Reflexivity carries two separate senses that are easily run together. In social research it names the researcher’s awareness that their own presence, position and assumptions shape what they observe and record, and the practice of accounting for that in the write-up. In social theory and economics it names something different: that participants’ beliefs about a system feed back into the system and alter it, so expectations become part of what they describe and no stable outside vantage point exists. The first is a methodological discipline; the second is a claim about how certain systems behave. Both are defensible in their own domain, and conflating them produces nonsense. Context is the only guide.
Why this entry carries no source list. This lexicon cites an official primary source wherever one exists. For a concept used across several traditions at once, no such source exists: there is no body with authority over it, and a signed academic reference — the tier this lexicon would otherwise reach for — has no entry under this headword. Citing one school’s formulation would present a position as a definition. So the entry names the senses in play and the distinction between them, which is the part a reader can actually use.
Deeper treatment: this term also has a full entry in the Business Library.
Systematic examination of how the researcher's own position, values, and assumptions shape the questions asked, the data noticed, and the conclusions drawn — a standard expectation across qualitative and reflexive quantitative work alike.