Ethical considerations

Ethical clearance was sought and approved by the University of the Witwatersrand Psychology Department’s internal ethics committee. The researcher also received permission from one of the SANCA branches to recruit mothers in the centre. A letter was sent to the manager of SANCA asking permission to contact potential participants (Please see Appendix D). Once permission was granted, the researcher was able to approach the mothers in the SANCA centre, and explain the purpose of this study.

Mothers who were recruited from AA meetings and Community Centres were approached and told about the nature and purpose of the study. Participants were given a participation information sheet (see appendix A) that explained possible risks,

aims and consequences of the study. The participants were given the opportunity to decide if they wanted to participate or not and that they may withdraw at any point in the study, without consequences. Confidentiality was maintained by the researcher and the supervisor. Full anonymity was maintained when reporting the results, and limited anonymity was assured during the recruitment of participants and data collection due to the face-to-face nature of the study. The use of pseudonyms was adopted when transcribing and writing up of the results, to maintain confidentiality and anonymity. Pseudonyms are used where direct quotes are used in the results and discussion chapter.

Since participants may have been occupying at least two identities, namely of being a mother and an alcohol abuser, they may have felt that they were placed in a morally comprising situation and that they have to account for themselves. They might have felt stigmatised and judged. The researcher was aware of this potential tendency and remained sensitive and openly interested towards the participants during the interviews. Further, she encouraged mothers to talk about good and bad times without feeling judged and stigmatised. None of the participants appeared traumatised or defensive during participation and did not seek the free counselling services that had been arranged prior to interviews. The participants reported that the interview session was cathartic for them.

Participants signed an informed consent form (please see appendix B) and audio­

recording consent form (please see appendix C) before being interviewed. The transcripts from the interviews were kept safe at the University of the Witwatersrand in a password protected laptop, with only the researcher’s supervisor and researcher having access to them. The participants were given a choice to request the summary of the results of the study.

3.8 Reflexivity

Reflexivity is grounded in phenomenology and hermeneutics (Grant, 2014). Reflexivity refers to an on-going process of self-reflection which researchers engage in, in order to generate awareness about their own actions, feelings and perceptions during the research process (Darawsheh, 2014). It can be applied during data collection and data analysis, improving transparency in research (Darawsheh, 2014). It further involves a process of self-awareness during the research process, aiding visibility on the practice

and construction of knowledge to produce accurate analysis of the research data (Pillow, 2003). The following section will focus on my reflection of the research process, further linking it to methodological issues.

During data collection, finding mothers who were in treatment facilities to participate proved to be difficult. Reasons included: there are few number of these women in treatment facilities as well as the potentially sensitive nature of the study. Employees in various treatment centres found it difficult to assist due to confidentiality issues and absence of mothers in their facilities. With that said, participants had to be recruited from various places, such as AA meetings and Community Centres. This resulted in the study having different categories of mothers (i.e. those still drinking and those recovering whilst attending AA meetings). Due to the diversity of these women, the level of reflectiveness of participants differed. Mothers who were recovering were able to reflect more on their experiences, especially with regards to the impact of alcohol use on their roles as mothers, more than mothers who were still using alcohol. During data analysis these different categories of the mothers were taken into account when analysing their experiences.

The potentially sensitive nature of the topic, and some of the questions I asked, required me to be conscious about the way i ask questions when interviewing the participants. I was mostly concerned about how the participants would react, therefore in some interviews I had to try rephrase the question or introduce the question in a different manner. During the interviews there were moments whereby participants were emotional, so some questions were reshuffled and some were introduced to allow them to talk about the good time they had as mothers and the times they had with their children. In this case I had to be sensitive towards my participants’ feelings and try to make the interview environment a contained experience for them.

Interviewing in a language other than English can be challenging. Even though I am fluent in Setswana I found it difficult doing the interviews in Setswana. Translating the interview schedule into Setswana proved to be difficult; there were no direct word translations that exist for some English words. Further, I had to rephrase some of the questions in a way that the meaning will be the same in English. Hence I decided to ask an individual (David Tlhoaele, Journalism student, broadcasting mainly in Setswana) who is fluent in Setswana to double check my translations. Therefore there

might be instances whereby the question-meanings in English-Tswana translation might be slightly different. Regardless, the translations were done in what is known as academic Setswana. Some of the words were difficult for the participants to understand. Nonetheless this indicates the difference between spoken and written language. In this case I had to substitute some words with English words and try to rephrase some questions in the way the participants would understand.

In conclusion, decisions had to be made in order to capture each and every participant’s experiences regardless of the category they fall in and to provide accurate results. Recognising the issues explained above and deducing solutions enabled me to evaluate research methodologies in a research specific context. Traditional methods may be difficult to adhere to when in specific research settings such as in the case of alcoholic mothers. Sampling methods tend to be adjusted to mirror the research context. For example in the case of the current study, since there were few women in rehabilitation centres who met the sampling criteria, women who were not in those centres had to be taken into consideration. Further, language issues accounted, I recognised the difficulty of conducting research in a multilingual context, especially with issues surrounding translation from one language to another, and the meaning lost during translation (Esposito, 2001). In this way validity/transferability will be compromised to an extent (Esposito, 2001). Issues of translation ranged from within-language and between-languages.