Crystallising my purpose

I am in the process of doctoring one of my old power points for a presentation I will be giving in a few weeks.   The old ppt is the presentation I used at LILAC 2008, and so is not very old--and yet seems so out of date.  It is perhaps, a mark of the development of my thinking that it has changed.   So what has changed?  Well, it is in the crystallising my purpose.   My original proposal spoke a lot about information literacy, a term, which  I believe, certainly in the English speaking West, is inextricably linked to academic libraries and or some kind of mechanistic training programs, rather than an overarching notion of tying together the strands of information seeking, information use and information behaviours.   As a term, information literacy conjures up preconceived notions by its very statement.   So back to my purpose,

• How do parents in modern Britain seek meaning and answers to their questions to make informed decisions?
• What sources do they turn to and how do they then construct meaning and assess relevance and trustworthiness?

Lower Income Groups (Reflections)

Yesterday, I spent the day at a primary school in one of the most deprived areas of Leeds.  During the day I spoke with and interviewed a number of mothers.   As I reflect after the event, a number of points seem to be highlighted in my mind.

• There seems to be an attitude of self sufficiency with a group of mothers.  They state that their problems are their own, and that they have to get on with it.  And yet, when things go wrong they blame the authorities who they were dealing with at the time for not helping enough.  When probed, they themselves did not or do not seek help from other sources.
• So far, only one father has been interviewed.  Does this reflect on the information seeking process as a whole i.e. it is the  mother who generally seems to take the lead?   It is true that in many cases not all of the parents are together.
• In the school that I was at yesterday I was surprised by the amount of Internet use by parents; maybe it was just who I spoke to yesterday, but it seemed as if the parents in this lower socio group really used the web more than 'middle class'  mothers.  Determining how successfully they used it is indeterminate at this stage.  (Was this as a result of the courses offered through the school for parents which included ECDL, CLAIT, and computer use??)

Certainly, I might be worth using this school and other similar ones as case study examination as part of my research.

Observations"

Today I attended, for the second time, the Whybeck Parents Forum.  My initial aim was to been seen, so that the parents would get to know me and hopefully agree to be interviewed.  

The forum is lively and energetic, with parents given an opportunity to have a say in the 'running' of the school.   The forum, is more than this however, it provides a social setting for the mothers (predominately women who attend).     It struck me today, as I attended (sometimes I can be a little dense) that what I was in fact doing was an observation in an ethnographic sense.  My aim now is to continue to attend and see how the group develop--there is rich source material in this parents forum.  

This reminds me of the remarks made by Charmaz (2006) who discusses the need for 'rich data' commenting that a "researcher can rarely make persuasive, much less definitive, statements from limited data" (p. 18) -- she also quotes Dey (1999: p. 119) who refers to a "smash and grab data collection strategy."

Transcribing Data

A challenge with the approach of allowing 'yesterday's' data (or interviews in my case) (Guba and Lincoln, 1985) to shape the direction of 'today's', is that in my case, it means that I have to write up the transcriptions from audio recordings of the interviews.  A couple of weeks in to my fieldwork, I have conducted five interviews, and have yet transcribe any of them (procrastination?). 

To give a little perspective, Today (Monday), I have another interview, Wednesday (five interviews) and Thursday (one interview).  Thus by the end of the week I will have approximately 12+ hours of interviews to transcribe.    This is why Guba and Lincoln, recommend that the researcher does not audio record interviews,  rather that he or she writes notes during the interview.  Such recommendations, although logical, in practice does not work and is impractical (and may put off the interviewee, as well as hinder the flow of the process), for a free flowing semi-structured interview, conducted by a novice researcher (me!). 

Hard to Reach Parents

Ok, Friday 13th June, 11.15am  this should be the time  that I interview one of my first hard to reach parents and my first DNA.  I have two booked today through the community team working with parents.     Saying that as I type a text has come through from my parent saying that she can't make the appointment.  The glimmer of hope for me is that she has asked me to call her back next week.   That said, I think that I need to start thinking creatively about how I approach those parents who have chaotic lifestyle, and even unlike the parent that I am meeting to day are not plugged into any community.  How do I do this?    One possibility may be to select a couple of geographic areas, and approach the community organisations and re-approach the schools and centre my focus there?     Possible sources of help of gate keepers:

• Community churches
• Refuges & Charities
• Youth Groups
• Mums and tots
• Heath Visitors

Research Development

Guba and Lincoln emphasis that refection and refinement is a fundamental part of the research process.  Today, I was reviewing the scenario sheets I use for the interviews.  It apparent that the two scenario's I currently use are very similar i.e. both health related.   I really need to develop another scenario, maybe education related.  Lets see what comes out of the research.

Fieldwork

My fieldwork is now taking a postpositive naturalistic bent.  I have been hugely influenced by Guba and Lincoln's 1985 classic Naturalistic Inquiry.  This book is having a profound effect on my thoughts and the development of my research. 

Naturalistic research is not research by osmosis, it is depended upon a systematic and robust implementation of research design.  It certainly is not the easy route that many may have you think it is.