Answering Why

Research, especially social science qualitative research, is wrought with personal biases and subjectivities that tint our analytic interpretations. And since my dissertation uses a mixed method approach - but mostly qualitative - I need to be particularly reflexive and attentive to the process: how I'm feeling about my data and participants, how I'm relating to them, and how these views are informing my analyses.

I've maintained that in the social sciences, maybe particularly in psychology, we study what we study because of some personal connection to the topic. My need to understand vulnerability and resilience in children, especially among children in seemingly the most dire situations, comes from a desperate drive to want to do something; it's a frustration that comes from realizing my privilege perhaps, and hoping that there's something I can do or understand that can better my participants' situations AND my own life. But the research has now become about understanding motivation and achievement in these kids who we are probably too quick to assume lack the skills to be allowed to achieve and succeed in a society that quickly shuns and stigmatizes them. I feel strange wanting to study vulnerability; something always seemed very wrong about that. So instead I decided I wanted to study resilience, but that hardly seemed like a solution to the root of this problem. This idea of motivation to achieve is the personal connection.

All my life, all I've known and learned is how to achieve. I've somehow learned well how to motivate myself to "achieve." And "achieve" for what sake? Often, for the praise of family, for recognition, and simply, to prove that I can do it. Achievement has not been necessary for me to survive, but it has been necessary for me to prove myself - for better or for worse. But, my participants' perceptions of achievement are along the lines of acquiring the skills necessary for basic survival. Basic Survival. We're not talking Yale and Harvard. We're talking, do I have enough food to eat, and can I protect myself from an attacker.

So I enter my dissertation with this bias - this varied definition and reason for achievement. Why are we motivated to achieve? For what reasons? When we are successful, what does that mean? When are we satisfied? When we are not motivated, why is that? Where do our hopes and dreams come from? How sure are we that we can attain those hopes and dreams? Do we have it within ourselves to realize them, or are we dependent on other sources?

Here is the beginning of the reflexive process, one that will be iterative, growing, and continual over the next several months.