Reviewer's report
Title:Autoethnography and severe perineal trauma - an unexpected journey from
disembodiment to embodiment.
Version:2Date:23 October 2014
Reviewer: Gill Thomson
Reviewer's report:
Thank you asking me to review this very personal, insightful paper that explores
the ‘transformation’ of an autoethnographer through her PhD studies. While it is a
well written paper, that provides in-depth insights into the challenges and
rewards experienced by a researcher who shares experiences of those being
researched, I do feel it would be best placed in a more methodological based
journal that welcomes reflexive accounts, e.g. Qualitative Health Research,
Qualitative Inquiry. A number of suggestions that could be considered for
re-writes of the paper are offered below.
1) In order to strengthen the paper’s appeal to a more qualitative methodological
audience, the following points could be considered:
a. Further integration of women’s voices to emphasise the multi-vocal narrative
approach. References to the wider literature when women’s voices are included
(i.e. within the ‘positioning myself amongst the participants’ section), e.g.
‘Research has reported that women……’ could also be removed as it detracts
from a multi-vocal approach, and can read as a bit disjointed.
b. To include further detail of the transformative emancipatory process adopted
for the study (e.g. issues referred to within the paper by Sweetman et al, 2010.
Qualitative Inquiry 2010 16: 441 Use of the Transformative Framework in Mixed
Methods Studies?)
c. To integrate more theoretical and philosophical literature that discusses
disembodiment and embodiment to illuminate the researcher’s (and others)
transformation. I feel this would help move it from what reads as a predominately
reflexive account, to one which is more theoretically and methodologically
informed.
2) At times it is not clear what study is being referred to – in the abstract it refers
to a mixed-methods study, in the methods it refers to interviews with 12 women
(so not mixed-methods?) – later on it refers to ‘one of my studies’ and then on
page 18 a ‘meta ethnographic synthesis’? Further clarification as to what data
are being used and from which study would be helpful for the reader.
3) General points:
a) There are a few small typos, e.g. first sentence at top of page 9.
b) There are some repetitions in the text, e.g. challenges of autoethnography that
could be tightened up with further proof reading.
c) While in the methods it refers to the researcher sharing her story with ‘all’
participants – this feels contradictory to the reflexive note (page 15) that states
that it felt ‘inappropriate to tell my story’? So how was this managed? Was the
researcher’s story not shared on this occasion, or introduced later? I do feel that
sharing of the researcher’s narrative and how this not only facilitated the
research, as well as enabled ‘transformation’ through disembodiment to
embodiment (on a personal basis as well as for others) is really interesting - the
author may want to consider this further in how the journey/information is
presented.
Level of interest: An article of insufficient interest to warrant publication in a
scientific/medical journal
Quality of written English: Acceptable
Statistical review: No, the manuscript does not need to be seen by a statistician.
Declaration of competing interests:
I declare that I have no competing interests.