The status of the here-and-now in re-studies and re-visits

Real Time Research, Goldsmiths, University of London, 3 December 2011

Graham Crow (National Centre for Research Methods, University of

Southampton)

Summary of presentation

• Two main elements

• Bringing archived data into the here-and-now can be revitalising

• What ethical issues are raised by how data collected in the here-and-now will be used in the future?

• And the question: What are the implications of the democratisation of social research?

The original study

Divisions of Labour (1984) by Ray Pahl based on an extensive, team-based, mixed methods project

Methods included essays written by 142 school leavers in May 1978 (mainly 16-year-olds, 90 boys, 52 girls), asked to imagine themselves towards the end of their lives and looking back

Essays now archived at UK Data Archive Speedy publication of ‘Living without a job: how

school leavers see the future’ New Society 2 November 1978: 259-62; focus on themes of work, unemployment and family

The original study and current re-study

Pahl acknowledges that article doesn’t do full justice to essay material which ‘would be extremely hard to interpret without some knowledge of the local context. As this improves, I may wish to modify my present interpretation’ (1978: 262)

2009-10 small-scale re-study of Sheppey involving 106 essays, with better gender balance

Location of Sheppey

Revitalising archived data – samples of extracts from essays

• Essays give insights into the world of young people in the late 1970’s: apprenticeships and divorce

• The author of essay 6 passed his exams at 16, was accepted as an apprentice mechanic for four years, during which time he joined a rock group and got engaged. ‘I couldn’t get married until I was twenty because I didn’t finish the apprenticeship until then’. Moved to Essex for work and had two children, but joined a new group aged 33, gained a record contract and spent increasing amounts of time touring. Aged 35 his wife divorced him because ‘she couldn’t take no more’. Children stayed with their mother.

Revitalising archived data – samples of extracts from essays

• ‘Mum found me a nice office job. I took it without a word of protest…. The rebel in me had died…. A[t] forty I can safely say my life had ended. It was too late to start again. I wasn’t content but I just had to accept it’ (essay 4, male)

• Essay 93, female, left school at 16, went to college and then got a secretarial job, met and married husband, continued working until birth of children, moved house, children got married in their twenties, and produced grandchildren.

• Essay 95, female, left school at 16, went to work in a factory, then moved to Northampton to live with her nan, worked in a shoe factory for four years, ‘then I did a good days work, I got married without any doubts’.

Revitalising archived data – samples of extracts from essays

• Essay 15 (male) recounts a successful life, married with children and grandchildren, wealthy living in a six-bedroomed house, but ‘sometimes I wonder what would’ve happened if I hadn’t been lucky in business, if I didn’t make the money I had now. Would I be like my school friend Mark who is still working at the factory job he found when he was sixteen, and how lucky I thought he was to take home £40 a week’.

• What kinds of contextual information would we like to have for such an essay writer? His friend?

• And for the people captured by other media?

Revitalising archived data

• Essays collected in 1978 are of interest to 16-year olds now

• Basis for comparison with essays collected now, and other forms of data collection now

• Attempts to contact 1978 essay writers unsuccessful

• Successful contact with writers of archived imagined futures collected as part of a study by Elias of the transition to work achieved by Goodwin and O’Connor

• Ethics of how far to pursue such contacts

What will data from the here-and-now look like in the future?

• Some essays contain things about which people may not wish to be reminded

• Complicated in settings in which it is difficult to achieve anonymisation

• Importance of contextual information to make judgements about how seriously the things are being said – classroom-based activities do appear to include some collusion

• Details of instructions to essay writers have not survived

• Related issue of ‘fantasy’ – who is the audience here?

What will data from the here-and-now look like in the future?

• Rich Ling (2008) New Tech, New Ties: How mobile communication is re-shaping social cohesion (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press)

• ‘The qualitative analyses include both interview situations and, in the spirit of Goffman, observations.’

• ‘At the most reserved level, I simply observed the use of mobile telephones in various public settings. The strategy was to position myself in some public place where I, in essence, had a legitimate right to be there (a café, a tram, a bus station, in the park, along the street, etc.). The point was simply to wait for people to begin using their phones’ (p.19)

What will data from the here-and-now look like in the future?

• ‘The next (relatively minor) phase was to carry out several small experiments with co-location. In these experiments I would find a person talking on a phone and then move within a meter [sic] of that person. In a grocery store, for example, I would move next to the telephonist and start to look at the labels of the tomato cans on the shelf. In a train station, if the telephonist was sitting on a bench, I would sit down nearby’ (p.20)

What will data from the here-and-now look like in the future?

• ‘The final observation technique was to move into audible range – the range of Goffman’s grunts and groans – of ongoing mobile phone conversations. I tried to overhear the conversations of the individuals…. As it turns out, it is quite easy to tune into mobile phone conversations in public spaces…. I made little use of photography or voice recording, because it is harder to blend into a scene when using a camera or a recording device’ (p.20)

• ‘There is also the ethical question of using material provided by others without their permission and indeed without their knowledge’ (p.21)

The democratisation of social research?

Opening up of research findings to wider audiences

1978 essays available to a much wider audience than could ever have been imagined in at the time they were written, including students (use of archived data in teaching), and community partners in recent research

Possibility of much more rapid dissemination of findings e.g. Lassiter et al (2004) The Other Side of Middletown – collaborative ethnography, fieldwork 2003

The democratisation of social research?

• Lessons of re-studies and re-visits include several examples of research participants being disappointed at how their data have been used, including a sense of misrepresentation and having been misled about the purpose of research

• So whose data are these, who decides how they should be used, what processes are involved in gaining consent? And what if subsequently they change their minds?