived similarities and differences between research participants and us” (p. 747). Some of us name these team discussions “transpersonal reflexivity,” a term we have been delighted to borrow from Dörfler and Stierand’s (2021) reflection on phenomenological bracketing. From the notion of transpersonal reflexivity, we have begun to detail these team processes as ways we make our preconceptions and assumptions explicit, allowing our perceptions, experiences, and beliefs to be sources of insight, with team members holding a reflexive mirror up to one another while “thinking together” (p. 788).

This is what we do—we challenge, build on, expand, counter, and further theorize ideas raised by team members. And—as qualitative research is usually a lengthy process—we do that over often weekly meetings for 2, 3, and 4 years. There is no meaningful succinct way to detail that for reviewers. As an example, Bishop and Shepherd (2011) provide a wonderful demonstration of reflexive analysis of two interviews, the focus of an entire article. How are authors to do something that thorough in the methods section of an empirical manuscript, in—say—100 to 200 words, or less? Can we expect a positionality statement to do this work? If so, how?

While packaging genuine, critical reflexivity in such tight word limits is a challenge, of additional concern is that a statement of positionality, reduced to a “shopping list” (Folkes, 2023) of identities, carries significant risks and can, should, (or sometimes does) act as a performative stand-in or “check-box” for reflexivity. This becomes even more problematic, particularly if the absence of a list of identities is taken to indicate the absence of reflexive work, a potential outcome if it becomes a marker of quality criteria or an expectation in peer review. Researcher reflexivity moves positionality beyond a narrow, performative list toward positionality as transient and situational, as in flux and relational, as varied across social geographies, as inextricably linked to analytic processes, and how this all shapes what we know and how we know it (Braun & Clarke, 2023; Folkes, 2023). Otherwise, positionality, understood as a “laundry list,” “shopping list,” or even a “disclaimer” of sorts, defeats the purpose of reflexive work and is counter to the intent of valuing reflexivity in qualitative research.

When reflexivity is diminished from examining the researcher’s relationship with the research to examining the identities of researchers as individuals, we also move further away from reflexively acknowledging the structural contributions that shape what research is valued and the constraints within which the research is conducted and presented that are unrelated to individual identities but reflect broader social structures that reproduce marginalization. These occur throughout the research process when researchers are asked to navigate and negotiate numerous structures set up to benefit those not doing critically reflexive research. For example, we are reflexive when we negotiate how to craft a grant that intersects social science and health, when granting agencies consider those separate funding fields, and they often have completely different ideological foundations. We are reflexive when we navigate discursive challenges in grant writing, negotiating how marginalized groups are described in grants to increase likelihood of funding while not supporting discursive norms of charity and saviorism which are often rewarded. We are reflexive when we negotiate the time it takes to build genuine relationships with communities, and do research on their terms, navigating ethical concerns in contexts where there is often no, or inappropriate, documented precedent, while also being required to meet the institutional research and publication requirements of academia. We are reflexive when we negotiate how to shape a paper to meet journal requirements which may limit relevant topics to a single identity, does not provide space for capturing intersectional experiences within word counts, and may require the artificial separation of “results” and “discussion” in ways that strip ideas from their context and masquerade interpretive analyses as objective research products. We are reflexive when we eschew “the canon” in favor of literature by authors from marginalized groups often excluded from academic texts, and then must defend our choice against, and therefore reproduce, normative discourse on critical topics. These all demand reflexivity in that they require us to attend to broader social, structural, discursive, and institutional norms that influence every stage of the research process and emerge from our experience living in and doing research from marginalized positions. And yet, including them in the discussion would detract from the intended scope of the paper. But excluding them never gets them “on the record” to support structural change. Reflexive attention to such decisions would shift us from a myopic focus on individual identity statements to the (power-laden) structural shaping of whole bodies of research.

Recommendations and Future Directions

So how might we get there? As reflexivity needs to be embedded in all stages of the research process, making this shift will likely involve changes to policies and practices along the research continuum. These may include:

• Capacity Building and Education: Supporting training and education programs focused on positionality, reflexivity, and ethical engagement in all research, with additional resources and support for underrepresented scholars. This will likely include education about privilege, oppression, colonialism, critical theoretical perspectives, and how these both historically and currently impact research. Journals and granting agencies may need guidance for peer reviewers on reflexivity in research.

• Revising Funding Criteria: Encouraging grant proposals to include reflexivity as a critical component to ensure that research design and methodology not only reflect an awareness of the researchers’ positionality but also reflexivity about the research. This may occur, for example, in addition to where researchers are asked for a plan for how sex and gender are addressed in their research.

• Ethics and Research Conduct: Strengthening ethical guidelines to support and make feasible meaningful community collaboration to co-create research.

• Supporting Effective Peer Review: Moving away from checklist-style reviews in qualitative research that support the interpretation that reflexivity is an isolated criterion, easily captured by a statement of positionality. Instead, evaluate reflexivity as threaded through research and allow space to share examples.

• Valuing Diverse and Inclusive Research Agendas: Promoting research agendas that prioritize underexplored areas and embed reflexivity as a core value. This may include re-thinking word limits when topics require the authors to engage in significant reflexivity throughout their work. It also includes ensuring academic evaluation metrics prioritize quality, inclusivity, and reflexivity over the quantity of publications.

Concluding Remarks

While reflexivity requires so much more than a checklist of identities—and to be clear, most journals requiring reflexivity and positionality statements argue that such lists are insufficient—our experience has been a frequent demand for these by reviewers at the expense of other, deeper, richer, and more impactful discussions of reflexivity. Being reflexive about positionality statements illuminates how they can create artificial perceptions that identities are permanent and stagnant, homogenize diverse groups of people, support potentially invalid claims to credibility in particular contexts, and create disproportional risk for those in more vulnerable social positions, under the guise of supporting “just” research. Along with others’ claims that they undermine the values of scientific communities (Savolainen et al., 2023), lead to the interrogation of individuals rather than their scholarship (Massoud, 2022), paradoxically support white colonial agendas (Gani & Khan, 2024), and reify a grocery-list approach to identity and positionality (Ríos & Patel, 2023), we kindly request that they stop being sought after as the token performance of reflexivity and academic credibility.

And yet, where then do we draw the line at what amount of reflexivity is “sufficient” in a qualitative study with a maximum allowance of 5000, 8000, or 10,000 words? There is not one simple answer to that question. Discussing reflexivity well would require its own manuscript! Reflexivity is primarily internal to the workings of the researcher or research team, at times embodied, and not easily translated into words (Katzman, 2015; Lala & Kinsella, 2011; Lyle et al., 2024). As researchers we make complex decisions that impact our research all the time—which quote to use (or not), which reference to cite (or not), which journal to publish in (or not)—all of which shape our research and how it resonates with our audiences. We make these decisions based on our individual and collective constructions of good research, and what institutional requirements we are striving to meet. So how do we know what makes “good” reflexivity? Some of it may involve listening to communities who may set standards about what types of reflexive information are meaningful to discuss (Fournier et al., 2024; Savolainen et al., 2023). It may involve using a particular tool or method to guide reflexive practice (Boveda & Annamma, 2023; Secules et al., 2021; Srivastava & Hopwood, 2009). It may involve strategies like transpersonal reflexivity (Dörfler & Stierand, 2021), or “kitchen table reflexivity” (Folkes, 2023; Kohl & McCutcheon, 2015). Intentionally making space for these discussions to support methodological rigor is extremely important and they deserve to take up space in our research, but not necessarily at the expense of communicating the research itself. And equally important is understanding and challenging the broader structural biases, assumptions, policies, and taken-for-granted expectations that influence which words make it onto the page. And which ones do not.