ESRC/ NCRM Training Seminar on Cross-National Research:

Research design – scientific and pragmatic rationales for choice of countries, case studies

and their contextualisation

An EU qualitative study on housing

Deborah Quilgars,

Centre for Housing Policy, University of York

Why consider this issue?

• Growth in cross-national research• Yet, relatively small body of literature on

cross-national research, especially qualitative methods

• Challenge greatest for qualitative work? Interpretation across historical, cultural and socio-political contexts….

• There are both scientific and pragmatic choices – need to make these explicit

The research study: aims

• Origins of Security and Insecurity (OSIS) -Citizens and Governance Programme (6th Fr)

• Housing as site of restructuring – interplay with jobs, household structures, finance, welfare etc

• Key aims:– Analyse factors & processes that have impacted on

households;

– Establish how households perceive patterns of security and insecurity & how affected personal strategies

The research study: methods overview

• Two key stages:– Quantitative analyses at macro and micro level

– Qualitative work

• Qualitative studies– Institutional studies

– 30 household interviews in each country, exploring perceptions, attitudes and extent to which housing is a resource and repository of ‘wealth’

• Today mainly focussing on qualitative work

The countries and researchers

• Belgium - University of Antwerp

• Finland - University of Turku

• France - ANIL, Paris

• Germany - University of Bremen

• Hungary – Metropolitan Research Institute, Budapest

• The Netherlands – OTB, Technical University of Delft

• Portugal - Centre for Studies for Social Intervention, Lisbon

• Sweden - Uppsala University

• UK - Universities of Birmingham & York

Choice of countries

• Scientific rationale: – selected to enable comparison across different

welfare regime types (Esping-Andersen etc)– & different housing markets (renting/ home-

owning split etc)

• Pragmatic rationale:– Cooperation - previous partnerships – Compromise - availability and interest

Identifying case studies I:Selecting geographical areas

• Pragmatism of one case study in each country:– impossibility of reflecting experiences across

localities (the compromise of selecting an ‘average’ area)

– location influenced by budget…. (comparing Budapest with York… a compromise)

– reality that household responses may have been different if rural areas selected…

Identifying case studies II: Selecting the respondents

• How important is it to select the same ‘categories’ of respondents? – Losing the reflection of individual countries

but gaining the comparison e.g. ratio of home-owners: renters

• Finding the respondents– Same or different recruitment methods?

Contextualisation I

• Analysis as the biggest challenge• Importance of agreed analytical framework

(and coding frame) • Locating analysis within institutional

understanding essential• Layers of analysis = layers of interpretation?...

Linguistic issues means analysis of country material not transparent….loss of cultural messages and understandings?

Contextualisation II

• Problem of moving from country reports to overview report… Compromise of two countries combining the material…. Could we ask for funds for everyone to be involved?

• Risk of ethnocentric focus by leading country/ countries

• Cooperation as means of accentuating the advantages & minimising the dangers

Cooperation is all

• Direction or over-direction?

• Past experience important?

• Knowing your fellow researchers

• Establishing open methods of communication

• Value of virtual meetings

Conclusions

• Cross-national research is by its nature a challenge

• Cooperation essential and compromise inevitable

• … need to be pragmatic but scientific rationale and methods prevail overall, if work hard enough!