I’ve always been taught to keep as many confounding variables out of the data as possible – including myself, my views, thoughts, and opinions. But Dr Hirini Kaa and Patrick Thomsen told a different story. Their personal experiences guided them to their research question and gave them purpose and passion to discover more. Their research was close to home, allowing them to tell their own story as it interacted with their informants’. They didn’t pretend to be outsiders but fully acknowledged their place in the narrative they weaved.
For Dr Hirini Kaa, telling the story of Te Hāhi Mihinare, or the Māori Anglican Church, coincided with telling the stories of his tīpuna. The oral history he had heard passed down through generations became his rich source of data.
Patrick Thomsen also gathered rich qualitative data through conversation. He used talanoa to investigate how Korean gay men in Seattle and Seoul communicate their sexuality, particularly with their families and the Korean American Christian Church. His research was inspired by his own experience of a breakup with a Korean gay man. Therefore, telling the narrative of his data was also a way to tell his own story and reach a form of closure in his personal life.
Both Hirini and Patrick explored their research topics through a cultural lens. Their research spanned cultures and ways of being, giving insight into both the similarities and differences between people groups, while also acknowledging that these groups are not homogenous in themselves. They sought to understand the cultures with which they were working but also drew on their own ethnic backgrounds to ground their research – Hirini through mātauranga Māori, and Patrick through Pacific Research Methodologies.
Hirini’s research was intrinsically Māori. Being part of Te Hāhi Mihinare, he was able to tell his research story from an insider perspective, documenting the history of his tīpuna in the process. Recounting the story from a Māori perspective allowed Hirini to help decolonise the narrative around Māori and Christianity. His research gives insight into how Māori interacted with and felt about Christianity and the Anglican Church, not just how the English felt delivering the message.
Prioritising the insider story was something that Patrick was adamant about in his research. He gave privilege to Korean scholarship, acknowledging Korean history and culture as documented by Koreans. Koreans, not Westerners, after all, have lived experience behind their knowledge and the right to tell their own story.
As well as acknowledging the culture he was working with, Patrick brought in his own Samoan background, as he saw how Korean and Samoan cultures overlap in their views of identity and relationality. Samoan is a collectivist culture in which an individual’s identity is essentially based around their place in their ‘aiga (family), in relation to others. Korean identity is also largely relational. The Korean language depicts this, as grammatical structure and word choice differ depending on the speaker’s relationship with the listener. Patrick, therefore, thought it relevant to pursue his research using Pacific Research Methodologies. He used talanoa (the exchange of ideas through conversation), creating a unique way to study Korean culture.
Being personally involved in their research meant that Hirini and Patrick were passionate to pursue it. What they were studying had importance to them as individuals. Hence, the hours that they invested into their research were not purely out of academic obligation but out of genuine interest. It was clear from their lectures that they enjoyed sharing their research story, and this made it fascinating to listen to.
Of course, the downside of being so personally involved in your research is that biases are prone to creep in unknowingly. When results don’t line up with what you expect or want, it can be easy to excessively challenge or attempt to ignore them, accepting alternatives all too readily. In Psychology, we call this confirmation bias.
Especially when dealing with the messy history of Christianity in Aotearoa, Hirini could have been tempted to skip over some of the harsh parts purely due to his involvement in the Church. Already very aware of the controversial nature of this history when he embarked on his journey, however, he approached the topic with a critical lens. He knew that research could come at a cost, especially when the focus is so close to home.
Patrick’s breakup could have meant that he carried resentment for Korean gay men’s tendency to hide homosexual relationships. When analysing his data, he could have been tempted to inflate any evidence of this or bring his own bias when questioning participants. Patrick was able to acknowledge his positionality, however. In doing so, his research was valuable not only to his personal journey, but also to further understanding of Korean gay men across different contexts and particularly in relation to the Korean American Christian Church.
If research isn’t personal like Hirini and Patrick’s, it’s often claimed to be done by a neutral third party. But how neutral can a third party be? We’ve seen in colonial narratives that depicting others’ stories without understanding and valuing them is not helpful. It does not provide the whole picture, or in some cases, an honest portrayal at all. Hirini and Patrick both recognised that the participants in their studies had the knowledge they sought. Interacting with them and understanding their stories were critical to understanding the research topics. Collecting data required the researchers to insert themselves into the picture, if only for a moment in time – and being involved makes it difficult to be neutral. Everyone comes with some bias, and understanding this is crucial to understanding the reliability of research.
I believe Patrick and Hirini’s research stories are valuable primarily because they are personal. They created room for their voices and the voices of their informants as they brought in their own cultures, acknowledged their positionality, and prioritised insider stories. The personal nature of their research helped decolonise historical narratives. So, why not make research personal?
