How to refer to myself in a research paper? [closed]

Okay so I have collected personal spending data of myself and significant other over a period of 6 months. I'm quite happy with the data and would like to present it and write it up as a research paper. I'm not going to be publishing it but would like to do it for fun (and a bit of practice can't hurt).

The dilemma I am facing at the moment is that I cannot figure out how to refer to myself or my significant other as participants in the study. I have been trying to figure this out for a few days now and google is really giving me a hard time. I cannot find a single thing relevant to what I am trying to do.

My first issue I have come to is that I am captioning a figure that reads similar to this. Figure 1: Average daily spending vs time for myself (solid line) and significant other (dotted line).

Is this the correct way to refer to myself and significant other? It feels much too informal for my liking. I have considered making a small statement that states that myself will be referred to as "participant A" and my significant other will be referred to as "participant B", but this might add unnecessary confusion.

Is there a standard on this? This has been driving me absolutely crazy over the past few days and would really appreciate any insight or suggestions.

Solution 1:

You'd normally follow your organisation's style guide. Here's an excerpt from one I found on the internet:

It is a common misconception that foregrounding the research requires using the passive voice ("Experiments have been conducted ..."). This is inaccurate. Rather, you would use pronouns in place of "experiments" ("We conducted experiments ..."). - APA Formatting and Style Guide, Purdue Online Writing Lab

Hee's another, again based on APA:

It is totally acceptable to write in the first person in an APA Style paper. If you did something, say, “I did it”—there’s no reason to hide your own agency by saying “the author [meaning you] did X” or to convolute things by using the passive “X was done [meaning done by you].” If you’re writing a paper alone, use I as your pronoun. If you have coauthors, use we.
However, avoid using we to refer to broader sets of people—researchers, students, psychologists, Americans, people in general, or even all of humanity—without specifying who you mean (a practice called using the editorial “we”). This can introduce ambiguity into your writing.
- Chelsea Lee

The above describe how you would refer to yourself as the researcher.

Now, researchers don't normally conduct research on themselves. What you describe is a case study with yourself and your significant other as the participants. What you call yourselves as participants depends on how you view the case study.

If you consider this to be a personal journal, using personal pronouns would be entirely appropriate. If you consider this to be "a bit of practice" for a research paper, it would be appropriate to treat the role of participant as a third-party role and pretend (for the sake of practice) that others filled that role. In that case, you can choose to give yourselves labels or aliases, or even refer to yourselves in the third person.

You ask:

Is there a standard on this?

As the excerpts above indicate, there are good grounds for using personal pronouns where they are relevant and where the context clearly identifies the people to whom the pronouns refer. Nevertheless, in practice, the standard on this remains your organisation's style guide.

Solution 2:

There are two different conditions to satisfy by compiling and presenting your research project. Differentiating between the two will greatly simplify your "dilemma."

Content: The first is to present your research data and findings in a clear, well-written form for understanding. There are simply two subjects involved in the project and differentiating between the two is the issue. You may use any terms that suit you. Participant #, Subject, First name, contributor, person, party, etc.

Credit: The second issue is to identify yourself as the author. This is done in a conventional manner according to any reference you prefer. If your significant other has contributed content, co-author can be used along with their name and credentials.

If no contribution was made other than as a data source, no authorship credit mention is due your partner. However, there is nothing to prevent you from a short write-up as an introduction in the Abstract, or a post-script comment, thanking your significant other for their participation.