As part of the planning process (see Chapter 3) the group will have identified the resources that it has or has access to. This will be an important consider-ation in deciding on what methods to use. Some methods are considerably more resource-intensive than others. Before you can make a final decision on the methods, you will need to have a clear picture of which of the following resources you have available:
• existing information (see Chapter 6);
• people – with the time to undertake a range of different tasks;
Figure 5.2 Objectives, research questions and methods: some examples 54 COMMUNITY PROFILING
• skills – in relation to survey or questionnaire design, interviewing, word processing, data inputting and analysis, publicity;
• equipment – computers, tape recorders, storage space, telephone, photocopier;
• money.
Of these resources the most important are probably people with the necessary time and skills available, and money. The kinds of skills that are relevant include: project management; questionnaire design; obtaining data;
interviewing; inputting data; data analysis; report writing. The relationship between these types of resources is also critical. You may want to fill in the grid (Figure 5.3a) to decide which of these combinations best describes your group and then consider the implications as shown in Figure 5.3b.
There are other considerations in making decisions about the deployment of resources. First, even where you have considerable resources and could ‘buy in’ a professional researcher or consultant to undertake the process for you,
Figure 5.3a Relationship between different types of resources
Figure 5.3b Implications of different combinations of resources
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there might nevertheless be strong reasons for not doing so, for doing it your-self. These reasons relate to the purpose of the community profiling exercise.
If that purpose is, in part, to do with building up the skills, capacity and confidence of the local community then a ‘do-it-yourself ’ approach might be preferable as it can make a significant contribution towards community devel-opment (see Chapter 4). On the other hand, if the overall purpose is to provide hard-hitting research evidence to support a local campaign then it might be the case that a professional researcher or consultant will be able to undertake work that is more persuasive to an external audience. However, even when this is the conclusion that you reach, your group will still need to be closely involved in specifying the project, commissioning the researcher or consult-ant and managing the process. (See Chapter 4 for a more detailed discussion of commissioning researchers.)
Doing the whole community profile yourself and commissioning an external researcher or consultant are at opposite ends of a spectrum with a number of points in between that might be worth considering. For example, you might want to commission an external researcher or consultant but specify that they have to employ local people as researchers or interviewers.
A second possibility is to seek some (often free) expertise from a local college or university. For example, universities that offer degrees in Youth and Com-munity Work often require students to undertake assessed research projects focusing on a particular neighbourhood. (See Packham 1998 for an example of an approach used at Manchester Metropolitan University.) Partnerships between colleges and universities can bring real benefits to both partners in terms of the quality of work undertaken and the development of longer-term links. However, for such partnerships to be fruitful there needs to be good communication between partners to ensure that both the community and the university each understands what the other wants to achieve through the project. Also, students undertaking community-based research will require institutional support and guidance from their tutor. Finally, you might want to consider using a resource pack or toolkit that allows you to use an ‘off-the-shelf ’ resource that has been tested elsewhere, thus minimizing the resources needed to develop, for example, a questionnaire. (See the reference to Compass in Figure 8.11.)
Approaches
Having considered the questions you want to ask, the resources you have available and other issues that you need to take account of, you are now in a position to decide on which methods to use. There are two dimensions to this process. The first relates to the balance between the collection of new (pri-mary) information and making use of existing (secondary) information; the 56 COMMUNITY PROFILING
second to whether you want or need predominantly quantitative information or predominantly qualitative.
Secondary data
This is the term used to refer to data or information that already exists without you having to collect it yourself. Of course, you will still need to get hold of it, interpret and make sense of it. Sources of secondary data and how to obtain and make use of it are discussed more fully in Chapter 6. However, at this stage it is worth pointing out that no matter what your community there will be some information somewhere that is likely to be of interest or relevance to you. Obtaining such information can be a cheap method to use. It may also have a number of other advantages. For example, where data on your area is part of a national data set it can allow you to make comparisons between your area and elsewhere or to track changes over time. However, it should be remembered that, precisely because the data has been collected for a purpose that is not your own, it may not exactly answer the questions that you want it to. Furthermore, you will need to check the ‘fit’ between your population and that covered by the information that you are using. For example, the com-munity for the purpose of your profile may be defined by the boundaries of a housing estate or perceptions of what constitutes the neighbourhood, whereas the data you are seeking to use is more likely to relate to a ward or local authority district.
Secondary data can be quantitative or qualitative. For example, the census will give you quantitative information about the population living in your area and agencies such as the housing department, police, education authority and Primary Care Trust all regularly collect data on, respectively, homelessness, crime, educational attainment and health. Such data is gener-ally fairly readily available although, in most cases, it is reported in terms of wards or other administrative areas, not necessarily by the neighbourhood or community that you are interested in.
Figure 5.4 Primary vs secondary data; quantitative vs qualitative
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You may also be able to make use of qualitative information about your area. This may take the form of, for example, newspaper reports, photographs of local events or places, minutes and other records of local organizations.
Primary data
In most cases secondary data, while it may be useful, will not deliver the answers to all the questions posed by your community profile. This will mean that you will also need to collect new information that is more precisely geared to answering your own research questions. Again, bearing in mind the con-siderations discussed above, you may choose to employ quantitative methods, qualitative methods or a mixture of the two. A detailed discussion of methods can be found in Chapter 7. However, in this section we briefly summarize a wide range of methods to help you select which are most useful for your pur-poses. Figure 5.5 summarizes the methods most commonly used in com-munity profiling and briefly indicates what they are useful for and what the disadvantages are.
Quantitative approaches to the collection of primary data are predomin-antly concerned with collecting relatively straightforward information from relatively large numbers of people in answer to such questions as: How many?
How often? What kind? The most common quantitative method used in community profiles is the social survey, which uses questions in a standard format as a means of collecting information from local people. Surveys can be administered by post, telephone, electronically or face to face. Observations can also yield quantitative information, for example the numbers of children using a playground or other local service at particular times of day.
Qualitative approaches are less concerned with issues that are amenable to quantification. Rather they are intended to provide answers to questions about what a smaller number of people think or feel about things, their perceptions, attitudes and experiences. Examples include: semi-structured interviews or unstructured interviews with a small number of people; focus group discus-sions; and case stories (see Figure 5.6).
Combining methods
Because different methods bring with them both advantages and disadvan-tages it is often worthwhile combining methods: quantitative and qualitative;
primary and secondary data collection. This can result in the collection of richer information and a more comprehensive and rounded view of the community. In Figures 5.7 and 5.8 (p. 62) you can find two examples where data collection methods have been combined to good effect, in the assessment of a community’s health needs in the first case, and in a wide-ranging com-munity audit and needs study in the second. In Figure 5.9 (p. 63) a number of 58 COMMUNITY PROFILING
Figure 5.5 Continued SELECTING METHODS 59
60 COMMUNITY PROFILING
Figure 5.5 Advantages and disadvantages of different methods
Figure 5.6 Surveys: questionnaire or interview?
Source: Fuller, R. and Petch, A. (1995) Practitioner Research: The Reflexive Social Worker . Buckingham: Open University Press: 56.
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less commonly used methods that might be useful to your community profil-ing exercise are summarized. Again the importance of combinprofil-ing methods to achieve your overall purpose is emphasized.