Within the ethnographic fieldwork, respondents were selected mainly through purposeful, yet convenient sampling methods to suit the context of the research as well as those who were present during the fieldwork (Ritchie et al. 2014). Further, a snowball sampling technique was also used, as individuals were approached based on the potential of providing more information as one participant referred to the other (ibid).
Ethics approval was obtained from the School of Textiles and Design at Heriot Watt University, Scotland. Formal written consent was received from the participants where practicable, in addition to oral consent. According to Rose Wiles (2012, p27) oral consent can become an alternative method to signed ethics forms to avoid respondents be “off-putt”, or when respondents are illiterate or use a different command of language (ibid, p35). As Iphofen (2009, p74) notes, consent “should be gained in the most convenient, least disturbing manner for both researcher and researched”, therefore oral consent was deemed more suitable when conducting ethnographic work in the community settings and collecting artisans’ responses. In those cases where an interpreter was employed, a briefing was provided to the participants. Participants were anonymised unless they wished to be recognised and confidentiality was assured to the best of the researcher’s ability (Wiles et al. 2006). Due to the unpredictability of ethnographic research work, and implications that arise with regards to trust, values and
• Phase 1: The reSIde case study
Analyse and contextualise the findings within the
broader literature
• Phase 2: Sri Lankan Fieldwork
Analyse and contextualise the findings
• Phase 3: Indian Fieldwork
Analyse and contextualise the findings.
• Phase 4: Design, test and evaluate a participatory engagement model
Collate all the analysis of previous phases to determine
a framework for the engagement model
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consent8 (Atkinson 2009, p21), the researcher was cautious about the responsibility she had during the field work and data representation. The researcher paid attention to gaining trust, and building relationships with the observed community groups and individuals, where gate keepers helped to maintain a non-coercive approach (Webster et al. 2014, p93) or contacting them prior to engagement in the field. This assured a “thinking ethically” approach during the research process (Miller et al. 2012, p4).
Phase 1: All the interviews were done in English.
Phase 2: The interviews were done in Sinhala (the main language spoken in Sri Lanka) in the majority of cases, especially when conducting the interviews with craft communities. The researcher translated the interviews, who is also native Sinhala speaker. A certain number of interviews were conducted in English, when the respondent felt he/she was able to communicate and express their thoughts in English. Phase 3: The majority of interviews conducted with the craft communities were carried out with the support of an interpreter, translating from Hindi to English and some instances translating from local dialects spoken in the region. The interpreter at times was an independent person joined to assist the field work, or sometimes a professional who worked at the organisation the researcher observed, and who agreed on the basis of facilitating the interview. There were also interviews conducted solely in the English language when the respondents felt comfortable with the language.
Data analysis was performed from the first phase of the research process and continued at each stage as an ongoing activity, and finally a formal analysis was performed. A descriptive qualitative data analysis process was undertaken, following approaches described by Spencer et al. (2014, p270), which is a thematic analysis where abstraction and interpretation is used. Since qualitative data are often messy and fractured, the first step this research took was indexing and sorting data, which means collating and organising different types of data gathered such as field notes, transcribed data, visual data and archival materials. In this formal analytic process, the researcher performed a substantive and a cross sectional analysis in terms of interpreting meanings, develop conceptual and analytical categories, mapping linkages to establish comparisons and
8
See Atkinson (2009) for a thorough analysis of why it is impractical in ethnographic research to obtain ‘informed’ consents always. He notes that it is not to do with ethnographers’ intention on not wishing to do so, but mainly because of the nature of the research they undertake which is unpredictable and always emerging as the research progresses.
connections between key themes and then finally provide explanations (Spencer et al. 2014, p272-286). It enabled the researcher to locate the findings within existing theories and literature and link it with the ideas that discussed in the contextual review.
Triangulation in qualitative research offers different applications, such as a validation strategy, contributes to generalisation of the findings, and gain a deeper understanding of the research (Steinke 2004, p183). This research followed the protocol of triangulation proposed by Norman Denzin in his book The Research Act (1978), which is still a popular strategy that researchers prefer to use, such as Stake (1995), Steinke (2004), and Denzin (2017) himself. The first technique used was “data triangulation”, which means triangulating the data acquired from different sources, such as participant observations, interviews, observational notes, photographs, video and audio recordings and published materials such as press reports. They were included to capture multiple participants’ views that were common across settings. Secondly, and especially during the fourth stage, the “investigator triangulation” was employed, where a neutral observer was used to balance out the subjective engagements of the researcher when connecting with participants. Thirdly, methodological triangulation was used by accompanying at one point mixed methods combining both quantitative and qualitative data (online survey, interviews, video recordings, observing objects) and in other times combining archival research materials of the same empirical unit under investigation while increasing the confidence in interpreting interview or observational data to provide additional dimension to research analysis (Steinke 2004, p178-182 and see also Denzin 1978, p294-304).