Systematic Self-Enquiry in Higher Education

Abstract: The formulation of a scholarly hypothesis is not only informed by the state of the literature in the respective field of research but also by a scientist’s personal agenda (e.g., individual expertise, preferences, perspectives, motivation, previous publication or funding success, the ensuing prioritizing of certain questions over others). The latter realm, however, is rarely acknowledged in the documented work – it is something of a blind spot that jeopardizes the neutrality of the scholarly process. It also contributes to the difficulty to replicate research because such hidden variables cannot be controlled. In the current article, we seek to import the approach of systematic self-enquiry – already common practice in the training of psychotherapists – into the educational curriculum of psychology students. We introduce and evaluate a guideline for supervised systematic self-enquiry – assisted first-person research (AFPR) – to motivate more critical self-reflection among students. A Thematic Analysis of interview data with n = 18 psychology students revealed outcome-oriented themes about the general impact of AFPR (Positive effects, Negative effects) as well as process-oriented themes about participants’ experiences with AFPR (e.g., Challenges, Universal relevance). We present the latest version of our recommended guideline for AFPR and discuss the results of the evaluation in detail. The AFPR guideline can be used to train psychology students or other interested people in first-person research.