Immersion Research using the Reality Check Approach

Through immersion by trained researchers, RCA offers governments, donors, development programmes, the private sector and others an opportunity to shed light on whether their policies and interventions are relevant and translate into tangible improvements in the lives of targeted individuals and communities.

"Digging much deeper to see, sense, witness and be part of the unseen and unreachable"

Reality Check Approach (RCA) is an internationally recognised qualitative research approach to immersions first used in Bangladesh in 2007. The approach uses immersive, experiential and observational research techniques, whereby researchers actually live with study participants in their homes for several days and nights and informally engage with them and the wider community.

RCA immersion research is based on the principles of ethnography but its narrower focus (on relevance, usability, for example) and the short time for immersions distinguish it from ethnography. RCA is based on the premise that experiential knowledge is a critical element of research seeking to produce people-centred accounts. RCA seeks to understand the processes, motivations, behaviours and attitudes of people through ‘hanging out’ informally, two-way conversations, observation and experience over several days and nights. Relying on building informal relationships and adopting the position of learner, RCA researchers involve community members in analysis of their own situation so that insights emerge naturally. These emerging insights are collected through extensive debriefing sessions and then analysed into patterns and relationships using Grounded Theory.

Empatika believes that training is an especially critical part of successful, effective, and respectful, immersion research. All Empatika researchers have participated in our six-day RCA Level 1 training that prepares researchers for immersion through both classroom and in-field practicum prior to participating in any piece of research.

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• RCA immersion research stresses informality for all interactions in order to put people at ease. Playing games, hanging out, casually chatting with family and friends builds rapport and creates open spaces for the researcher to explore topics.
• Living with families (immersion) means that researchers interact with families in their own spaces.
  
• RCA values inclusivity and multiple perspectives and team members are trained to find ways to include all voices in their interactions and being able to pick up conversations at different times during their stay.
• RCA researchers are trained to continuously reflect on the power dimensions of interactions and finding ways to place themselves as much as possible on the same level with study participants, rather than interacting with people as a typical researcher.
• RCA is flexible in its interactions and often employs the use of creative and participatory methods such as drawing pictures, taking photos, playing games (both relevant to the study subject and simply for fun), guided tours, making social maps and using puppets.
• RCA takes a context-specific lens and embraces complexity and systems thinking to explore particular phenomena.

​​You can also learn more about the background of RCA at www.reality-check-approach.com