Focus of research

Developing research questions is a key part of the research process which develops over time. Following an initial review of the literature, I identified the initial areas which I wished to explore as part of my research proposal:

a. To examine understandings of staff and students of the concepts of risk to self and risk to others;

b. To examine and compare the expectations staff and students have in relation to the extent of institutional duty of care;

c. To examine and compare staff and student expectations regarding institutional action when students present a risk to self or others; d. To examine and compare the application of institutional policies and

procedures to issues relating to duty of care where students are a risk to self or others;

e. To examine and compare the ways in which judgements are made in relation to duty of care issues where students are a risk to self or others;

f. To identify a range of effective practices with regard to meeting institutional duty of care towards students who are a risk to self or others.

Further examination of these research areas raised a number of methodological, practical and ethical issues. The literature review had already indicated multiple viewpoints among staff in HEIs and it became clear that this was a substantive area for research on its own. Therefore, although the investigation of student perspectives on these issues is relevant, and may be an area for future research, it has not been included in this study. The removal of this comparative element narrowed the potential areas for investigation. This left potentially five broad areas for investigation from the perspective of HEI staff:

a. Understanding of key concepts in relation to risk;

b. Understanding of key concepts in relation to duty of care; c. Understanding of how decisions and judgements are made in

relation to students who present a risk to self or others; d. Application of policies and procedures relating to duty of care

As a practitioner and psychologist by background, I was interested in how decisions are made. There is a rich literature in this area and it provided some interesting possibilities for research. Approaches vary from cognitive behavioural (Beach and Connolly, 2005), which focuses on the link between thought and action, to the case based reasoning of casuistry which considers the moral elements of specific situations and relies on individual’s experience of previous cases (Calkins, 2001; Norton et al., 2004 ). These approaches offered some interesting possibilities for the areas I was considering. However, much decision- making theory appears to assume that decisions are made in a rational manner and does not attempt to explain the broader social influences which influence individual decisions. It focuses on the process of decision-making rather than on the ideas or constructs which underlie particular interpretations of situations. This approach would help to understand how institutional responses to students who present a risk to self or others are arrived at but not what influences these decisions. Examining decision-making processes could undoubtedly be of interest to practitioners, particularly those responding to critical incidents, however, I believe that understanding what influences individuals is a more productive starting point as it enables a deeper theoretical exploration of the issues and creates more possibilities for practitioner reflection within decision- making. The importance of this understanding is acknowledged by Beck in his work on risk:

"...the calculus of probability can never rule out a given event, or risk specialists may call each other's detailed results into question because they quite sensibly start from different assumptions." (Beck, 2000 p217)

Another possible area for exploration was identifying effective practice in relation to students who present a risk to self or others. However, the notion of effective practice is problematic as what is defined as effective depends on what the practitioner is trying to achieve, which in turn depends on the individual’s understandings of risk and what an ‘appropriate’ response may be. As with decision-making, this area offers interesting possibilities for future research; however such research would be more useful if underlying conceptions of risk were clearly articulated, therefore this area was excluded from the current study. Comparing the application of institutional policies and procedures was excluded as a potential research area for similar reasons; examining how policies and procedures are implemented would be more effective with an understanding of the underlying assumptions underneath the policies and procedures.

This narrowing down of potential areas of research left two potential areas; understanding key concepts in relation to students who present a risk to

themselves or others and key concepts in relation to duty of care. My previous research had demonstrated the potential overlap between the terms risk to self or others and duty of care (Harrison, 2007). To ensure a clear focus for this current research I decided to focus on just one of these terms, students who present a risk to self or others. With this area clearly identified and a commitment to a critical realist approach, I then began to consider potential theoretical frameworks for the research methods.

In previous work in this area (Harrison, 2006; Harrison, 2007), I had adopted a constructivist approach drawing on the work of Lincoln and Guba (2000 p91).

had not at that time clearly articulated a critical realist ontological position. Thematic analysis provides a useful framework for analysis of broad areas of interest but is not necessarily grounded in critical realism. Therefore, I sought to clarify my understanding of specific constructivist approaches which could be useful in this study, in particular Grounded Theory and Narrative Inquiry. There is not enough space here for a comprehensive review of these approaches; rather I provide a brief summary of how these two approaches were considered and why they were rejected as unsuitable for this particular study.

Grounded Theory (Glaser and Strauss, 1967) seeks to build theory in relation to the area of study and can be used with a range of ontological positions (Mills et al., 2006). It focuses on building an understanding of the subject from the words of participants. This approach would help to build understanding and to theorise some of the concepts which influence HEIs’ responses to students who are a risk to self or others. However, Grounded Theory also requires researchers to

bracket prior knowledge and build theory from the ground up. This does not allow for the use of existing knowledge in theory-building something I was unlikely to achieve given my day-to-day involvement in this area. Therefore, it would have been very difficult to conduct this study using Grounded Theory.

Narrative Inquiry appeared to offer some useful possibilities. Narrative

approaches focus on the stories people tell and particularly the plot within these stories. Plots provide a way of linking events into a meaningful sequence, demonstrating how earlier events lead to subsequent events. Much of the meaning is in the relationship between these events (Polkinghorne, 1995). However, collecting narrative data requires in depth interviews (Czarniawska,

2004) with time for reflection and possibly a follow-up interview. I was concerned that the time this would require would be off putting to potential participants as I hoped to interview relatively senior people within the organisation. I then

considered discourse analysis as a potential framework.