PART III: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
5. Introduction: Nested case design and research methodology
5.6 Journey of discovery
This section describes the joys and difficulties of gaining access to organisations and their clients; takes a hard look at the ambivalence displayed towards research and researchers, and describes the data gathering, recording and transcription methods used.
5.6.1 The 360° degree research method
Triangulated data gathering methods were used to get a nuanced understanding of the case and to find an answer to the research question. These consisted of semi-structured (i) group, (ii) paired and (iii) individual interviews and (iv) observation of restorative justice processing. On the subject of triangulation, Stake (1995:113), argues that ‘because there is no best view, researchers must rely on multiple perspectives or views on a case’.
Following Stake, the data was collected from various sub-units at multiple sites in South Africa, one site in Norway and from a key expert who now lives in Australia via a skype interview. This completed the 360° formation of sub-units.
Sub-units Female Male Totals Country
Victims (5 Primary 1
Secondary) 6 1 7 SA
Offenders 4 4 SA
Prosecutors 4 2 6 SA
Mediators 3 3 6 SA 4F/NOR 2M
Internal key experts 2 2 4 SA 2M/NOR 2F
External key experts 2 1 3 SA 2F1M
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5.6.2 Access granted
This story is out of sequence, but I want to start on a positive note. In 2011, when it became clear that I would not have access to clients of the organisation that originally gave me permission as they were not ‘able to assist during this financial year due to present research and student commitments’, (correspondence with national manager dated 24 March 2011) I wrote to an organization in another province. After a period of approximately six weeks in which we had constant email contact, I was given permission to conduct interviews. I was provided with 24 names. In the meantime, the Director provided me with documents about the organization, consented to be interviewed as a key expert and agreed that I could interview their mediators. Despite their busy schedules, I was given all the assistance I needed. After the visit to their offices, I made a donation towards costs incurred in the course of contacting clients and for providing me with office space.
5.6.3 Access denied
Before I started to write my proposal in 2007, I first sought permission from a crime prevention organisation in Cape Town, where I live, for access to their clients who had undergone victim offender mediation as part of restorative justice processing. This permission was granted by their CEO.
In 2009 the crime prevention organisation referred to above also submitted a letter in support of my application for ethics clearance. After receiving clearance I had a meeting with the deputy director and the newly appointed national manager in charge of the Western Cape Province. It was agreed that the organisation would supply me with names of their clients. A few names and contact details were sent to me via email at different times around September 2009 and I filed the emails under a research file in my email inbox where all research correspondence was kept.
I was initially advised that I received ethical clearance but was informed about a month later that I should effect some changes to the research schedule and give more detail with regard to confidentiality. This process took some time and I held off on setting up interviews as I was not covered in terms of university ethics. I contacted the
organisation’s site office, where I was supposed to observe a process, to advise them that
162 I should wait for ethics clearance. In November I travelled to Norway again for work purposes.
In the meantime, I conducted an exploratory interview with a senior official from the Department of Justice and Constitutional affairs in the Western Cape Province. From there it snowballed when he provided me with leads as to whom I should interview in the Criminal justice system. After approximately six months of correspondence interspersed by long silences, I received permission from the National prosecuting authority to
interview six prosecutors. They submitted a letter in support of my application for ethics clearance in 2009. During December and January it was not possible to conduct
interviews with other participants, but the time was more convenient for prosecutors and I interviewed them on 10 December 2009 and a follow up interview with the senior
prosecutor during the following week.
During 2010 I experienced one computer crash and lost many documents. Of those that could be retrieved, many were corrupted. I also experienced three virus attacks in which all the contents of my inbox was lost, including my email research correspondence file.
This included all emails containing the names of clients from the organisation in Cape Town. I discovered this loss in early 2011 when I wanted to contact their clients. I wrote to the organisation explaining my dilemma and to ask if they could resend the emails.
They informed me that all their old emails were deleted. I offered to personally search their database for names, but the newly promoted national manager refused even after I offered to provide proof of my computer problems from the computer technicians. I could also prove that since I started with proposal writing in 2007 to date, I have replaced computers twice (2008 and 2011). I preferred not to take the matter up with their CEO who originally gave permission for me to conduct research with the organisation.
The deputy director of the organisation later facilitated access to one of their offices in another province, unfortunately, despite my request for adult victims and offenders, the list of names I received were all juveniles and their parents. I only discovered this after several telephone calls to set up appointments and found that only two parents were available for interviews during the times agreed to with the organisation. I postponed these appointments and contacted my supervisor for advice as I did not have ethical clearance to interview juveniles. The organisation was aware of the fact that I needed to
163 interview adults, because I provided them with a copy of the university ethical clearance form, and stated the requirements in email correspondence, but somehow lines got crossed and I could not conduct these interviews. With hindsight I realise that they may not have read every section of the ethical clearance form and may have assumed that I wanted to interview juveniles. Also, since a year had passed since we had a meeting where I expressly stated that I needed adults, I assume that this aspect was forgotten.
5.6.4 Access delayed
During the period of uncertainty I contacted an organization in another province. I sought permission from their head office and was referred to the site manager. I corresponded with the manager of this office during 2009 and despite the fact that I explained that I lived in another province, she wanted me to make an appointment to see her at their office. I tried again in 2011 after the first organisation became unavailable, and we corresponded for several months. During this time I complied with every request the manager made, including asking my supervisor to write to the organisation. After answering all the questions that were asked in 2009 and after fulfilling all their
requirements over time, I was advised that they were waiting for permission from their funders. At this point I asked for their written refusal to co-operate so that I could hand it to the university. They gave their permission for me to conduct interviews in May 2011, a few days before I left to work in Norway.
In the period that I was waiting for permission from the second organisation, I sought permission from a third organisation in a province even further afield. As I was due to return to Norway for work purposes my mind turned to the Norwegian konfliktråd where an ex colleague was a mediator as part of his PhD experience. I contacted my supervisor for his opinion on a Norwegian sub-unit and he consented. My colleague introduced me to the konfliktråd and also consented to be a participant.
5.6.5 Serendipitous access
Before I travelled to Norway in May 2011, I was advised by the konfliktråd that victims and offenders were reluctant to participate in research, but that they would continue to search. When I arrived at the konfliktråd offices, they had not been able to find victims or offenders who were willing to be interviewed. The deputy director, head of training, one
164 current and one past mediator of the konfliktråd consented to interviews. The deputy director remained in email contact with me after our interview and provided konfliktråd documents, and more importantly, a 2009 report of research conducted with 340
participants throughout Norway. An initial step of the research was a survey conducted in 2008 with 22 konfliktråd leaders from all offices throughout Norway. This research report, together with further documentary analysis, follow up questions to participants, and regular visits to the konfliktråd website provided me with secondary data on participants’ perspectives of restorative justice processing. I hoped to interview four Norwegian restorative justice participants on skype or via email before finalizing my methodology chapter. I abandoned the idea after the attacks in Oslo and Utøya in July 2011, as the offices of the konfliktråd were in the vicinity of the attack and one of their mediators died as a result of the blast. My need for primary data from Norway was not pivotal to understanding restorative justice processing as an embedded (Yin, 1994:41) instrumental (Stake, 1995:4) case in South Africa. The secondary data sufficed and added to the depth and breadth of the perspectives on the Norwegian sub-unit. After my
interviews with the staff of the konfliktråd, they continued to provide me with articles, policies, legislation and an invitation to visit them at any time in future.
5.6.6 Hard to reach participants
In 2010 I retreated completely from the battle for access to do fieldwork. I became absorbed in thinking, reading widely, attending public lectures and commenting on thought leader type blogs about contextual issues regarding South Africa’s historical and contemporary matters related to inequality, crime, violence and reconciliation. I wrote a thought piece for a journal of Psychology titled ‘Mediator’s Dilemma: mediation in South Africa, an unequal, deeply divided, transitional society’. The essay was about an actual mediation ‘event’, but it was also about a struggle to negotiate the ‘post’ apartheid South African terrain and being confronted with my own inadequacy as a practitioner, with so many good intentions and as many blind spots.
In 2011, I decided that I was not going to be defeated by any overt or covert resistance to research on the subject of restorative justice as a peacebuilding tool. I exercised my right as a tax paying citizen to respectfully and persistently correspond with organisations until they opened their doors. Two organisations in two different provinces in South Africa
165 respectively gave their consent for me to contact their clients. In one province I
interviewed six parties from a list of nine who were available, three mediators in one province and a few weeks later the head of their restorative justice programme from another province via skype. I was advised that parties were not keen to be interviewed for research, therefore the small list of names.
I also interviewed four parties, a mediator and the director of a restorative justice organisation in the other province. While this organisation was keen to assist and originally provided me with a list of 24 names, after several attempts on my part, I was only able to make contact with two people who were able to present for an interview.
Some of the reasons given why people were not contactable at the numbers they have on record, is related to the fact that (i) some people live in informal settlements and the number might belong to a neighbour or relative (ii) the person might not have airtime (iii) the cell phone battery might have died and there might not be immediate access to
electricity to charge the battery (iv) some people could not come for an interview because it was close to payday, and various other reasons. After offering to pay someone from their office to act as a research assistant and to set up appointments during their lunch hour and after hours at a research assistant’s fee, he was able to secure four appointments with two victims and two offenders from the list of 24 names.
5.6.7 Group Interview
I conducted a group interview with five control prosecutors and one senior prosecutor in Cape Town. This interview was conducted under the supervision of the senior
prosecutor, with whom I had a follow up interview at her office at the courts in Cape Town. These interviews were conducted in December 2009.
5.6.8 Paired and individual face to face interviews
During June 2011, I conducted field visits in Durban and Pretoria respectively. When I originally wrote to the NGOs for permission, I requested the names of adult victims and offenders who have participated in victim-offender mediation within the last 12 months and later. When it became clear that South African victims and offenders were also reluctant to participate in research, I asked for whoever is available. Since the aim of my research was to get multiple perspectives on restorative justice processing, the number of
166 participants and types of cases were of secondary importance, so in consultation with my supervisor I settled for the available number of adult victims and offenders, which proved sufficient for the direction in which the data took the research.
5.6.9 Observation
I was scheduled to observe two mediation processes. Due to the fact that one of the parties arrived late the one mediation was postponed. I therefore observed one victim offender mediation process for which I received signed consent from the parties involved.
I will draw on past experience and ‘accumulated knowledge’ (Dey, 1993:63) of facilitating and observing mediation processes as well as experience of conducting
mediation training workshops and literature to analyse this process in light of the research question.
5.6.10 Continuous contextual data gathering
As South Africa’s transition (from the colonial and apartheid periods to the period of market democracy) is a core part of the research, I attended public lectures related to Transitional Justice, crime, violence and reconciliation in South Africa as a further source of data gathering. I would ask questions at these meetings to test if others are making the connections that I started to see. From 2008 to date, I have been doing background
reading on the South African context and have started to read and comment on newspaper blogs to get a feel of where South African society is heading. I have found that in early 2008, inequality was seldom mentioned. In the latter half of 2008, after the violence in which xenophobia became salient, inequality was found to be core to the spread of the violence and had a ‘tinderbox effect’22 (cf. Henkeman, 2008:1-12 status report based on interviews with mediators). In 2012, during the write-up period of this thesis, inequality was mentioned in every newspaper and some reference was made to it on television news on a daily basis, as latent conflict is becoming more manifest. Following Ryan & Bernard (2003:92), I went back to the data to look for what was missing. I conducted the informal round of meetings/interviews with key experts in criminology, community safety and the
22 The volatile situation around the country was referred to as a ‘tinderbox effect’ by Mr. Mntambo, one of the mediators in the Western Cape.
167 peacebuilding field after the interim analysis was done. Some were conducted
telephonically, others via skype. I was seeking answers to the questions that arose during the interim analysis, to fill the gaps and cracks and to orient myself.
5.6.11 Desk Study
Continuous desk study was done to construct the conceptual framework, analyse documents and to scan multi-disciplinary literature to locate the themes and categories that emerged in the data. I requested documentation related to restorative justice
processing as well as mediator training from restorative justice stakeholders to provide a fuller picture of restorative justice processing. These documents were analysed in light of the literature and formed part of the data from which the comprehensive model of
findings emerged. The study was located within the literature in two ways (i) to inform the conceptual framework which bounded and directed the study and (ii) as data for the purpose of comparison and confirmation of themes that surfaced in primary data.