A reflection on the significance of researchers' narratives in commissioned qualitative studies: A case study of four South African universities

The problem with most commissioned studies is that they are generally anchored on research protocols, guidelines and theoretical underpinnings imposed by research grant makers or the external Principal Investigator’s (PI) own research design preferences. Furthermore, the problem is that researchers who are recruited during various phases of commissioned studies have little contribution to the overall research design, methodological or theoretical framework of such studies. On 22-23 November 2022, the University of Johannesburg’s (UJ) Ali Mazrui Centre for Higher Education Studies (AMCHES) facilitated a fieldwork training and orientation workshop hosted by the Nelson Mandela University’s (NMU) Faculty of Education. The purpose of the workshop was to orient institutional research teams for a commissioned study titled: Steering Epistemic Access and Success of Historically Disadvantaged Students in South African Universities. This commissioned study was funded by the National Research Foundation (NRF) and AMCHES was the principal investigator, and it had its own prescribed research design to explore the institutional student access and success narratives and experiences of students from historically disadvantaged backgrounds. However, during this orientation workshop, it became apparent to the author that researchers recruited from the four participating universities were raising key research design-oriented narratives that were significant to the respective social contexts of the institutional case studies. The research design and theoretical framework of the entire study benefited from the inclusion of narratives describing the institutional researchers’ own experiences and their familiarity with the SEAS research sites. The four case study institutions were the universities of Cape Town (UCT), Fort Hare (UFH), Kwa Zulu-Natal (UKZN) and NMU. AMCHES held the overall ethics clearance for the study, which had been granted by UJ’s Faculty of Humanities. The author explored the pre-study narratives of the institutional research teams that emerged during the orientation workshop using a qualitative narrative analysis approach. This demonstrates the benefit of the incorporation of researchers’ narratives and perspectives of their lived experiences of the research site in commissioned studies. The author argues that the incorporation f narratives of researchers’ lived experiences of the research site adds a social context and enriches methodological approaches and theoretical framing in commissioned studies to create social relevance beyond the grant maker or the PI’s imposed approaches.