Mapping Researcher Identity in Culturally Diverse Teams Investigating Health Inequalities in High-Income Countries: A Scoping Review Protocol

Abstract

Background

Researcher identity and positionality shape how studies of health inequalities are conceptualised, conducted, and interpreted, particularly within culturally diverse teams. Yet there is no consolidated map of how team-level identities influence research processes and outputs in High-Income Countries (HIC) settings. The purpose of this scoping review is to map out key definitions, theories, and methods used to examine team-level researcher identity/positionality in HIC health inequalities research, and to synthesise reported impacts on research processes, collaboration, and outputs.

Methods

This scoping review will be conducted following Arksey and O’Malley’s framework, with refinements by Levac and the Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI). It will be reported in line with the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses Extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR). The databases to be searched are MEDLINE (PubMed), Web of Science, and Scopus, using a JBI three-step strategy, supplemented by hand searching and citation tracking. Eligibility criteria are structured using the Participant Concept Context (PCC) framework. These will include studies involving culturally or demographically diverse research teams that explicitly address the researcher’s identity/positionality/reflexivity at the team level, as well as how these dynamics shape research processes and relationships between researchers and communities conducting health inequalities research in HIC. English-language, peer-reviewed empirical and conceptual/theoretical papers published from 2010 onwards will be included; grey literature and non-health contexts will be excluded. Two reviewers will independently screen titles, abstracts and full texts in Covidence, resolving disagreements through consensus procedures. Results will be presented in a PRISMA-ScR flow diagram and synthesised narratively, supported by tabulated summaries.

Discussion

This review will synthesise and provide important insights into how team-level researcher identity and positionality are defined and enacted within HIC health inequalities research, and where across the research cycle, these dynamics most influence study decisions, collaboration, and outputs.

Review Registration

Open Science Framework (OSF) (https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/29KPT).

Background

Chronic diseases, such as type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, cancers and respiratory diseases such as Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), account for the greatest burden of morbidity and mortality (about 75%) worldwide, and disproportionately impact marginalised racial and ethnic minority groups (Frieden, 2013; Roth et al., 2020; Safiri et al., 2022; Shaw et al., 2016). These ‘health inequalities/disparities’ (used interchangeably), defined as ‘preventable differences in the burden of disease, injury, and opportunities to achieve optimal health’, persist globally and disproportionately affect marginalised communities (Braveman, 2014, 2016). Addressing these inequalities requires a multifaceted approach that includes cultural competence, equitable access to healthcare, and targeted interventions tailored to the specific needs of diverse populations (Dover & Belon, 2019).

Research into health inequalities is increasingly gaining attention as funders and researchers work to understand how to reduce unequal health outcomes and the burden on health systems and individuals (Ford et al., 2021; Gkiouleka et al., 2023; NIHR, 2025). Marginalised and ethnic minority groups are often unequally affected but remain underrepresented in health and care research (Pardhan et al., 2025; Redwood & Gill, 2013). Barriers to research participation include issues such as access, cultural differences between patients and professionals, language barriers, and others (Luebbert & Perez, 2016; Pardhan et al., 2025; Shea et al., 2022). Codesigning interventions with diverse communities has been recognised as a strategy more likely to lead to support that is relevant and impactful (Bowers et al., 2017; Maina et al., 2023; Salway et al., 2015; Shea et al., 2022). Researchers from these diverse communities/minority groups are in a unique position to conduct this research, as they are often familiar with the languages and cultures of the communities they work with (Prinjha et al., 2020; Salway et al., 2015).

Researcher Identity and Positionality

In this article, researcher identity refers to an overarching concept of who a researcher is, including their social and cultural background, such as race, gender, socioeconomic status, and lived experience, which researchers bring to a project and that can significantly influence their research perspective and engagement with participants (Joseph et al., 2021; Malterud, 2001). Positionality refers to where the researcher stands in relation to the participants, and also ‘reflects the position that the researcher has chosen to adopt within a given research study’ (71) (Savin-Baden & Major, 2023). The researchers’ position also encompasses how they view themselves and how others view them: “as either an insider or outsider, someone with power or who feels powerless or coming from a privileged or disadvantaged situation” (p. 191) (Ozano & Khatri, 2018; Rowe, 2014). However, literature on the topic has long highlighted that treating researcher positionality as either “insider” or “outsider” is too simplistic, as the two positions are not clearly delineated (Katyal & King, 2014). Milligan (2016), Katyal and King (2014), and others argue that positionality exists on a shifting continuum shaped by context, so a researcher is never fully one or the other (Katyal & King, 2014; Milligan, 2016). Researchers may be cultural outsiders yet professional insiders, and their degrees of ‘insiderness’ and ‘outsiderness’ can shift over time as their lives, experiences and knowledge change (Katyal & King, 2014). Thomson and Gunter (2011) describe this as “liquid identity”, stating that a researcher’s positionality is context-dependent and may not necessarily be under the researcher’s control (Thomson & Gunter, 2011).

In research teams composed of members from diverse cultural or demographic backgrounds, these identities can shape every stage of the research process, affecting trust, communication, and influencing data collection and the interpretation of findings (Davis & Wagner, 2019; Rowe, 2014). Emerging research suggests that researchers from within the communities under investigation can effectively navigate complex cultural dynamics and establish trust with participants (Prinjha et al., 2020). Consequently, having a culturally diverse team can ultimately enhance the quality of data collected and the relevance and applicability of the research findings to marginalised communities (Nyashanu, 2022).

Cultural diversity (the coexistence of cultures and different backgrounds, such as race, ethnicity, gender, and religion) within teams has been reported to present both opportunities and challenges (Saouma & Isar, 2015). Stahl et al. describe this duality as a “double-edged sword,” where diversity can lead to friction and conflict and may introduce challenges related to communication, power relations, and epistemological assumptions (Stahl & Maznevski, 2021). However, they also agree that it catalyses innovative problem-solving and enhanced team functioning. Understanding these dynamics is particularly important when investigating health disparities that affect marginalised communities, where trust, cultural sensitivity, and community-engaged approaches can significantly influence the quality and impact of the research (Muhammad et al., 2015). Reflexivity, or more explicitly, team reflexivity, has been proposed as a way to address these dynamics and address these influences in the research process (Muhammad et al., 2015).

Reflexivity in Health Research

Defined as the ‘relational awareness’ of how researchers and participants influence each other (Warin, 2011), reflexivity considers the researcher-participant relationship as mutually shaping. Rather than assuming the researcher simply “collects” data, it asks: how do my identity, stance, and decisions influence what is said, how it is said, and how I interpret it, and how do participants’ views of me shape the same? (Yip, 2024). Malterud (2001) suggests that reflexivity starts by “identifying preconceptions brought into the project by the researcher, representing previous personal and professional experiences, pre-study beliefs about how things are and what is to be investigated, motivation and qualifications for exploration of the field, and perspectives and theoretical foundations related to education and interests” (p. 484) (Malterud, 2001).

Reflexivity enables researchers to critically examine their own identities, positionalities, and standpoints in relation to the research process, which is essential for forming comprehensive assessments of study findings (Evans et al., 2025; Olmos-Vega et al., 2023). In multicultural teams, structured team-reflexive discussions, as described in Olmos-Vega et al. (2023), are a useful tool that encourages researchers to critically examine how their experiences shape their participation in projects and influence their qualitative research orientations (Olmos-Vega et al., 2023). They are crucial for equitable collaboration and for producing contextually relevant knowledge, especially in navigating research involving health disparities (Muhammad et al., 2015).

To date, no review has explored/mapped the existing literature on the interactions between researcher identity, the cultural dynamics within research teams, and their impacts on health inequalities research. This highlights the need for further investigation into how these factors influence research outcomes and community engagement. Reviewing published literature on this topic could improve understanding of how these intersections shape research processes and outcomes in health disparities research.

Objective

The purpose of this scoping review is to map out how researcher identity has been conceptualised, theorised, and reported in diverse teams investigating health inequalities in High-Income Countries (HIC).

Methods

This scoping review methodology will follow the latest guidance from the Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) (Peters et al., 2022) to explore research on researcher identity in culturally diverse research teams studying health inequalities in HICS, examine how this specific research is conducted, and identify knowledge gaps. The JBI’s manual for review authors mandates the use of an a priori protocol for scoping reviews; it also recommends that the inclusion and exclusion criteria should clearly relate to the objectives and research questions. This protocol adheres to this requirement, and the scoping review will incorporate the recommendations during its execution.

The mandatory five stages of the six-stage Arksey and O’Malley framework will be used in conducting this scoping review, with the optional sixth stage excluded. These six stages are: Identifying the research question; Identifying relevant studies; Study selection; Charting the data, collating, summarising and reporting the results; and the optional consultation exercise. The sixth stage, the consultation phase, is optional; however, Arksey and O’Malley suggest that including it can enhance the review (Arksey & O'Malley, 2005). In addition, the reporting process of this research will adhere to the preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analysis extension for scoping reviews (PRISMA-ScR) (Tricco et al., 2018). This study has been registered in the Open Science Framework (OSF): 10.17605/OSF.IO/29KPT.

Stage 1: Identifying the Research Question

We will identify from existing published literature what is known about how researcher identity has been conceptualised, theorised, and reported in diverse teams investigating health inequalities in HIC. Our scoping review will describe the following research questions:

(1) In what ways is researcher identity defined and conceptualised within culturally diverse health disparities research teams in high-income countries?

(2) What theoretical frameworks or methodological approaches are used to examine the interplay between researcher identity and team dynamics in this field?

(3) What are the reported impacts of researcher identity on research processes, collaboration, and outcomes in empirical studies?

Stage 2: Identifying Relevant Studies

The eligibility criteria in this scoping review are constructed based on the PCC (participants/concept/context) framework (Table 1).

Table 1.

Eligibility Criteria

PCC element	Inclusion criteria	Exclusion criteria
Participants	- Research teams (two or more people) or studies explicitly involving research team members as the unit of analysis.	- Studies focusing solely on individual researcher reflections without reference to a team context.
	- Teams composed of members from culturally or demographically diverse backgrounds (e.g., diverse races/ethnicities, national origins, disciplines, career stages).	- Studies of single-investigator projects.
Concept	- Examination of researcher identity, including notions of positionality, reflexivity, insider/outsider status, power/privilege, or self-reflection.	- Papers not addressing any aspect of researcher identity or positionality.
	- How identity shapes or is shaped by team dynamics, decision-making, data collection/analysis, or researcher-community relationships.	- Studies focused only on participant identities without reflexive analysis of researchers.
Context	- Health disparities research (e.g., disparities, inequities, social determinants of health, underserved populations).	- Non-health contexts (e.g., education, corporate, market research without a health focus).
	- Culturally diverse or multidisciplinary research teams.	- Grey literature (reports, theses, conference proceedings).
	- Peer-reviewed journal articles, English language, published 2010-present.	- Articles in languages other than English or published before 2010.
	- Empirical (qualitative, quantitative, mixed-methods) or conceptual/theoretical papers.

Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria

Table 1 presents the inclusion and exclusion criteria. We include peer-reviewed articles from high-income countries, published in English since 2010. This period marks a notable rise in the appearance of health inequalities and related terms in publications (Brownson et al., 2021), as well as the introduction of the Equality Act 2010 in the United Kingdom. Studies must pertain to health disparities research or related topics and describe the research team’s identity (including reflexivity, positionality, and team reflection) or the interplay of identities within team research settings. We will include empirical or theoretical work, using qualitative, quantitative, or mixed-methods designs, during the title and abstract screening stage. Efforts will be made to contact authors of relevant articles whose titles and abstracts meet the inclusion criteria, but whose full text is not available in the public domain, via email.

We will exclude studies published before 2010, written in a language other than English, or that have irretrievable records. Studies that do not address research team identity or positionality, or that use those terms in a different context, will also be excluded. Additionally, studies that are single-author reflective essays lacking a team context, focus on non-health contexts (e.g., corporate/business or purely educational settings), and are grey literature (e.g., theses, conference proceedings) will also be ineligible.

Search Strategy

The search strategy was developed by identifying key terms and keywords relevant to the study’s purpose and research questions. The three-step search strategy recommended by the JBI manual for review authors will be carried out in this stage. The first step involves an initial search of MEDLINE (PubMed), Web of Science and Scopus electronic databases to retrieve relevant articles. The title and abstract of selected articles from this initial broad search will be scanned for keywords and index terms used to describe the articles. In the second step, the keywords and index terms identified in the first step will be used to develop comprehensive search strategies (search strings) using controlled vocabulary and text words. The focused search strategy, reflective of the research question, will combine key terms across three concept areas:

• Researcher Identity: Terms or keywords such as “researcher identity,” “positionality,” “reflexivity,” “team-reflection,” “ethnic minority,” and variations specifying Black or South Asian research team members.

• Team Diversity: Keywords include “multicultural team,” “culturally diverse research team”

• Health Disparities: Terms such as “health disparities,” “health inequities,” “health inequalities,” “social determinants of health,” “underserved population,” and “global health.”

The search strategy will be tailored to the specifications of each database searched, as shown in Table 2. The third and final step will involve ‘hand-searching’ of selected, relevant records to ensure comprehensive coverage of the appropriate and available literature. Two authors will participate in this three-step search for relevant records.

Table 2.

PUBMED Search Strategy

PubMed (all fields, MeSH terms)
1	(“Researcher identity” or “research team identity”)
2	(“Intersectionality or “team reflexivity” or “insider/outsider”)
3	1 or 2
4	(“Multicultural team” or “culturally diverse team”)
5	(“Health inequ*” or “health disparit*”)
6	4 and 5
7	(“Social determinants of health” or “chronic health condition”)
8	1 and 4 and 5
9	2 and 4 and 7

Stage 3: Study Selection

All articles meeting the inclusion criteria found through the search will be managed by EndNote for storage and then imported into the Covidence review management platform (Innovation, 2021). Duplicate articles will be removed. Two reviewers will independently screen the titles and abstracts in Covidence. Covidence’s machine learning capabilities will be used to organise the number of studies excluded after carefully screening titles and abstracts, and irrelevant studies will be removed based on the eligibility criteria. Once the potentially relevant studies have been selected, the reviewers will read the full-text articles to make a final decision on whether to include them in the review. If the reviewers are unable to decide, they will flag the article for discussion with a third reviewer. In cases of uncertainty or ambiguity, the team will include the record. Details of the study selection and decision process including the duplicate citation removal, title, abstract and full text exclusions with reasons will be presented in a Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA-SR) flow diagram, a schematic draft of which is presented in Figure 1, as recommended in the PRISMA extension for Scoping Reviews (Tricco et al., 2018) checklist.

Figure 1.

PRISMA-SR flow diagram

Stage 4: Data Extraction

The data from the primary search of included articles will be extracted and charted using a data extraction form created by the team, following the research question and the eligibility criteria of this study (Peters et al., 2022). The extraction and charting process would be conducted by the main author (AA). Cross-checking of the data will be undertaken by the second reviewer (TT), and any disagreements regarding dissimilarities in the extracted data will be settled by the third reviewer (SP). The data extraction form will be available on the research teams’ Google Drive for ease of data entry and sharing by the reviewers.

Details of the data from the included study in this review will be presented by adopting guidelines (Peters et al., 2022) and the extraction form. The form will be updated as necessary throughout the study’s progress. The data charting form will be designed to extract information relevant to the review question and objectives and will include the elements outlined in Table 3. A notes section will also be included to record additional relevant information, such as reflections, interpretations of results, and other discussion points.

Table 3.

Data Extraction Form

Publication details	Author(s), year of publication, study location (country) and setting.
Study design	Qualitative, quantitative, mixed methods, or conceptual/theoretical paper.
Theoretical frameworks or methodological approach	Frameworks such as intersectionality, critical race theory, feminist theory, team reflexivity tools, etc
Dimensions of researcher identity	Aspects such as race/ethnicity, gender, discipline, and personal/team experiences.
Team composition	Details on disciplinary, cultural, or demographic diversity of the research team.
Methods and outcomes	Details of data collection methods, measures of collaboration, reported team challenges/benefits.
Key findings	Related to how the researcher’s or research team’s identity shaped research processes and outcomes.

Stage 5: Collating, Summarising and Reporting the Results

This scoping review aims to explore how researcher identity/positionality is defined, theorised, and operationalised at the team level within health inequalities research conducted in high-income countries (HIC) and will synthesise reported impacts on research processes and outputs. As is appropriate for scoping reviews, we will not conduct a quantitative synthesis of study data, assess the methodological quality, or perform a risk-of-bias assessment of the included studies.

The scoping review will report the search results and the number of records included at each stage, following the PRISMA-ScR (Tricco et al., 2018). Data extracted from the included studies will be collated and synthesised both narratively and in tables to summarise themes across the studies related to definitions and conceptualisations of researcher identity, theoretical frameworks, methodological approaches used, and reported impacts on research processes, team dynamics, and outcomes. Study characteristics (year, country/HIC classification, discipline, team composition, community involvement, patient and public involvement and engagement (PPIE), study design and setting) will be summarised descriptively or quantitatively. We will capture reported mechanisms or impacts (e.g., access & trust, method adaptation, interpretation shifts, redistribution of labour/power, harms/risks, outputs & influence). This will be followed by an informed discussion based on careful consideration of the results, in line with the purpose and objective of the review.

Study Team Positionality and Reflexivity

Our team comprises culturally diverse researchers with mixed disciplinary backgrounds, representing expertise in various methodological areas, including public health, social science, geography, community engagement, and research career stages (non-doctoral, doctoral to senior faculty), as well as roles (academic, clinical, and community-engaged). Team members include researchers who self-identify across racialised/ethnic groups, genders, migration statuses, socioeconomic backgrounds, and language repertoires (including bilingual and multilingual speakers). We also include members with prior experience in community engagement and health service roles. These social locations can afford both insider and outsider perspectives on health inequalities in HIC contexts. As part of our role, the research team leads the Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) workstream for the ‘Co-design and evaluation of an intervention to increase uptake of Pulmonary Rehabilitation for people living with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease’ (UPTURN) study, an NIHR-funded five-year clinical trial and, to our knowledge, the first NIHR-funded study to embed a formal EDI workstream across the full trial lifecycle. This workstream is being systematically evaluated as the study progresses and forms part of the trial’s impact evaluation, which in turn informs our reflexive approach in this review.

In conceptualising this scoping review, we prioritised team-level (not solely individual) identity given our unique team dynamic, working together on a specific research study (UPTURN) involving health inequalities that affect ethnic minority groups in the UK, and the need to establish a bounded scope as is recommended for scoping reviews (Levac et al., 2010; Peters et al., 2022). Additionally, several team members have worked in culturally diverse research groups and observed identity-linked impacts on recruitment, analysis, and dissemination. We scoped to HIC to maintain conceptual comparability in governance, equity language and reporting practices. We required an explicit link between identity/positionality and research processes or outputs, reflecting our belief, based on lived research experience, that declarative statements alone are insufficient for learning about mechanisms. Finally, the protocol published on OSF will include (i) full search strategies; (ii) the screening/decision log; (iii) the data-charting template; and (iv) a reflexivity appendix summarising the themes and how they altered decisions. Our aim with this is not to claim neutrality, but to make our standpoint visible, demonstrate how it shaped the review, and provide enough documentation so that others can trace, critique and reproduce our decisions.

Discussion

This scoping review will map a rapidly growing body of literature that has engaged with team-level identity and reflexivity in health inequalities research in HIC. The key contribution of our scoping review is to systematically identify and characterise how researcher identity/positionality is defined, theorised, and operationalised at the team level, and summarise the reported implications for research processes and outcomes (e.g., recruitment, data collection, analysis and dissemination). This would provide researchers, methodologists, and principal investigators building a diverse research team with a collective resource that: (i) provides a record of definitions, frameworks, and tools used to support team reflexivity; and (ii) descriptions of how these have been applied in empirical studies and conceptual work to highlight patterns and evidence gaps (Munn et al., 2022). We anticipate that this will have practical implications for study planning, transparency in authorship and labour, community engagement/PPIE, and compliance with the expectations of various funding bodies regarding EDI, especially in HIC research settings.

Limitations

Several limitations have been noted. Firstly, limiting our search to only include studies written in English language and date sources from 2010 to the present may underrepresent research work with teams in non-English-speaking HIC and earlier foundational contributions. Although we will mitigate this by citation chasing, some materials may remain under-captured if outside our predefined search strategy and databases. Additionally, our restricted inclusion to HIC settings to improve conceptual comparability and policy relevance may limit the generalisability of our findings to low-middle income countries (LMIC) contexts or to HIC-LMIC collaborations where structural power and governance conditions are different.

Secondly, as with any equity-focused synthesis, the reviewer’s social location and disciplinary background may have influenced framing, inclusion judgments and interpretation. We intend to mitigate this by engaging in explicit, reflexive discussions and documenting our decisions. Thirdly, as this is a scoping review, we are mapping concepts and evidence, not estimating effects or assessing study quality; whatever “impacts” we report reflect the authors’ accounts and are descriptive in nature. Finally, reporting biases (including selective emphasis on positive examples and under-reporting of identity-linked labour or harms) may skew the apparent balance of benefits and risks.

Despite these limitations, this review will create a comprehensive map at the field level that combines various scattered evidence on how diverse research teams in HIC engage with identity and power, when these dynamics are most relevant in the research cycle, and which tools or frameworks are actually employed. By highlighting these practices and systemic gaps, the review can aid in better planning, promote more transparent reporting (including authorship and labour), and foster more reflexive partnerships with communities, thereby enhancing the equity perspective and the genuine impact of health inequalities research.