As examples of the qualitative style of research, and the issues that are raised, we shall look at a number of oft-cited studies. These studies have been based upon a variety of research methods, and this is something that is typical for the qualitative approach within the social sciences. However, the key methods are participant observation and in-depth interviewing.
Eileen Barker ‘The Making of a Moonie’
This study had as its overarching aim to examine what at the time were generally held beliefs about the Unification Church – or as members were commonly referred to by the mass media, the ‘Moonies’. Barker conducted a six-year programme of research, designed to:
• answer questions about Moonie beliefs; and
• test whether media claims condemning the movement as a ‘brainwashing, bizarre sect’ were really justified.
She set herself several questions:
Why and in what sort of circumstances, will what kind of people become Moonies? Why, and in what sorts of circumstances will what kind of people leave the movement? What is life like in the Unification Church? What kinds of communication system and power structure does the organisation have? To what extent, and why, does the movement vary according to time and place? What is the range of the relationships which the church and its members have with the rest of society? And in what kind of ways can we best understand and explain the phenomenon of the Unification Church and public reaction to it? (Barker 1984, p.16)
She used a variety of approaches and methods to address these initial research questions. These included:
• In-depth interviews: Thirty British members of the Unification Church were randomly selected for taped interviews in local church centres. Each interview lasted between 6 and 8 hours. As is typical for this style of inter- viewing, Barker developed a provisional outline topic guide, but was flexible in terms of the way she asked her questions, and the order in which she asked them.
• Participant observation: In order to deepen her understanding of the church, how it was organised, and who its members were, Barker actually spent six years residing in various centres in a number of different countries. During this period, she followed three phases of participant observation-based study: a
‘passive’ phase of watching and listening; an ‘interactive’ phase of engaging in conversation to learn the concepts and language of the church and its members;
and an ‘active’ stage where, having learned the social language, she could challenge and debate to understand better the essence, life, and organisation of the church.
• Questionnaire survey: In the course of developing an understanding of her initial research questions (through her interviews and participant observations), Barker became sufficiently confident in her studies to begin to devise more structured questions. She then designed a large questionnaire that was sent to all English-speaking members in Britain, and some in other countries.
One of the key issues for the social science researcher to learn from this study is that the qualitative research approach is a styleof research; it may involve more than one particular research method or technique, and often the research follows an iterative process. Here, Barker uses a combination of methods to gain cumulative insights into the life of the Unification Church and of its members. And the insights gained from one method in her study informed the development of other methods – in particular, the questionnaire survey was informed by the participant observation aspect of her project.
Maurice Punch ‘ Observation and the Police’
In his study of the police in Amsterdam, Punch was interested in examining their
‘social’ role – in particular, how they interacted with the public, and how individual police officers themselves defined their role. He claimed that as they are a parti- cularly secretive and secluded part of the criminal justice system, participant observa- tion would be the only method that would fully enable researchers to appreciate policing:
The essence of uniformed police work is relatively solitary patrolling, free of direct supervision, with a high degree of discretion in face-to-face interaction with the public, and with decision-making behaviour that is frequently not reviewable ... Only observation can tap into that initial encounter on the streets, or in a private dwelling, with all its implications for the individual citizen concerned and for his potential passage through the criminal justice system.
(Punch 1993, p.184)
Furthermore, Punch provides a series of detailed examples as insights into the possibilities that participant observation has as a method for social researchers:
I could follow radio messages, conversations between policemen, and verbal exchanges during incidents. Additionally I could read the extensive documentary material in the station – telegrams, the station diary, reports, charge sheets,
‘wanted’ notices, telex messages etc. (Punch 1993, p.187)
These examples also indicate what conducting participant observation studies actually entails. The approach involves more than just observing action and inter- action; instead it is a flexible research approach that involves using a variety of different methods and sources of data in order to aid the construction of a picture of the world according to the group or organisation under investigation.
In the course of his research, Punch notes that it was necessary for him to become involved in a social relationship with the police officers he was observing – to establish a rapport with them. This was crucial for his study; without such a relationship, he would be incapable of convincing the officers that they had nothing to fear from revealing their world to him, and the part they had to play in it.
Perhaps not surprisingly, such an approach raises the possibility of going native – of over-identification with the police officer’s role:
I had a strong identification with the work of the patrolmen. I considered them my colleagues, felt a unity with the group, and was prepared to defend them in case of physical (or intellectual) attack. (Punch 1993, p.191)
Elsewhere, he again raises the issue, and in doing so reveals the implications that this issue has in terms of his ability to conduct his research in an objective and credible way:
The more I was accepted the more they expected me to act as a colleague. In my willingness to be accepted by the policemen I over-identified perhaps too readily and this doubtless endangered my research role. For the patrol group is a cohesive social unit and the policeman’s world is full of seductive interests so that it is all too easy to ‘go native’. (Punch 1993, pp.195–6)
As Punch carried out his research, it became increasingly clear to him that the police officers that he was studying were modifying their behaviour somewhat in order to shield some aspects of their ‘world’ from him. Such behaviour represents a real threat to a research project, as it undermines the ability of a researcher to record accurately complete details of the field that she or he is studying. In formal research terms, this issue is referred to as reactivity. Punch observes that it was only as rapport and trust developed between himself and the police officers that he came to learn that his initial observations were based on only a ‘partial picture’ of the data:
I went to Hans’s flat for a celebration and several policemen began talking excitedly about corruption. I learnt a lot more in that evening, thanks to the liberating effects of alcohol, than in all my field-work ... a subterranean police culture which had largely escaped me suddenly emerged ... Hans and Tom explained, ‘How much do you think you found out when you were with us? You wrote somewhere that you thought we were open-hearted. Well, we only let you see what we wanted you to see. You only saw about fifty per cent. We showed you only half of the story. (Punch 1993, pp.192–3)
A final issue illuminated by Punch’s paper concerns the ethical aspects of his study.
In one notable episode, for instance, he recounts how he was asked on at least one occasion to hold the gun of one of the police officers and restrain people suspected of having committed a crime. It became almost routine for him to perform policing duties without the authority actually to carry these out:
More and more I became involved in a participant role. I chased people, searched people, searched cars, searched houses, held people, and even shouted at people who abused my ‘colleagues’. (Punch 1993, p.191)
John Goldthorpe et al. ‘The Affluent Worker in the Class Structure’
This was a study of a group of upper working-class manual workers based at the Vauxhall Motors plant in Luton during the 1960s. It was conducted in the aftermath of the British Labour Party’s third successive electoral defeat in 1959, which led many commentators to argue that a process of ‘embourgeoisement’ was taking place, largely as a result of the growth of an increasingly affluent working class, and its apparent adoption of middle-class values and lifestyles. However, Goldthorpe and his colleagues were among ‘those who regarded the thesis of the worker turning middle class with some marked degree of scepticism, or who at any rate,
could see a number of serious difficulties in the thesis as it was being presented’
(1969, pp.23–4).
The authors opted for a qualitative research design – an intensive case study approach using both qualitative and quantitative methods that they hoped would yield considerable detail about the social lives of working-class people in Britain:
Our intention, then, was to bring together data which pertained both to attitudes and to social behaviour and relationships, and to cover work and non-work milieu alike; the ultimate aim being that of forming some idea of the total life- situations and life-styles of the individuals and groups we studied. (Goldthorpe et al. 1969, p.31)
The immediate dilemma facing the authors is one that confronts all researchers intent on using case studies in qualitative projects. And that is, how to select a case study that would enable Goldthorpe and his colleagues to make broad generalisations about the new ‘affluent’ working class? From their literature review, they set up certain criteria which they considered might serve as measurable indicators to test the embourgeoisement thesis empirically. These included (Goldthorpe et al. 1969, pp.32–3) that:
• the population of workers should be relatively affluent, economically secure, physically mobile, and consumption minded,
• they should work in an industrial setting with advanced technology, ‘progressive’
employment policies, and harmonious industrial relations,
• their community should be characterised by its relative newness, instability and
‘openness’, it should be socially heterogeneous, and economically expanding.
The author opted to select an ideal case that would be as favourable as possible for the confirmation of the embourgeoisement thesis. Their rationale for this sam- pling method was that should the thesis be confirmed through their data, then they would have detailed material about workers undergoing a process of class transformation. By way of contrast, should the thesis not be confirmed by the reality of working-class life in this most affluent of contexts, it would serve to undermine the argument that embourgeoisement was occurring across British society as a whole. This is similar to a theoretical sampling method using the critical case approach, in which settings (or people) are chosen for investigation precisely because they offer the researcher the clearest insight into the topic being inves- tigated; there is no attempt at random probability sampling here, but rather the strategicselection of cases. This theoretical sampling method is outlined in the next section of this chapter.
A further important issue that readers should consider when studying this book is the researchers’ use of sampling methods. Their sample of workers was based entirely of men. Their study might therefore be criticised for contributing to the relative ‘invisibility’ of women in social science research, especially in relation to studies of social class. It might be argued that such an approach assumes that
women have no class at all, and that their role is dependent on their male partners.
The questioning strategy employed might also be criticised on the same grounds.
For instance, 7.(a) (section 1) of the interview schedule asks, ‘What sort of work does your father do or what was his last job, if he is no longer alive or retired?’
Elsewhere in section 3, question 3 asks, ‘How many of the men who work near to you would you call close friends?’ In neither of these two questions (nor indeed elsewhere) is there any reference to women, perhaps presupposing that women were not in paid work – or perhaps reflecting the gender division of (paid) labour in British society at that time.
One issue that the authors do acknowledge is in relation to representativeness. Theirs was not a random probability sample of the population, but included (male) workers chosen from only the major departments in the workplaces. As a consequence, some of the assembly workers were under-sampled. However, readers were left with a reliance upon the assurances of the authors who claimed that these workers did not differ in terms of their characteristics from workers in other departments.