On the basis of my knowledge of the literature and consultation with supervisors, eight high-profile Australian social policy commentators were invited to contribute to the research. All had published work that explicitly acknowledged women’s exploitation in the social arrangements for caring for young children and advocated egalitarian change to these arrangements. All of these individuals were clearly willing and able to think outside of conventional streams of thought. The people approached to participate included four sociologists, an economist, a demographer, a journalist and a politician. People from more than one disciplinary background and from more
than one sphere of influence were included to give the research as broad a coverage as possible, consistent with the orientation of the research towards progressive rather than conservative thought. The people approached to participate were:
• Emeritus Professor Lois Bryson, Research Centre for Gender and Health, University of Newcastle and Adjunct Professor, School of Social Sciences and Planning, RMIT University.
• Professor Belinda Probert, School of Social Sciences and Planning, RMIT University
• Ms Eva Cox, Senior Lecturer, Department of Writing, Journalism and Social Inquiry, University of Technology, Sydney.
• Mr Michael Bittman, Senior Research Fellow, Social Policy Research Centre, University of New South Wales, Sydney.
• Associate Professor Duncan Ironmonger, Head, Household Economic Research Unit, Department of Economics, University of Melbourne.
• Professor Peter McDonald, Head, Demography and Sociology Program, Research School of Social Sciences, The Australian National University, Canberra.
• Ms Pamela Bone, Associate Editor, The Age newspaper, Melbourne.
• Dr Carmen Lawrence MP, Federal Member for Fremantle, Opposition (Australian Labor Party) Spokesperson on the Status of Women.
I wrote to each of these people, enclosing a brief statement about my research and a copy of an article published in Just Policy (Grace 2001a). They all agreed to be interviewed. Each interview was conducted in late 2001 in a location chosen by the interviewee, usually his or her own office, but a favourite coffee shop in one instance (See Appendix 2 for a sample letter, research information, article and a sample interview schedule). Because the aim of these ‘expert consultations’ (Sarantakos 1998) was to explore the thoughts and ideas of the respondents, interviews were chosen as the most appropriate form of data collection (Reinharz 1992). Although much more expensive than mailed surveys because of travel costs as well as the cost of the researcher’s time, the interviews yielded much more extensive and detailed data than could be expected on a written questionnaire. The researcher’s obvious investment of time and resources in each interview would have communicated to the interviewee the value placed on his or her contribution. Literature on research
interviews does not usually cover interviews with high-status individuals (Babbie 2001, Sarantakos 1998). However, clearly the courtesy of a personal interview provided an excellent outcome in this research, and yielded ideas and statements in addition to those already published by the respondents. These were some of Australia’s foremost public intellectuals whose published works indicated that they had given critical thought to the social arrangements for care of young children. The interviews provided the opportunity to explore their published ideas further and to find out about any additional ideas they had developed.
The interview schedules were individually prepared for each of the interviewees, and were emailed to them one week prior to the interview. The first question on the schedule referred to the published work of the interviewee. The remainder of the interview schedule was used as a guide, asking how they became interested in the topic and why they thought it was important, what was their vision for a better future, how they thought we might get from where we are now to that better future, and what barriers they could perceive to the changes they desired. Prior to each interview, consent was sought to tape-record, transcribe and utilise the interview material in the research (see Consent Form A, Appendix 2). After transcribing, the transcripts were coded and a summary of each interview was prepared. In order to verify the researcher’s interpretation of the data (Miles and Huberman 1994), each summary was sent to the relevant interviewee, with a request to check and notify me of any changes. The email sent with the summary emphasised that the purpose of the summary was to represent the views of the interviewee and encouraged the interviewees to add to or modify the summaries as they saw fit. A second consent form including agreement to be identified by name in the research was sent, with a self-addressed reply-paid return envelope (see Consent Form B, Appendix 3). The interviewees approved the summaries and requested very few changes. They all consented to being identified by name in the research.
Following the data reduction procedure of preparing the interview summaries (Miles and Huberman 1994), further analysis was carried out, identifying topic areas covered (eg labour market participation) and ideas within that topic (eg support, education and
training for women re-entering employment following time out to care for young children). The interview summaries were coded, and a matrix was prepared detailing what each interviewee said about each of the identified topics, and this was used in the preparation of ‘Chapter 5: Interview Findings’. A summary list of suggestions for change was developed and checked with the interview transcripts to ensure adequate coverage. These suggestions for change were taken to focus groups for reaction and comment (see Appendix 3, Focus group questions, for the list of suggestions).