Designing and Conducting Research in Social Science, Health and Social Care

Fiona McSweeney, Dave Williams, Fiona McSweeney, Dave Williams

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9780815372431
• eBook ISBN: 9781351245401
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Science Research & Methodology
• Index: Social Sciences

This book presents a novel and accessible way to learn about designing and conducting social research. Unlike traditional social research methods books, it provides a 'real world' account of social researchers' experiences and learning achieved through conducting research in a variety of fields.

It contains an eclectic collection of research and advice for conducting research from social researchers with varying backgrounds. Suggestions are made in relation to gaining access to research sites, conducting research on sensitive topics such as suicide, child sexual abuse and homelessness, ensuring the inclusive participation of participants with intellectual disabilities and children. Also included are discussions of conducting practitioner research, conducting research on individual change, psychoanalytically informed research, documentary research and post qualitative research. Other chapters focus on criticality in research on topics that have become politicised and moralised, ensuring that research conducted is credible and how knowledge in research is constructed through both the theoretical framework used and how it is conducted.

Bringing together a diverse collection of social research projects, Designing and Conducting Research in Social Science, Health and Social Care will be of interest to students, educators and researchers in the social sciences and professionals in related areas.

Chapter 1

Gatekeepers

The experience of conducting research in a prison setting

Nicola Hughes

Introduction

Beginning a research project can be a daunting task as there is much to plan, organise and consider. One aspect of conducting social research which is often overlooked, but which can have a significant impact on the research, is gaining and maintaining access to the research site. This process begins with identifying who is the relevant person in an organisation to talk to and so beginning the process of negotiating access. These individuals are known as gatekeepers and they are the “individuals … that have the power to grant or withhold access to people or situations for the purpose of research” (Burgess, 1984, p. 48). All too often researchers assume that once access has been granted at a management level they can conduct their research unencumbered. However the reality is often very different, as once access has been granted at a macro level, access must then be negotiated and possibly re-negotiated at a micro or local level with the individuals at the coalface. They are the real gatekeepers and their support and assent is essential for the success of the research.

A common miscalculation, made by researchers and students alike, is underestimating the time that it will take to gain access to the site where they wish to conduct their research (Bryman, 2015). Gaining and maintaining access involves forging relationships with key personnel, the gatekeepers, and generating their support and backing for the research. If gatekeepers are to help with our requests for assistance then they must be convinced of the relevance and importance of the research (Crowther-Downey & Fussey, 2013). If a key gatekeeper is moved on or leaves, then the process of forging new relationships with new gatekeepers must begin. Thus, the time it takes to gain access can take considerably longer than originally anticipated. Add to this the possibility of re-negotiating access with the personnel on the ground and the original research deadline is quickly extended (McDonald, Townsend, & Waterhouse, 2009).

Despite all the planning engaged in prior to conducting research, research often evolves in the field and a successful researcher must be able to seize the opportunities that arise and to deal with the challenges that occur along the way. Based on my research in prisons this chapter will consider the role of gatekeepers in the research process.

The learning points for the reader are:

• Identifying key factors in gaining access to a research site;
• Identifying key factors in maintaining access in a research site;
• Being adaptable and planning alternative approaches if the gatekeepers prove reluctant to lend their support.

Overview of the research study

My field of interest is criminology and during my time as a social researcher I have conducted research in a number of different settings and with many different groups, such as with incarcerated prisoners, released prisoners, heroin users and victims of domestic abuse. Subsequently I have had many experiences of dealing with gatekeepers, some very positive and some not so positive, and the difficulties and delays that can arise, and the frustrations that inevitably accompany it. In this chapter I will discuss what I have learned from engaging with gatekeepers when conducting research. To do this I will concentrate on a large study I conducted with young males who were incarcerated in a juvenile detention centre.

In 2007 I conducted the fieldwork for a research study involving young males who were due to be released from a juvenile detention centre. The purpose of the research was to establish the expectations and plans of these young men prior to their release and their attitudes towards reoffending on their release. The criteria for inclusion in the study was that participants had to be between the age of 16 and 20 years, had been sentenced to a period of detention and were due to be released within one month. The nature of the offence and the sentence length was not deemed important, though a range of offence types and sentence lengths were identified.

This research was a follow-up study from a quantitative study that established the rate of reimprisonment of prisoners in Ireland over a four-year period (O’Donnell, Baumer, & Hughes, 2008). This was the first time that such a study had been conducted in Ireland and its findings were significant as they highlighted, for the first time, the rate of reoffending among Irish prisoners. The overall rate of reoffending for Irish prisoners was established to be 49.2 percent over a four-year period. One of the findings of the study stood out, and it was this finding that was the catalyst for the larger study of young males due to be released from detention. It was found that the rate of reoffending for younger prisoners was significantly higher than for older prisoners. The rate of reimprisonment for younger prisoners, aged 20 years and younger, was 60 per cent, compared to 40 per cent for prisoners aged 30 years and over. Thus, the reimprisonment rate for younger prisoners was 50 per cent higher than for older prisoners (i.e., 60 per cent compared to 40 per cent).

I wanted to try to understand why the rate of reimprisonment was so much higher for younger prisoners and what their experience of prison had been. Thus, while the previous quantitative research had established the extent of reoffending among this group, I wanted to try to find out why this was the case. This was achieved by giving the young men an opportunity to speak about their experience of imprisonment and, as they were nearing the end of their sentence, what their plans and expectations for their release were. I was also interested in what their thoughts were on reoffending following their release from prison. Giving a voice to the individual and allowing their voice to be heard, in this case young males who had spent time in prison, is an approach which is particularly strong within the field of desistance in criminology (Farrall & Calverley, 2005; Healy, 2010; Leibrich, 1993; Maruna, 2001). Desistance is when an individual ceases their association with crime, usually following involvement with the criminal justice system. It is also an approach that I, as a social researcher, enjoy, as it provides a unique research perspective and gives a voice to the individual. This was particularly important given that the research participants in this study were all serving a period of imprisonment. For the purpose of my research it was also a good approach, as it built on the knowledge gained from the quantitative research previously referred to.

For this reason, a qualitative approach to the research was taken. In total 60 semi-structured interviews were conducted with young males, who were all within a month of their release from a juvenile detention centre. The 60 young men who agreed to be interviewed were aged between 16 and 20 years at the time of the interview. Parental consent to be interviewed was sought for all participants aged 16 and 17 years. The interviews were conducted in the juvenile detention centre, in a private room away from other prisoners and prison officers. All but one of the interviews (as this participant did not want their interview recorded) were recorded and then transcribed. The interviews lasted on average 60 minutes. The interviews were analysed using thematic analysis, which involves reading and rereading the transcripts in order to identify themes relevant to the research questions (Bryman, 2015).

A year after the interviews had been completed imprisonment information from the prison authorities was extracted in order to establish the extent of reimprisonment of the young men who had been interviewed. This was an important element to the study given the plans and expectations expressed by the young men prior to their release and their thoughts on reoffending.

Many participants described feelings of panic, fear and anxiety on first entering prison. These feelings were soon replaced by a feeling of normality around being in prison, which some participants described as not being ideal if prison is to act as a deterrent. Many participants expressed a desire not to return to prison and to turn their lives around, while some were unsure about what they would do following their release and whether or not they would reoffend. There was also a sizable group of participants who believed that they would commit crime again following their release and that they would return to prison in the future.

The imprisonment data from the prison authorities allowed me to establish who had returned to prison following their release and who had not. Interestingly, there was no clear pattern between the plans and expectations expressed prior to release and whether or not someone reoffended, with those who said they would not reoffend just as likely to reoffend as those who said they would reoffend. Some participants who said they would reoffend following their release were not returned to prison during the follow-up period of the research.

Each of the two elements of the study involved negotiating access with gatekeepers to gain entry to the prison and to gain access to official imprisonment information a year later. In this chapter however the focus will be on negotiating access with gatekeepers within the prison setting.

A brief account of the research does not provide a full description of the complexities involved and the limitations in the measurement and research design. It does, however, provide the reader with an understanding of the research and the important role of gatekeepers in conducting complex research in a prison setting – particularly if they also wish to conduct research in an area or environment which is sensitive and where gatekeepers play an important role.

Gaining initial access

The experience of my research shows that there are many gatekeepers who must be accessed along the way for research to be completed. Learning about the research site in advance and who the potential gatekeepers are is essential when planning a research study (Lincoln & Guba, 1985). The first part of gaining access to any research site and research participants is to achieve ethical clearance from your institution and, if necessary, from the organisation where the research will be conducted. In my case this was from my university and from the prison authority. The first gatekeeper I met on my journey was the prison governor. Despite clearance from the prison authorities it was necessary to gain the consent of the prison governor. This involved a face-to-face meeting and answering questions on the research. This conversation involved what I would require from the prison staff and how potential distress in participants was to be dealt with. I also explained the purpose of the research, how and why it was being conducted and the potential learning that could be achieved from the research. This was a straightforward process and once the prison governor was assured of the merits of my research and the way in which I was planning on conducting it, I was granted access to enter the prison. I was given the name of a chief officer in the prison and told to arrange my visits to the prison through him. This involved a similar discussion to the one that I had had with the prison governor and at the end the chief officer was supportive of the research and agreed to provide his assistance. The decision about whether or not to provide access is usually based on a trade-off between the possible benefits of the research and the demands of having a researcher around (King & Liebling, 2008). Once I had negotiated access with the chief officer to come into the prison the real task of gaining access to my research participants began, by negotiating access with the real gatekeepers, the prison officers.

Once a researcher enters a research site and begins data collection they constitute a new element in that environment. From the perspective of conducting research in a prison environment “staff and prisoners cannot avoid taking some notice of the researcher even if it is only in the form of avoidance procedures. The researcher cannot help but participate by carrying out the role thus created” (King, 2000, p. 305). For the prison officers, the gatekeepers, this involves either facilitating or hindering the researcher and the research. Wincup (2017) describes the skills necessary to successfully negotiate access to a research site as those of salesperson and diplomat, and from my own experience I completely agree.

Most of the prison officers I encountered were supportive of the research and interested in what I was doing and why. Talking to them and answering their questions openly and honestly ensured their support and assistance. Most wanted to know where I was from, why I was undertaking the research, how I became interested in this area and what I was going to do with the results.

Strategies for maintaining access to gather the data

Much of my time in the prison involved dealing with the prison officers, developing a rapport with them, resolving problems and issues that arose and had the potential to delay my research. Denscombe (2014, p. 85) suggests that “access, in the sense of permission from a gatekeeper, is necessarily renewable and negotiable”, and as such gaining access should be regarded as a relationship rather than a one-off event. While Davies (2011) describes negotiating access as a recurring issue, rather than a one-off hurdle, Bryman (2015, p. 151) describes it as “the research bargain”.

Based on invaluable advice from a colleague who had also conducted research in a prison setting, I decided to base myself in the detention centre in order to complete my interviews, rather than come in when potential participants were available. This meant I was in the detention centre and ready when someone was available to talk to me rather than being called in. This ensured that I was always visible in the prison, both to the prisoners and the prison officers, and potential participants did not have to wait for me to come in.

Spending time in the prison in this way, waiting for participants and observing the day-to-day activity of the prison, provided me with understanding of how the prison worked (Carrigan, 2015). With the exception of organised visits to see around prisons, this was my first real experience of going into a prison on a regular basis and dealing with staff and prisoners, and it was very different to my previous visits. My expectations and concerns at the start of the fieldwork period bore no resemblance to the reality of what it was like to conduct interviews in such an environment. The reality was that there was a lot of waiting around, waiting for doors to be opened, for doors to be unlocked and for participants to interview. Unlike conducting research in other settings where it is necessary to arrange to meet a potential interviewee and there is always the possibility that they may not turn up, prisoners are in one location and so one could think that access should be relatively straightforward. Prisoners, however, have limited out of cell time each day and access to a quiet, private room may not always be possible. In addition prisons are unique places in which to conduct research and they are governed by very specific rules in terms of when the research can be conducted and where.

It is essential to the success of the research to ensure that an accurate account of the research, what is being requested and the possible implications of the research is given to all gatekeepers (Burgess, 1984). This was done initially by talking to the officer in charge of the area where I was based and explaining everything to him and asking for his help. I also went through this process with each new officer I met. I explained where I was from, what I was doing and why. It is important to communicate to gatekeepers your institutional legitimacy and the importance of your research (Heath, 2012). Negotiating access and dealing with gatekeepers raises other important issues for researchers, such as how much information researchers should provide to gatekeepers and the impact of our actions on our fellow researchers who will come after us. For all researchers it is important to leave the research site on good terms and not to act in a way which could hinder access for the researchers who come after (Wincup, 2017).

Gatekeepers may be wary of the research, what it involves, what it means for them and how it will be used, thus it is your job to reassure them. This was an ongoing process with different gatekeepers due to different rosters and staff moving about the prison. This was a necessary and essential part of the research, but it was also at times frustrating as it took valuable time away from the limited window that I had each day to conduct my interviews. There either was not enough time to start an interview or to complete an interview. Also, due to the nature of a prison, interviews were sometimes interrupted midway to accommodate unexpected visits and had to be rearranged to be continued a day or two days later. I found talking to my supervisor and my colleagues to be very helpful in relieving my frustrations and reminding myself to be appreciative of the assistance that was being afforded to me.

The prison officers who were tasked with locating potential participants and bringing them to me were the most important gatekeepers. I had very specific requirements of the prison officers. They were to locate potential participants in the prison, tell them about the research and ask if they would talk to me. The information to be given to the prisoners at this stage was minimal as I wanted to ensure there was no misunderstanding and that any refusals to participate were because of the research and not because of some other reason of which I was unaware. I also wanted to minimise the role of the officers in the research (Wincup, 2017).

Research in a prison environment can be disruptive and the involvement of prison staff has implications for other activities in the prison (King, 2000). Thus, it is essential...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Gatekeepers: the experience of conducting research in a prison setting
• 2 Suicide research: what have we learned about conducting sensitive research with vulnerable populations?
• 3 Ensuring the active participation of people with intellectual disabilities in research: implications for researchers and professionals
• 4 To choose and to participate: lessons from researching with children and young people
• 5 Managing relationships in the field: practitioner research with the travelling community
• 6 Between policy and practice: ethical challenges in longitudinal social work research with street youth
• 7 Cream cakes, hungry cats and hugs: developing a responsive strategy to asking sensitive questions and hearing the answers
• 8 Measuring individual change using open card sort data
• 9 Choosing constructivist grounded theory to explore children’s experiences of disclosing sexual abuse
• 10 A psychoanalytic approach to data collection and analysis
• 11 The politics and ethics of research into ‘wicked’ social problems: the case of Jimmy Savile at Duncroft
• 12 A post qualitative, transdisciplinary, close reading of child and youth care and the capacity of love
• 13 Using documents to examine the meanings of childhood: a figurational perspective
• 14 Theoretical frameworks in research: lessons from a study examining the experiences of birth children of foster carers
• 15 Constructing a knowledge through research: examples from research on practice teaching
• 16 Indicators and strategies to develop credible outcomes in qualitative research: young people, compliance and community supervision
• Index