The interview process

To ensure the results are potentially transferable by readers to other settings, it is important to present a critical reflection on the sampling and interview process to acknowledge its boundaries. Participants were recruited through gatekeepers in homelessness services. Therefore all persons interviewed in the study, were accessing support, to different degrees and were known by the gatekeepers. This recruitment strategy excluded individuals who were not using services at the time of the study, including those in ‘at risk’ tenancies. As described in section 2.5, individuals experience a complex pattern of movement from homelessness to precarious housing situations and ‘hidden homelessness’ and the recruitment process of this study does not fully capture this. Although the soup run was included in an attempt to recruit individuals at different stages of this complex movement, this was not successful, as reflected upon in

section 3.6.7. In terms of gender, only five of the twenty nine participants were female, which under-represented the ratio of women who experience homelessness as a whole. However it accurately reflects individuals who experience multiple exclusion homelessness who are predominantly single men (McDonagh, 2011). Only single women were interviewed—persons who experienced homelessness as part of a family unit were excluded from the study. Although this omitted a specific group of people, family homelessness can have different causes and consequences, and as a result different support needs are implied. Similarly persons under the age of 18 were not included and this is reflected in the service types and settings that were invited to take part.

To access participants who had moved into their own tenancies, services that provided tenancy support services were asked to be part of the study. The 12 people in their own place at the time of interview were renting from a private landlord, council or social housing organisation. No tenancy support services were provided by Housing First. All participants who were using homelessness accommodation services at the time of interview had experience of being a tenant in their own place. The study sought to recruit a group of individuals who had experience of homelessness, and chronic physical or mental ill-health, problematic substance misuse or institutional care, but did not specify more details. Gatekeepers recruited individuals to the best of their knowledge, or assumptions, in relation to complex needs. Although the study did not set out to gather specific background information on health issues, participants revealed issues or diagnoses in their interview narratives, and these were followed up on, as appropriate. However details, collected more systematically, on multiple exclusion homelessness would have added a fuller description of participants, to enhance the study’s transferability. In keeping with constructivist grounded theory, the strategy of

theoretical sampling was used to gather more data to develop the emerging category ‘settling into a home’, as described in section 3.6.5. Towards the end of the recruitment process, I was unable to access individuals who were in their own tenancies from existing gatekeepers and so I approached another tenancy support project in a different geographical area. Yet within the hostel, an original setting, numerous persons continued to meet the inclusion criteria, reflecting the number of individuals with multiple exclusion homelessness who access accommodation services.

Semi-structured interviews using reflexive photography were the main data collection method in this study for participants with experience of homelessness. An interview guide with some broad open ended questions, in keeping with a grounded theory approach, developed for the ethics committee application, is included in appendix 7. In practice, however, the interviews were contextual and the majority were initiated and guided by the photographs taken by the interviewees. The visual images provided an insight into types of occupations, possessions and places the participants valued. Follow up questions and prompts enabled a deeper understanding of the meaning interviewees ascribed to these images and occupations, as well as how this might have changed as they transitioned into and out of homelessness and tenancies. On reflection, when attending to occupation within homelessness—in which people are at risk of occupational deprivation and alienation as a result of their situations—the interview guide could be critiqued for not placing sufficient emphasis on an in-depth exploration of the function and meaning of occupations. Constructivist grounded theory, as a method which prioritises process, revealed the occupational nature of the transition from homelessness to a sustained tenancy and the critical role of occupational strategies in making a home. However, placing a greater emphasis on questions to garner more specific experiences of occupational engagement during the transition may have

increased the focus on occupation. It is acknowledged that this could also have been gained by using a different methodology, for example, phenomenology, but the unique contribution provided by this grounded theory study on the process of transition to tenancy sustainment would not have been captured.

Much consideration was given to the placement of staff interviews within the data analysis process. As the participants had been supported by staff in their transition from homelessness or within services, I felt it was important to attend to the wider context and include staff interviews. It is acknowledged that there would have been merit in analysing the staff interviews separately, to allow for a separate representation of their views about the process of transitioning from homelessness. However, in attending to the power differential that can be experienced by service users, it was decided to privilege the personal experience of homelessness. Therefore the staff interviews were analysed to further refine the categories revealed from the service user interviews and develop the substantive theory.