Bracketing. Bracketing allows the researcher to analyze the lived experiences of participants without allowing their own personal or theoretical concepts to get in the way of how the phenomenon is being explained by participants (Sadala & Adorno, 2002) Researchers are allowed to enter the life-world of participants when they utilize bracketing (Beech, 1999). Bracketing can be understood in two ways, one refers to the bracketing attitude of the researcher and the other refers to the bracketing of participants (Mortari & Tarozzi, 2010).
There are three phases of bracketing, (1) abstract formulation features include the theoretical framework and orientations standpoint; (2) research praxis, and (3) reintegration (Gearing, 2004). The abstract formulation provides clarity as to the study’s design and type of bracketing to be used in the study. The research praxis provides the foundation and focus of the bracketing strategy and determining what internal and external suppositions are to be bracketed out if any (Gearing, 2004). The researcher should define the start point, duration, and end point of bracketing as well as how rigid, specific, or porous the bracketing boundaries are to be in suspending suppositions.
Finally, the researcher must reintegrate the bracketing back into the research (Gearing, 2004). Gearing (2004) identifies six types of bracketing, (1) ideal, (2) descriptive, (3) existential), (4) analytical, (5) reflexive, and (6) pragmatic. Reflexive bracketing was used in this study based on its fit for this study. Reflexive bracketing’s focus is to be transparent and overt about the researchers’ personal values, background, and cultural beliefs (Gearing, 2004). I will describe how reflexive bracketing was used to increase trustworthiness later in this chapter.
Constructs.The following are discussions of the key concepts in this research.
Race– Race has been used historically and currently as a powerful force in Western thought, behavior and is deeply embedded in the structure of social institutions (Parham, Ajamu, White, 2011; Daniel, 2002). It is intertwined with a society’s distribution of wealth, power, privilege, and prestige, and therefore with inequality (Parham, Ajamu, & White, 2011). Race has been defined differently over the years. Historically, psychologist, sociologist, and other scientist have defined race as a matter of biology and genetics (Omi & Winant, 1994). At other times in history, religious explanations were given, believing that people with Black skin were descendants of Ham. Noah cursed Ham’s son because Ham saw Noah naked and was cursed along with his descendants to be servants of servants (Daniel, 2002). There are others who believed that there is no such thing as race and view it as a disastrous legacy of the past 500 years of human history and recommend that the concept of race is discarded altogether (Parham, Ajamu, & White, 2011). Finally, there are others who believe that race is a social construct with no scientific basis.
For the purpose of this study, race is defined as a social construct that is often determined by a person’s human features such as skin color and physical features such as the shape of nose, mouth, eyes, the texture of hair, etc. One’s perceived race determines the type and quality of access to health care, housing, employment, and education in American society.
Gender– The division of the sexes is a biological fact, not an event in human history (De Beauvoir, S., 1953). Gender is a social construct in which different sexes (female and male) are viewed and treated by society (APA, 2015). Historically there has been an almost universal worldview that men and women naturally possess distinct characteristics. These beliefs are derived from classic thought, Christian ideology, and contemporary science and medicine (Emsley, Hitchcock, & Shoemaker, 2017). Differences wer
