Observational sketching as method

This paper explores the potential of observational sketching as a social science research tool, informed by our own recent experiments with observational sketching techniques and approaches. We first outline the historical roots of academic sketching and note a recent resurgence of interest in sketching in certain disciplines. We then introduce our own explorations in sketching as method, based on a year-long collaboration between an observational artist and a group of qualitative researchers with interests in creative methods. The paper outlines some of the lessons we learnt from our partnership, focusing on three themes: (i) ‘sketchiness’; (ii) ‘concentrated seeing’ and (iii) sketching as interaction. We conclude that observational sketching generates a refreshingly different form of visual data which has considerable potential to be used as a complement to other methods, including as a participatory method and as a useful tool for thinking.     

Friendships with benefits? Examining the role of friendship in semi-structured interviews within music research

This article explores the ‘methodology of friendship’ and its wider potential within music research. Drawing on two research examples that made use of ‘friendship’ in distinct fashions – one that explores music listening practices in everyday life and the other, music as a site for racialisation – the article discusses how friendship can be incorporated within semi-structured interviews. The case studies act as examples of how to negotiate alterity in music research and how friendship represents a potential for gathering more detailed data. The notion of ‘alterity’, at the core of research relationships is critical to shift the conversation to an informal tone and improve the depth of the discourses gathered from informants. Consequently, this article addresses debates within qualitative (music) sociology by reconsidering friendship as an axis of power and examines the nature of the data gathered in semi-structured interviews through the methodology of friendship.     

The freedom of information act and sociological research

Passed in 1966, The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) has provided nearly thirty years of access to government information virtually unmatched throughout the world. Used heavily by the media, it has been virtually ignored by sociologists. Nonetheless, it promises access to a potential wealth of data for sociological research. Following a brief discussion of the history of federal information policy and the FOIA, some suggestions for possible research applications are made. Implications for further research are presented, including the emergence of two new classes, information “haves” and information “have-nots,” indicating a new dimension for stratification research in contemporary society.     

Working at a marginal 'career': the case of UK social science contract researchers

Contract researchers constitute a significant occupational group within the UK higher education system, and the products of their labour are crucial to the research profile of the institutions in which they work and to the sector as a whole. Given the ‘marginality’ of the contract researcher role, with its attendant insecurities and inferior employment conditions in comparison with ‘permanent’ faculty, it is perhaps not surprising that relatively few individuals manage to sustain any continuity of employment resembling a career path. The fact that some researchers do succeed in achieving this is therefore worthy of investigation. This paper examines and charts some of the ways in which contract researchers manage their everyday work routines and construct a presentation of self in order to maximise opportunities for ‘staying in the game’.     

JUMPING ON SHADOWS: CATCHING THE UNCONSCIOUS IN THE CLASSROOM

This article discusses case material from a psychoanalytically informed ethnographic research project where the author had a dual role as a teaching practitioner and researcher in an infant school. It suggests that practitioner researchers can deepen a concern with reflexivity in the research process by transferring elements of the practice of the psychoanalytic clinician — specifically, attention to ‘counter‐transference’ — to their research practice. The article reviews the concept of counter‐transference. It suggests that working out the difference between transference and counter‐transference may be connected unconsciously to working out the distinctions between ego and superego. The article then goes on to provide an illustration of the way in which the author attempted to use her own counter‐transference to inform her research into young children's learning, specifically in relation to her experience of being a teacher. The discussion connects this to the teacher's transferential place as a parental and ‘superego’ figure for pupils. Observational extracts are drawn from the case study of ‘Lutfa’, a Bengali girl placed at the lower end of the ability group range. The article concludes by suggesting that attention to counter‐transference dynamics as a form of reflexivity can provide the practitioner‐researcher with valuable information about the research subjects and about dynamics in the setting, particularly the participants' relationships to ‘superego’ figures.     

Battles through and about statistics in French pay equity bargaining: The politics of quantification at workplace level

This article proposes to study the discreet ‘battles of numbers’ at workplace level, particularly exacerbated on pay equity, in relation to its potential additional costs for employers. Figures are at once a framework, an object and a resource for power struggles between social partners. This approach is inspired by ‘statactivism’, a research perspective that studies the ways and contexts in which statistics can become tools for social mobilization. In a European context where bargaining is increasingly decentralized to company level, we argue that researchers should pay attention to statistical resources and quantification skills of negotiators, both on the management and unions side. They should also include in their analytical framework the influence of experts and specialists who advise social partners on how to strategically produce and use gender‐sensitive statistics. In this article, two case studies allow us to open the ‘black box’ of equality bargaining, revealing challenges and controversies of gender pay reporting.     

Data craft: a theory/methods package for critical internet studies

ABSTRACT

Disinformation campaigns continue to thrive online, despite social media companies’ efforts at identifying and culling manipulation on their platforms. Framing these manipulation tactics as ‘coordinated inauthentic behavior,’ major platforms have banned culprits and deleted the evidence of their actions from social activity streams, making independent assessment and auditing impossible. While researchers, journalists, and civil society groups use multiple methods for discovering and tracking disinformation, platforms began to publish highly curated data archives of disinformation in 2016. When platform companies reframe manipulation campaigns, however, they downplay the importance of their products in spreading disinformation. We propose to treat social media metadata as a boundary object that supports research across platforms and use metadata as an entry point for investigating manipulation campaigns.

We illustrate how platform companies’ responses to disinformation campaigns are at odds with the interests of researchers, civil society, policy-makers, and journalists, limiting the capacity to audit the role that platforms play in political discourse. To show how platforms’ data archives of ‘coordinated inauthentic behavior’ prevent researchers from examining the contexts of manipulation, we present two case studies of disinformation campaigns related to the Black Lives Matter Movement. We demonstrate how data craft – the exploitation of metrics, metadata, and recommendation engines – played a prominent role attracting audiences to these disinformation campaigns. Additionally, we offer some investigative techniques for researchers to employ data craft in their own research of the disinformation. We conclude by proposing new avenues for research for the field of Critical Internet Studies.     

Dementia,disability rights and disablism: understanding the social position of people living with dementia

This article considers the recent history and consequences of positioning people living with dementia in the realms of disability, disablism and disability rights. The geo-political focus is the United Kingdom and neighbouring resource-rich nations in the Global North. The first section examines the growing trend of identifying ‘dementia’ with ‘disability’, a trend fuelled by the expansion of dementia-related activism and research. The second section focuses on how researchers who have published in Disability & Society and other journals have applied the social model of disability to individuals living with dementia. The third section discusses three conceptual challenges that lie ahead for those who choose to research and theorise the dementia/disability connection. These challenges concern: theorising dementia as disability; understanding intersectionality in dementia contexts; and understanding ‘abuse’ in dementia contexts.     

Co-production: towards a utopian approach

This article outlines how co-production might be understood as a utopian method, which both attends to and works against dominant inequalities. It suggests that it might be positioned ‘within, against, and beyond’ current configurations of power in academia and society more broadly. It develops this argument by drawing on recent research funded through the UK’s Connected Communities programme, led by the Arts and Humanities Research Council; and by attending to arguments from the field of Utopian Studies. It explores particular issues of power and control within the field of co-production, acknowledging that neoliberalism both constrains and co-opts such practice; and explores methodological and infrastructural issues such that its utopian potential might be realised.     

Sensitive topics in social research involving children

While there is broad consensus that involving children in research is critically important for understanding their lives, there is considerable caution around their participation in social research on ‘sensitive’ issues. Such caution is further amplified by a lack of agreement about what constitutes a ‘sensitive topic’. This article draws on data from interviews with a range of Australian stakeholders, including children, parents, researchers, ethics committee members, government and non-government organisation representatives, and other decision-makers, specifically related to the question of ‘what is a sensitive topic?’. While participants identified a range of sensitive topics, findings point to sensitivities being closely linked with the contexts of children’s lives and experiences. This requires researchers to approach research in ways that reflect more nuanced understandings of these sensitivities, help address potential concerns and facilitate the development of research relationships that promote ethical conduct of research with children.     

Cross‐generational gender constructions. Women,teenagers and technology

Despite the supposed inroads of feminism, gender equality and new ‘democratic’ means of technological communication, adult women and teenage girls in the UK continue to emphasise what Valerie Walkerdine has termed the ‘habitual “feminine” position of incompetence’ (2006, 526). This article draws on two complimentary research projects in order to investigate the cross‐generational gender constructions women and teenagers articulate. Drawing on Negra's notion of a ‘cover story’ (2009, 44), this article suggests that we can read the claims and practices of the women and teenagers in terms of how they frame new ideologies of femininity. Further, the continual recourse to an essential feminine position of exclusion is detrimentally shaping not only technological use, but also the wider operationalization of gender in public and private arenas. Focussing specifically on the female populations of the research projects, we demonstrate how gender continues to emerge and be produced by women and girls in negotiated, but highly problematic ways. Rather than considering gender as a determining force, it emerges here as a carefully constructed tool for engagement, and as a distancing device facilitating a claim of, and towards, disinterest. The two projects suggest implications for future mediations and relations with new media technology; they also suggest that across generations, women are detrimentally fixing and restricting potential and actual performances of gender through the evocation of a more traditional femininity.     

‘Shared intelligibility’ and two reflexive strategies as methods of supporting ‘responsible decisions’ in a hermeneutic phenomenological study

Hermeneutic phenomenologists propose that researchers inescapably bring themselves into their research because interpretation must inevitably be influenced by their contexts and pre-understandings. They propose that interpretation is a dynamic and active part of the construction of a text’s meaning, and involvement in this construction process leads to deep empathic understanding of others’ experience, reappraisal of accepted social and cultural systems, and a level of self-enlightenment. The strengths of the hermeneutic methodological approach have led to its use in a number of disciplines, however, there remains concerns about interpretative validity. It is widely acknowledged that in order to support rigour and validity in hermeneutic studies, researchers are required to develop and integrate strategies within the research process to promote awareness of the interplay between their pre-understandings and interpretation. This paper discusses how episodic interviewing which capitalizes on ‘shared intelligibility’, and the reflexive strategies of ‘oppositional arrangement of perspectives’ and ‘backgrounding’ were used to shed light on data from a study of the experiences and views of nursing home nurses regarding their occupational role and status, and work identity.     

Work-based learning in social work education: the challenges and opportunities for the identities of work-based learners on university-based programs

This article explores the experiences of work-based learners undertaking social work degrees in the UK. The article is based on research of work-based learners on undergraduate social work degrees based in two universities, a local face-to-face university and a national distance learning university. Based on narrative inquiry methods for data collection, the article presents two case studies from the wider study which provide narratives of ‘becoming’ and ‘being’ a student. Drawing on identity theory, the article analyses how identity is an important concept in understanding the challenges and opportunities for this group of students on their journeys into and through higher education. The paper concludes by considering the implications for current provision of social work education.     

Visual methodologies,sand and psychoanalysis: employing creative participatory techniques to explore the educational experiences of mature students and children in care

Social science research has witnessed an increasing move towards visual methods of data production. However, some visual techniques remain pariah sites because of their association with psychoanalysis; and a reluctance to engage with psychoanalytically informed approaches outside of therapy-based settings. This paper introduces the method of ‘sandboxing’, which was developed from the psychoanalytical approach of the ‘world technique’. ‘Sandboxing’ provides an opportunity for participants to create three-dimensional scenes in sand-trays, employing miniature figures and everyday objects. Data are presented from two studies conducted in Wales, UK. The first, exploring mature students’ accounts of higher education, and the second, exploring the educational experiences of children and young people in public care. The paper argues that psychoanalytical work can be adapted to enable a distinctive, valuable and ethical tool of qualitative inquiry; and illustrates how ‘sandboxing’ engendered opportunities to fight familiarity, enabled participatory frameworks, and contributed to informed policy and practice.     

Developing evidenced-based policy and practice in social interventions with children and families

This review article focuses on a series of reports commissioned by Barnardo's, the largest children's charity in the UK.¹ The series examines ‘what works?’ in different forms of social intervention with children and families. The publication of these reports is very timely. There is growing interest, indeed a demand, from many quarters for a strengthening of the evidence base that informs social policy. This, in turn, has opened a debate among researchers and users of research about what constitutes evidence. What sort of information enables us to make claims that a particular initiative works? This series considers the question of appropriate research methodologies and in so doing raises many further questions, which are the theme of this review.     

Multimodal identity texts as mediational spaces in researching Ph.D. students’ critical teacher-researcher Selves

This paper analyses how two Ph.D. students used multimodal identity texts (MMITs) to document their research journeys as they engaged in their doctoral studies. Drawing on qualitative data collected from multiple pre-service teacher preparation programmes in Chile and Sri Lanka, two bi-national researchers (a Colombian-Canadian and a Sri Lankan-Canadian) use MMITs to document the complexities surrounding conducting research in contexts where they were neither ‘complete insiders’ nor ‘complete outsiders’. The two researchers’ identity texts provide a mediational space for them to document the multiple, yet shifting identities they enacted, assumed and were assigned during their prolonged research journeys. The study reveals how the process of constructing and maintaining identity texts, as well as conducting constant critical conversations allows the authors to scaffold their learning processes while reflecting on their emerging professional identities.     

Research,policy and funding – academic treadmills and the squeeze on intellectual spaces1

In recent years, there has been a great deal of collective rumination about social scientists' role in society. In the post‐1997 UK context, public policy commitments to ‘evidence‐based policy’ and ‘knowledge transfer’ have further stimulated such reflections. More recently, Michael Burawoy's 2004 address to the American Sociological Association, which called for greater engagement with ‘public sociology’ has reverberated throughout the discipline, motivating a series of debates about the purpose of sociological research. To date, most such contributions have been based on personal experience and anecdotal evidence. In contrast, this paper responds directly to Burawoy's suggestion that we should ‘apply sociology to ourselves,’ in order that we ‘become more conscious of the global forces’ driving our research ( Burawoy 2005 : 285). Drawing on an empirical research project designed to explore of the relationship between health inequalities research and policy in Scotland and England, in the period from 1997 until 2007, this paper discusses data from interviews with academic researchers. The findings suggest that the growing pressure to produce ‘policy relevant’ research is diminishing the capacity of academia to provide a space in which innovative and transformative ideas can be developed, and is instead promoting the construction of institutionalized and vehicular (chameleon‐like) ideas. Such a claim supports Edward Said's (1994 ) insistence that creative, intellectual spaces within the social sciences are increasingly being squeezed. More specifically, the paper argues we ought to pay far greater attention to how the process of seeking research funding shapes academic research and mediates the interplay between research and policy.     

Crimes against non-human animals: Examining dog fighting in the UK and the USA through a green criminology perspective

This article reviews the social scientific literature published between the late 1990s and 2021 on the illegal ‘sport’ of dog fighting in the UK and USA. Adopting a green criminological perspective, it argues that studying dog fighting is important for understanding the ways in which this form of animal cruelty contributes to a range of social and animal harms. The review is structured in five sections. The first situates the review theoretically by introducing key ideas within green criminology that will inform the discussion. The next section presents a typology of the different levels of dog fighting in both countries. The third section then explores both the motivations of contemporary dog fighters, as well as the justifications they deploy to defend their ‘sport’ to outsiders. The fourth section then adopts a green criminological perspective to explore the various social and animal harms associated with dog fighting. The final section then brings the threads of the discussion together and highlights some directions for future research.     

Commercial and sexual exploitation of children and young people in the UK—a review

This paper reviews recent information and data relevant to the commercial sexual exploitation of children and young people in the UK. Three main aspects of exploitation are addressed: abuse through prostitution; abuse through pornography; and the trafficking of children and young people to and through the UK for the purposes of commercial sexual exploitation. Most published research in this area relates to young people exploited through prostitution. The review explores the range of vulnerability factors, the processes used to engage young people in prostitution and the types of support strategies for those being exploited. Rather less information is currently available on the scale of child pornography, or the links between the use of pornography and other forms of sexual abuse. The internet as a modern technology for proliferating child pornography is discussed, alongside its role in providing opportunities for paedophiles to access and ‘groom’ children for sexual purposes. Finally, the review provides a summary of research on trafficking of children to and through the UK for the purposes of commercial sexual exploitation and demonstrates the limited knowledge about this topic. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.