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.

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!).