Feeling at home in an experiential research group: reflections on the research process in collaborative pluralism

ABSTRACT This paper presents a set of reflections on the process of conducting a qualitative pluralistic group research project. As our work progressed, we began to spend as much time discussing this group work process as we did focusing on our specific research topic. We begin by giving some background to how we got started and the research study itself as well as saying something about who the group is. We then describe our process and examine how we came to see that what we were doing shared a lot of similarities with forms of pluralistic research. We discuss some of the challenges and opportunities we faced along the way and end with some final thoughts on where we might go next. We argue that it is important to pay close attention to the research process as it plays a crucial role in shaping the insights that can be gained from a piece of research. This paper contributes to the growing literature on reflexivity in qualitative psychology in general and the exploration of the research process in in collaborative pluralistic research designs in particular.