Leslie Gelling looks at the insights and challenges brought up by methodological studies from a feminist perspective

FEMINIST RESEARCH focuses on the experiences of women in natural social settings, where the aim is to ‘make women visible, raise their consciousness and empower them’ (Holloway and Wheeler 2013). Adopting a feminist approach influences what questions researchers ask and how they think about their data, but it does not usually influence how data is managed or analysed. This edition of Nurse Researcher includes two themed papers exploring issues around the collection and analysis of qualitative data in research projects that have adopted a feminist approach. The first paper considers methodological issues in a feminist-informed study and the second paper describes how taking account of feminist ideologies might enhance interpretive interactionism. In the first paper, Blythe et al (2013) describe four challenges related to acting as an insider researcher in a study using a ‘feminist-informed storytelling research design’ to explore the experiences of Australian women providing long-term foster care. The authors argue that this study was ideally suited to a feminist approach because foster care, the focus of this research, is ‘heavily gendered’ with women providing the majority of care. The challenges explored are not unique to feminist research but are common to researchers adopting an insider approach to data collection. While insider researchers often adopt or develop into an insider role, the lead researcher involved in collecting data for this first themed paper was firmly embedded in the research setting because she also had considerable experience as a foster parent. This can only have intensified the methodological and scientific challenges associated with being an insider researcher and, it could be argued, make this researcher’s personal circumstances a reason why she should not have been leading the research. Blythe et al (2013) clearly considered this issue when suggesting that the first of the four challenges for an insider researcher relates to ‘assumed understanding’. The authors argue that being a true insider, where there is clearly a shared experience between the researcher and the research participant, can result in important information being omitted during storytelling in the participant’s belief that the researcher already understands the experience being investigated and does not, therefore, need to be told parts of the story being recounted. The strategy adopted to counter this challenge was to probe participants when the researcher recognised that a participant was assuming understanding, demonstrated by phrases such as ‘you know what I mean’. Researchers repeatedly face the challenge of encouraging research participants to share their experiences and perceptions of that experience as freely as possible. This requires that researchers balance the benefits of insider knowledge and understanding (reflexivity) against the need to ensure ‘analytical objectivity’. In the example of insider research presented in the first themed paper, it can be argued that the lead researcher was too close to the participants being researched and that creating the necessary balance was bound to be difficult in this situation. What is not clear in reading this paper is whether this data collection could have been performed as effectively by someone who did not share this researcher’s personal experiences. Also, might a researcher who did not share this experience have collected more informative data? Would they have found more searching and explanatory responses? These researchers show both the advantages and disadvantages of undertaking insider research but it is unclear how well they believe they balanced their roles in this research. What is clear, however, is that research informed by feminist theory was the most meaningful approach for this research. It was also reassuring that the authors did not claim that the challenges they explored were unique to feminist-informed research. A feminist approach to research