PERSPECTIVES ON CHILD WORK
4.5 RESEARCH METHODS
4.5.5 Producing the Life Histories
Results were organised around the study's questions and sub-questions namely:
"Who are these learners"? And, "Who are their parents?" These questions and sub-questions were added to understand the reasons for learners' involvement in the informal sector of the economy, which is one of the critical questions for this study. The questionnaires, letters, interviews, transcripts and written notes were coded to introduce some order and structure into data. This enabled me to assign meaning to the responses and remarks from the used tools. Findings were represented in either graphs or tables and they were interpreted accordingly.
Results were discussed and where possible the findings of this study were compared with other similar studies from this country and other countries.
survey done in townships of Cape Town. This survey found that most of township people do not speak English. In fact, they found it difficult to use any English in interviews (Deumert& Dowling, 2004).
• Types of activities
I wanted to work with a variety of activities e.g. selling alcohol, involvement in illegal activities, domestic workers, child-minders etc. This was to help me understand the experiences of learners in different types of activities i.e. to get a fuller picture of what exactly learners are doing in the informal sector.
• Gender
In literature it has been established that females differ from males in respect of the type of activity they are involved in the informal sector. Both sexes were to be chosen or the study. 5 participants were selected to participate in the study. Figure 7 reflects a summary description of their biographical profiles.
Figure 7. Biographical Profiles ofLearners
Thando Female Selling sweets
Thobile Female Selling sweets
HIe Female Selling sweets and braiding
Mandlakhe Male Selling sweets Sipho Male Selling sweets
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)t._<'':Xi '-'}~*! .>~ if .Atli~jties o~ideschOol Domestic worker, gardener and selling food at the taxi rank.
Child-minder.
Running a shebeen, selling sweets and braiding hair.
Work in a hardware store.
Selling sweets, chips, and ice-cubes at home.
Interviews are an excellent way of discovering the subjective meamngs and interpretations that people give to their experiences (Denzin, 1989a). They allow aspects of social life such as social processes and negotiated interactions to studies that could not be studied in any other way (Daly & McDonald, 1992).
While it is important to examine pre-existing theory, in-depth interviews allow new understandings and theories to be developed during the research process.
They work well with an inductive theoretical approach and grounded theory.
People's responses are less influenced by the direct presence of their peers during in-depth interviews. Participants may be prepared to discuss sensitive matters such as sexual experiences, rape and drugs. In-depth interviewing can involve a single hour interview with each participant or may take several sessions each of 2 hours duration or up to 25 sessions (Taylor & Bogdan, 1984). However, most seem to consist of a single interview of approximately ninety minutes. In examining pre-existing theory, in-depth interviews allow new understandings and theories to be developed during the research process. They work well with an inductive theoretical approach and grounded theory. People's responses are less influenced by the direct-presence of their peers during in-depth interviews.
Participants may be prepared to discuss sensitive matters such as sexual expenences, rape and drugs. Some feminists have pointed out that it may be appropriate to offer emotional support in interviews, particularly when the interview concerns difficult topics, such as women's experiences of marital rape (Gelles, 1977). When interviewing people about sensitive issues it is important to arrange for referrals to trained counsellors or request for a relative or friend to be present.
Diaries
I initiated this phase by giving the 5 participants diaries where they were to record their daily activities for 7 days. I made copies of pages from Tuesday 23rd of September to Tuesday the 30th of the same month. I provided extra pages for each day in case there were a lot of entries for a single day. Participants were expected to keep a running record of their activities. They were asked to record all their activities in as much detail as they could, and to make entries daily. They were to focus on their economic activities for 7 days. They were allowed to use either English or isiZulu. They were assured that if they did not know how to use a diary they would be taught by the researcher. I wanted to induce learners to reflect at length about processes which underpin their experiences. These diaries were also to take me through each participant's journey for each day. This diary- interview method (Zimmerman & Wieder, 1977) was to guide the in-depth
interview, which was used for life histories. All male subjects indicated that they were not used to diaries and they regarded them as "girls' things". They made it clear that it would not be feasible for them to use diaries and that it was pointless to teach them how to use diaries. All female participants worked with their diaries.
"Life log" of Work and Related Experiences
In the next phase I asked each participant to prepare a detailed chronology of his/her activities, experiences, important events and people in his/her life. They were to use these in writing the detailed descriptions of their experiences during childhood up to their present developmental stage. They had to include their economIC involvement in all these years. Denzin (l989a) reports that this methodology is used to collect life documents that record crucial moments.
4.S.6 Constructing the Life Histories
Although the life history process invites participants to tell their stories, it is not without direction, given the fact that the project addresses specific critical questions (Kathard, 2003). Interview schedules were constructed with the aim of structuring the process and keeping the life history frame as a deliberate orientation. The schedules were structured to trace changing life experiences from childhood to where they are now. A social emphasis assisted with accessing experiences within a social frame, as the influence of society, family school and life circumstances were deemed as important. Personal frames of participants' personal sense of making their experiences and issues of importance to them were critical.
I read each participant's chronology of events thoroughly and formulated questions for in-depth interviews. These were focused and unstructured interviews. In-depth interviews aim to explore the complexity and in-process nature of meanings and interpretations that cannot be examined using positivist
methodologies. They are more like conversations than structured interviews (Taylor& Bogdan, 1984). The influence of the interviewer on the production of the interview narrative cannot be ignored. The interviewer is, undoubtedly, a "co- participant in the discourse" (Mishler, 1986:82).
An average of 40 questions for each participant was fonnulated. Interviews took place at school in November 2006 after final exams. I provided the participants with lunch, as we had to remain in school for a long time. Each interview took about 90 minutes. The young women were determined to tell their stories no matter how traumatic, sad and tearful. When one of the girls told her story of how she was assaulted by her step-father, she was not sobbing but crying aloud. There was anger and frustration in her face. I feared that I had opened old wounds. A part of me wanted to stop her, but I decided not to disturb her while she was speaking. She quickly removed her shirt and showed me the horrible marks of candle burns on her back.
I am not sure whether being humane as a researcher is being biased. But at this stage the smiling face of a friendly researcher disappeared when I felt tears uncontrollably running from my eyes. I was sobbing and holding her tightly and we were both crying. This was followed by a moment of silence on my side and sobbing from her. She continued relating her story as if nothing had happened.
The resilience showed by these children, who survived maltreatment by their own relatives and the community at large, calls for a greater respect of children. This respect for children is also echoed by Alderson (1994, 1995) who in her own research is at pains to demonstrate the ability of very young children to understand issues that are both complex and painful, and to produce refined judgments on issues.
I had two tapes of 90 minutes for each of the participants. Instead of doing transcripts, I listened to the entire tape using a tape player with a counter. As I listened I noted on a piece of paper the topic of conversation and the changes of
focus against the number on the tape counter. Then I went through again and again this time trying to answer all the 40 questions to fill in the gaps in their autobiographies. I transcribed those parts, which were relevant to the research questions. During in-depth interviews, new information emerged and more questions were asked in addition to the 40 previously prepared questions. The autobiography of each participant, transcripts of important parts of the tape, as well as original tapes, was used to supplement each other in formulating each participant's life history. Every story had to be treated on its own. 3 of the 5 stories were easy to construct as much information from autobiographies were straightforward and their stories were not very long. The stories of Hie and Thobile were very long.
For the sake of consistency, the format of each story was guided by the instructions given to each of the participants when they wrote their autobiographies. I decided to use some important information provided by participants during interviews to provide topics for their stories. My decision was influenced by a number of factors such as how such sentences were stressed, facial expression, body language as well as repetition of such statements.
I also used fictitious names for participants when analysing their stories. The reason for this was to protect the participants since they disclosed very sensitive information about themselves. For many indigenous African cultural groups such as the Nguni, the naming and the meaning attached to names play a role in the definition of a personhood (Guma & Milton, 1997). The names I gave to the participants are my own responses to the difficulties experienced by each of these learners. The names praise the work of children, stressing their importance as human beings with respect and show that they are loved and they are beautiful.
These names are in isiZulu as everything was done in their mother tongue. The names and their meanings are as follows:
• Mandlakhe- what he has achieved is from his own sweat
• Sipho- gift from God
• Hle- from Twinkle, which means a beautiful thing
• Thobile- she is humble
• Thando - from Northland, which means the mother of love
One participant was interviewed per day. Since autobiographies and interviews were done in isiZulu, I had to translate them into English as I speak both languages. I asked for assistance from my sister who is an expert in isiZulu to check my interpretation. The edited stories were given back to the participants for verification. HIe asked for the tapes after reading her story. I thought she wanted to pull out of the study. I was very relieved when both the story and the tapes were returned to me. One of the male participants landed in some trouble. He reported that some people wanted to kill him. They were accusing him of stealing car wheels. He had to go into hiding for some time. That left 5 learners to work with.
4.S.' My Autobiography
I did not plan to include my autobiography at the beginning of the research. But as the analysis of each learner's life histories unfolded, I discovered that I also identified with these learners. I was affected by the stories, which brought up memories of my own life. I was once a working learner too. Likewise, I could answer the critical questions of the study and my family's background was similar to some of these learners. Autobiography is a kind of writing in which you tell a story of yourself as truthfully as you can, or as much as you can bear. It is not thought of as fiction writing but as a kind of history writing (Coetzee, 1984).
Autobiography, as a method, raises some critical points. Both autobiographies and biographies are conventionalised, narrative expressions of life experiences. These convictions, which structure how life experiences are narrated, involve the following presuppositions and taken-for-granted assumptions: the existence of the
other, the importance and influence of gender and class, family beginnings, known and knowing authors, objective life markers, real persons with real lives, turning-point experiences and truthful statements distinguished from fiction.
According to Sayre (1994), rather than defining autobiographies it might be wiser to think somewhat more about what autobiographies reveal: what they tell us that other methods may not. They reveal things that the author has never told before, at least in print or to a wider general audience. I have never discussed my family background with anyone before. An author's defenses and justifications are also revealed. It gives my side of the story. Only one person has the unique knowledge and unique access to it, only one person can distort it in as much as revealing. Itis important to note that a person can lie sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously. Memory itself is a very tricky faculty. It often erases or blocks unpleasant experiences. Autobiographies change in more than just content. They change in form, emphasis and audience. A rigid definition of autobiography for one time may not fit in another time. An autobiography not only reveals an author's broad concepts of self but it also reveals more specific modes of behaviour styles, education and vocations, which might be called "forms of identity". Autobiography, therefore, may reveal as much about the author's assumed audience as they can do about him/her and is a further reason why they need to be read as cultural documents not as just personal ones.
Autobiography, which speaks of the personal and specific, elaborates on uniqueness, can also be found among the marginalised, evoking common aspects.
The reader is invited to recognise similarities, individualistic paradigms of self and ignore the role of collective and relational identities in the individuation process. Autobiographies of women and members of minorities may expose historically generated differences from dominant groups depending on sex and race. Lastly, autobiographies attempt to provide a good understanding of the subjective meaning behind the individual's actions. But a good explanation
depends on relating this action to the economic, political, social, and cultural conditions in which they are constituted.