The Elephant IN the Room

Hello Curious Learner,

You might have seen on social media that I successfully defended my PhD thesis last month! My exam was intense and required a lot of critical thinking. During the second round of questions, one of my examiners asked me a question that wasn’t the hardest yet the most personal…

The overall purpose of my PhD was to explore women’s perceptions and experiences of health during pregnancy and postpartum while facing difficult life circumstances (e.g., low income, food insecurity, recent immigration to Canada, social and geographical isolation) and accessing community-based programs in Alberta. The external examiner noticed in my thesis dedication and acknowledgements that I had two babies during my PhD and asked if I was pregnant during my data collection through focus groups. She described her question as addressing the “elephant in the room” within the context of my thesis. I know her question might be perceived as inappropriate but in qualitative research that personal fact mattered, and she was very supportive in providing context to her question.

The answer was “No, I wasn’t,” and I continued by saying that it could have changed how women interacted and what they shared with me. I probably would have had to find additional strategies to address the additional layer of subjectivity. Even though I wasn’t pregnant at the time of my data collection, I finished analyzing some of my data after my first maternity leave, which very likely changed my final interpretation of the findings. I know for a fact that my perception of pregnancy and birth complications changed. I knew what it meant to have birth complications because I experienced it myself, and knowing that women coped with that on top of so many other difficult life circumstances made me look at their realities with much more compassion.

Based on my answer, the examiners in the room suggested me to include more about my personal journey as a woman and mother throughout my PhD in my thesis. I ended up writing an additional section to my methods chapter called “positionality in research” where I described who I saw myself as when I started graduate school in January 2014, and how/what changed in the course of the following six years. I found my positionality in research to be an incredible reflexivity exercise that pushed me to think about the moments in my personal life that shifted and shaped my worldview. It was so powerful and deep, and I would encourage you to do the same. If you are a graduate student, talk to your supervisor about doing this and including in your thesis. If you are doing research in another setting or as part of your work, you can journal your thoughts and debrief with a trusted peer. I wrote a blog post on reflexivity that I highly recommend you to read because it is very complimentary to what I am writing here today.

Remember, you won’t have an elephant in the room if you proactively acknowledge and process the fact that life happens to all of us.

Talk soon,

Maira