Reflexivity and Positionality Statements: A Template With Worked Examples

A positionality statement and a reflexivity statement are the written artifact: the actual paragraph (or short section) in a qualitative manuscript where a researcher names their social location in relation to the study and explains how it was accounted for methodologically. That is a narrower question than the ethical and reporting obligations behind it — covered in CASRAI’s Research Ethics in Qualitative Research guide — or how reflexive commentary gets woven into ethnographic narrative prose, covered in Ethnographic Writing Conventions. This guide is the template-and-example page: what to actually write, where it goes, and what a defensible one looks like.

Positionality vs. reflexivity: quick reference

Term	What it refers to	What appears in the manuscript
Positionality	The researcher’s own social location — discipline, institutional role, and personal characteristics (e.g. professional background, insider/outsider status relative to the population) relevant to the study.	A short statement naming that location and its likely relevance to access, rapport, or interpretation.
Reflexivity	The ongoing practice of examining how that position is shaping data collection, analysis, and interpretation, rather than treating the researcher as a neutral instrument.	A statement (often the same paragraph as the positionality statement) describing what that examination found and what was done about it — e.g. a reflexive journal, peer debriefing, or member checking.
Reflexive journal / field diary	A private, ongoing record kept throughout data collection and analysis.	Not published itself — it is the evidence base the reflexivity statement draws on and, in some COREQ-governed studies, is cited as a methodological control.

In practice, most published qualitative papers combine positionality and reflexivity into one statement rather than two: a sentence or two naming who the researcher is in relation to the study, followed by a sentence or two on how that was managed. The rest of this guide treats them as one combined artifact, which is how COREQ and SRQR both frame the requirement.

Why journals ask for one

Two EQUATOR Network-endorsed reporting guidelines are the main reason this has become a near-standard expectation rather than an optional disclosure:

• COREQ (Consolidated Criteria for Reporting Qualitative Research, Tong, Sainsbury & Craig), a 32-item checklist built specifically for interview and focus-group studies, opens with a “Research team and reflexivity” domain covering the researcher’s credentials, occupation, relevant experience, gender, and — critically — any prior relationship with participants before the study began. COREQ is the checklist most journals require for interview-based qualitative health and social-science research.
• SRQR (Standards for Reporting Qualitative Research, O’Brien et al.), a 21-item checklist that applies across qualitative designs generally (grounded theory, ethnography, phenomenology, case study, not just interviews), includes a dedicated item on the researcher’s characteristics and reflexivity: personal attributes, qualifications and experience, and any assumptions or relationships that may have affected the methods, results, or their interpretation.

Journals that ask authors to follow COREQ or SRQR — increasingly common across health services research, nursing, medical education, and qualitative social science — are, in effect, requiring a positionality/reflexivity disclosure as a condition of reporting completeness, not as an optional reflective aside. Last verified against the EQUATOR Network and the original COREQ/SRQR publications: 2026-08-16.

Where it goes in the manuscript

Placement is discipline- and journal-dependent; there is no single universal rule, but three patterns cover most cases:

Manuscript context	Typical placement
Interview/focus-group studies following COREQ (health services, nursing, medical education)	Woven into the Methods section, often under a “Research team” or “Data collection” subheading, alongside interviewer credentials and any prior relationship with participants — frequently a paragraph rather than a separately labeled statement.
Broader qualitative designs following SRQR (grounded theory, phenomenology, case study)	A short paragraph in Methods, sometimes under an explicit “Researcher characteristics and reflexivity” or “Reflexivity” subheading.
Ethnography, autoethnography, participatory action research, and much education/critical-qualitative work	Frequently a standalone “Positionality Statement” section, sometimes placed before Methods (near the introduction) rather than inside it — conventions here are journal- and field-specific, so check recent issues of the target journal.

When a target journal has no explicit house convention, the safest default is a short paragraph at the start of Methods (or as its own labeled subsection immediately after it), since that is where a reader expects to find researcher-characteristics information when evaluating how the data were produced.

A reusable template

A defensible statement answers four questions, in roughly this order. Treat each as a prompt to fill in, not a rigid formula:

1. Who am I in relation to this study? Relevant professional role, disciplinary training, institutional affiliation, and any personal characteristic (shared or differing from participants) that plausibly affected access, rapport, or interpretation — not an unbounded personal biography.
2. What is my relationship to the participants or setting? Insider (member of the population/setting studied), outsider, or somewhere between; any prior relationship (colleague, clinician, prior collaborator) that existed before the study began, since COREQ specifically asks for this.
3. What assumptions or expectations did I bring in? Named briefly and specifically — a disciplinary lens, a prior hypothesis, a professional stake in the outcome — rather than a generic disclaimer that biases exist.
4. What did I do about it, methodologically? The concrete step(s) taken to manage the influence named above: a reflexive journal kept throughout fieldwork, peer debriefing, member checking, an audit trail, bracketing interviews before analysis, or an independent second coder. This is the sentence reviewers look for; a statement that names a bias but describes no methodological response reads as disclosure without rigor.

Worked examples

Illustrative examples only — these are composite, generic statements written to show structure and are not drawn from or attributed to any real study, author, or institution.

Example: insider-researcher, health-services interview study

The first author is a registered nurse with eight years of clinical experience in the inpatient unit where recruitment took place, and had a prior collegial relationship with several potential participants before the study began. This insider position likely supported rapport and candor in interviews, but also risked participants moderating their responses out of concern for how disclosures might be perceived by a colleague. To manage this, the first author did not interview any current direct reports, disclosed her clinical role explicitly at the start of each interview, and kept a reflexive journal noting moments where her clinical assumptions appeared to shape a follow-up question; entries were reviewed with a co-author with no clinical role at the site during weekly debriefs throughout data collection.

Example: outsider-researcher, ethnographic/education study

The researcher entered the field site as an outsider: a doctoral student with no prior affiliation to the school district, no shared racial or linguistic background with most participating families, and an institutional position (university-based researcher) that carried different social capital than that of the teachers and parents in the study. This distance likely limited access to informal, backstage talk available to a known community member, but also reduced the risk that participants would shape responses around an existing relationship. The researcher addressed this by extending fieldwork to fourteen months to build trust incrementally, using a local research assistant for initial introductions, and returning transcribed field notes to three key participants for member checking before analysis.

Common mistakes

• Naming identity without naming effect. “I am a White, middle-class researcher” states positionality but not reflexivity — it doesn’t say how that position plausibly shaped the study or what was done in response. Reviewers increasingly flag this as incomplete.
• No methodological response. A statement that identifies a potential bias but describes no concrete step (journaling, debriefing, member checking, bracketing) reads as performative disclosure rather than a reporting-guideline-compliant reflexivity practice.
• Confusing this with a conflict-of-interest or funding disclosure. Positionality/reflexivity concerns interpretive influence on the research itself; COI disclosures concern financial or professional interests. Most journals require both, separately.
• Treating it as one-and-done. COREQ and SRQR both frame reflexivity as an ongoing practice through data collection and analysis, not a single sentence written retrospectively once the manuscript is being drafted. A reflexive journal kept during fieldwork produces a more specific, defensible statement than one written from memory afterward.
• Placing it somewhere a reviewer won’t find it. An uncredited aside in the Discussion or Limitations section doesn’t satisfy COREQ/SRQR reporting expectations, which treat researcher characteristics as Methods-section information a reader needs to evaluate how the data were produced.

Frequently asked questions

What is a positionality statement in qualitative research?

A short section or paragraph, usually in the Methods section, where a researcher names their own social location — discipline, institutional role, and any personal characteristics relevant to the study population — and its likely relevance to access, rapport, or interpretation of the data.

Is a reflexivity statement required by COREQ or SRQR?

Both checklists require reporting on researcher characteristics and their relationship to participants: COREQ through its “Research team and reflexivity” domain (for interview and focus-group studies), and SRQR through a dedicated item on researcher characteristics and reflexivity (across broader qualitative designs). Neither checklist mandates a specific section label, but a journal that requires COREQ or SRQR compliance is, in effect, requiring this content somewhere in the manuscript.

How long should a positionality or reflexivity statement be?

Most published examples run one short paragraph, roughly three to six sentences: who the researcher is in relation to the study, the relationship to participants, the assumption(s) that mattered most, and the concrete step taken to manage them. Standalone “Positionality Statement” sections in ethnography or participatory research can run longer, but padding with generic biography rather than study-relevant detail is a common and avoidable weakness.

What’s the difference between a positionality statement and a reflexivity statement?

Positionality is about who the researcher is in relation to the study; reflexivity is the ongoing practice of examining how that position shapes the research and documenting what was done about it. In practice, most manuscripts combine both into a single statement rather than writing two separate ones.

Do quantitative papers need a positionality statement?

Not conventionally — positionality and reflexivity statements are a qualitative-methods convention tied to interpretivist and constructivist research paradigms, where the researcher is understood as an active interpretive instrument rather than an instrument-independent measurement. Mixed-methods papers typically include one only for the qualitative strand.

Related CASRAI guides

• Research Ethics in Qualitative Research: Consent, Confidentiality, and Positionality — the ethical and reporting obligations behind positionality and reflexivity, including power dynamics and consent.
• Ethnographic Writing Conventions — how reflexive commentary is woven into narrative prose rather than confined to a single statement.
• Writing the Qualitative Methods Section — where the positionality/reflexivity statement fits within the broader Methods section.
• How Qualitative Research Papers Deviate from IMRaD Structure — for standalone-statement placement questions.
• Using First Person (“I”) in a Research Paper — positionality/reflexivity statements are one of the accepted contexts for first-person voice in academic writing.
• Thematic Analysis: A Step-by-Step Guide — where reflexivity re-enters as a rigor criterion during coding and analysis.

Further reading: IMRaD Example — A full illustrative IMRaD outline — Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion — with representative section content, a checklist, and common cross-section drafting mistakes.