Mirroring self: Researchers facing themselves through the interviewees

Introduction A key ontological and epistemological issues in qualitative research lies in the relationships between the Known and the Knower, as evidenced in closeness versus distance to the phenomenon under study.

Goals and Methods The presentation will reflect on the researchers’ mirroring the self in studying old people. Interviews with 32 women and 25 men aged 60-71 will be used as data to substantiate the reflective experience based on the sameness and the difference of life challenges of the two sides. The analysis of findings identified as a key theme the experience of “In -Betweenness” between the creation of a coherent narrative of the interviewees which includes continuous competence, doing and coping and the consciousness to old age and its dictums.

Results These issues are much similar with the ones the researchers were struggling with parallelly in their life. Throughout the analysis we the researchers face our existential situatedness (Dasein or being in the world) with the interviewees’. The result is a circular process, in which interviewees’ answers become the starting point to researchers’ Dasein. This leads to self-reflection concerning questions as to what is important in this world? and why does it matter? Eventually the self-answers are projected and integrated in the analysis.

Conclusions The presentation will illustrate the integrative processes of duality and their presence in the interviews. One the one hand, reflecting on others and our being in the world help to clarify the meanings in the interviews and the multiple ways they affect our life themes. On the other hand, such processes bring us face-to-face with anxiety, our being as lonely existential creators in facing the unclear and difficult unanswerable life questions.