As noted earlier in this chapter, the interviews were all recorded using a digital recorder. While this means that there is an accurate recording of what was said, and was certainly easier than note-taking, it must be acknowledged that the equipment itself can affect the data that are collected. As Back (2010) notes recording devices can be:
enabling in the sense that it allowed for the voices of people to be faithfully transcribed with accuracy. Paradoxically, the fact that the recorder captured the voice and the precise detail of what informants said meant that social researchers have become less attentive as observers. The tacit belief that the researcher needed merely to attend to what was said has limited the forms of empirical documentation.
(Back, 2010: 23, 24, cited in Edwards and Holland, 2013: 70) I agree that there is a potential for that to be the case, however, I found it freed me to be more, not less observant. Furthermore, using a recorder meant that I could engage more fully with the women than if I had been trying to keep a written record during the
conversation. There are other issues that are worth noting, however, including the difficulty some participants have in ‘forgetting’ the equipment is there. Some people are embarrassed or shy about being recorded, and may be reticent about divulging some information,
knowing that there is a verbatim record of it. Often the women concerned themselves with whether the recorder was working, and it seems that children are endlessly fascinated by them, so on more than one occasion it was switched off, or picked up and thrown. I experienced some difficulty on occasions when the interview was conducted in a public place, with background noise occasionally obscuring the voices. Finally, on one occasion the batteries went flat, and I failed to notice immediately, thus losing part of one interview.
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Despite each of these issues, on balance, I felt the conversations flowed more easily, and the advantages outweigh the disadvantages.
Following each interview, I recorded field notes in my research diary (Lofland and Lofland, 1995; Parker, 2000). I included notes about what I thought had stood out or that had been unexpected, which later helped in drawing out themes for my analysis. These notes augment the verbatim transcripts, and I have used them throughout as aides-memoires. Whenever possible I transcribed the recordings immediately after the interview. I understand the act of transcribing as part of the analytic process, rather than something that precedes it (Taylor, 2001). Everything that is recorded on the transcript is already an interpretative decision (Kvale, 1996); moreover, the way in which accent, pauses and tone are notated may reflect my interests and assumptions differently depending upon the stage of the research.
Accordingly, I have retained the voice recordings and moved repeatedly between them, the transcripts and my interpretations throughout the analysis and writing stages. The
recordings are invaluable resources that allow me to not only remember the interview more clearly but to add texture to the words spoken.
Before ever conducting the interviews, I had of course already immersed myself in a review of the literature, think tank reports and some of the commercial products related to
‘parenting’. As discussed in chapters one and two, terms such as ‘sensitive’ (Walkerdine and Lucey 1989), ‘intensive’ (Hays 1996) and ‘concerted cultivation’ (Lareau 2003) have all been used to describe styles of mothering associated middle class mothers and are associated strongly with conversion into social, economic and cultural capital. Inevitably, these
literatures informed my first tentative links with the empirical data, acting as indicators for thematic coding and analysis.
At the analysis stage, the development of categories was itself a qualitative endeavour; the process of critically assessing emerging patterns included challenging those which may seem apparent by examining links to alternative explanations (Marshall, 1999). Talk is not neutral; it is a complex phenomenon and statements can be understood as serving several purposes. Rather than simply accepting statements at face value, the context in which they are made is important. Choices about what is mentioned, emphasis, rhetorical style and non-verbal communication are indicative of the speaker’s assessment of the audience as much as the events, processes or beliefs being spoken about (Jørgensen and Phillips, 2002). By bringing
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together notes, recordings and the transcripts, and reading across them, I found it easier to make sense of the meanings expressed.
Thematic analysis involves a close reading of the transcripts in order to identify themes and concepts. The intent is to look for not only commonality but also differences and
relationships across the data (Gibson and Brown, 2009); codes are created to reflect regular occurrences, strong emphasis and instances of ready (dis)agreement. Coding is at the centre of qualitative research (Flick, 1998: 17), and is directly related to interpretation and analysis of the data. I adopted an ‘open coding’ approach, which entails concepts and categories being coded at the level of the paragraph, sentence and word (Flick, 1998: 179-180). These codes act as basic units, from which to examine relationships between categories, and from there develop theories. In order to apply these principles, my first full reading was what Mason (2002) refers to as ‘interpretative and reflexive’ to gain an overview of the different types of experiences and views held by the women. During this reading, I noted how I responded emotionally and intellectually to the participant, a ‘reader response’ which subsequently proved very useful during the interpretive process. The second stage involved re-reading and marking the transcripts in relation to the research questions, to reduce the data (Miles and Huberman, 1994). During this phase, I also noted and recorded themes that were not necessarily related to the research questions, but that recurred across transcripts. Despite believing that I had identified the key themes, in the process of writing up it became clear that I had not picked up on issues of place and their meaning for both me and the participants. This entailed a return to the data, and a further reading and identification of instances recorded. In particular, my own field notes, which form a private log intended to capture as much detail as possible about environments, interactions and feelings, proved invaluable.