PART I: CONTEXT, LITERATURES, AIMS AND METHOD
Chapter 3: Aims and methodology
3.3 Principal research question and techniques
Using Hajer’s discourse analysis methodology, this dissertation aims at its broadest level to shed light on factors that lead governments in the Global South to adopt policies to deinstitutionalise children’s institutions. Specifically, it does this through an in-depth examination of deinstitutionalisation policymaking in a country of the Global South, namely, Indonesia.
3.3.1 Case study selection. Indonesia is selected for study for three reasons. First, it appears to be one of only a relatively small number of countries of the Global South to have adopted a national policy to reduce reliance on children’s institutions as ways of dealing with orphaned, neglected or abandoned children in the past decade or two. It is unclear how many countries in the Global South have taken this step as there is
incomplete information published on this topic. Basic descriptive information on children’s institutions and related policies is either absent or patchy on scores of
countries of the Global South. Information that is provided, such as by the Child Rights International Network (2015) (an internet-based repository of information about
children in alternative care) and in reports of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child (2015), seldom provide detail about national deinstitutionalisation policies.
Within the apparently small number of countries to have adopted national policies to deinstitutionalise children’s institutions over recent decades, Indonesia’s change of policy on a particular type of institution for orphaned, neglected or abandoned children known as panti asuhan has been publicly portrayed by some INGOs, the UN and even the Indonesian Government as a leading example of how one country of the Global South undertook policy reform on children’s institutions. As discussed in Chapter 4, Indonesia’s policy change on panti asuhan has been depicted by these players as a milestone in international efforts led by the UN and INGOs to reduce reliance on children’s institutions in the Global South and as a recognition by the Indonesian Government of its international children’s rights obligations. The level of public attention that has been given to Indonesia’s policy reform thus suggests that the Indonesia case is worthy of more detailed analysis.
Second, Indonesia is of particular interest in global terms given estimates that between 170,000 and over 500,000 children live in thousands of Indonesian panti asuhan when compared with estimates that, globally, there may be between two and eight million children living in institutions (see Chapter 1). This thesis does not recommend that lessons from the Indonesia case be applied in other countries with different political, social, cultural and other circumstances. However, in view of the large numbers of children involved, it does suggest that the case of Indonesian policymaking on panti asuhan is likely to be of interest to policymakers, researchers and policy change advocates in other countries of the Global South, especially in terms of a methodology aimed at assembling a broadly-based understanding about the environment in which deinstitutionalisation policymaking occurs.
Third, from a practical research standpoint, Indonesia was selected because it has been possible to gain relatively unfettered access to a wide range of senior officials, INGO and NGO representatives, researchers and others who were either directly involved with the policy reform process or who closely observed it. As discussed in Chapter 5, most of the key policy players could be accessed by the author for interview.
3.3.2 Research question and techniques. Bearing in mind limitations in the research literature noted above and the anticipated advantages of policy discourse analysis, this dissertation asks: What factors led the Indonesian Government to adopt a policy during the 2000s to reduce reliance on a type of children’s institution known as panti asuhan?
In line with Hajer’s discourse approach, face-to-face interview was the principal qualitative method used to identify the views of key informants about the main drivers of Indonesian policy change on panti asuhan. Interviews were a critically important means to gather information that was unavailable from other sources, such as
publications and official inquiries, and to help interpret other primary and secondary evidence. Given that my aim was to obtain the perspectives of key decision-makers and others closely associated with the policy change, I drew on elite-interviewing techniques (Aberbach & Rockman 2002, pp. 673-76, Goldstein 2002, pp. 669-72, Dexter 2012, pp.
31-72). Richards (1996, p. 199) defined an ‘elite’ as ‘a group of individuals who hold, or have held, a privileged position in society and, as such, as far as a political scientist is concerned, are likely to have had more influence on political outcomes than general members of the public’. In the context of policy studies, the aim of elite-interviewing is to provide the researcher with the subjective perceptions of players who had either direct or close involvement with the policy process.
While the material acquired through interviewing elites may be important in addressing research questions, it may also present particular challenges for the researcher. First, gaining access to high-status individuals for interview purposes can be difficult and lack of access to a sufficiently wide range of people associated with the subject of the
research can diminish the reliability of findings (Nader 1972, pp. 301-08). Even when adequate access is gained, interview duration is likely to be limited. This requires the researcher to recognise the power differential between themselves and the interviewee, to be highly targeted and flexible in their approach to questioning, and to recognise that not all questions may be answered. Interviews with elite actors are therefore more likely to take the form of semi-structured conversations that use open-ended, rather than closed, questions (Aberbach & Rockman 2002, p. 674). As with other qualitative work, the interviewer also needs to bear in mind the reliability of accounts provided by interviewees; for example, memory lapses on the part of the interviewee may affect the reliability of findings if the interview and the event being discussed are far apart in time (Richards 1996, pp. 200-01, Silverman 2000, pp. 148-60).
Chapter 5 contains further information about interview selection, protocols and conduct that are specific to the case study. I conducted interviews as open-ended discussion. In order to facilitate access to elite interviewees, I provided information about the purposes and methods of the research project to all prospective interviewees when seeking
interviews. At the outset of every face-to-face or telephone interview, I asked
interviewees for oral consent to: conduct the interview; make either hand-written notes or an audio recording of their responses to questions; and, use their responses without attributing comments to them by personal name in the final report. All interviewees indicated their agreement to these requests.
Typed transcripts of all interviews were prepared on the basis of either hand-written notes or audio recordings. Human research ethics approval to conduct interviews for this study was granted by the Australian National University in February 2012, in accordance with the University’s ethics policies and the National Statement on Ethical Conduct in Human Research (2007) issued by the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council.