Phase Three Phenomenological Reflexive Semi-Structured Interviews

The third phase of data collection sought to build and expand upon general themes identified within the second phase, continuing the sequential design of this research. Utilising a semi-structured interview method, post audio diary, allows the researcher to guide the participants’ reflection so that it was more focussed, and greater depth and exploration could be achieved in areas that were raised within the audio diary, but not further developed. Although this brought the researcher directly into the construction of the narrative, it was felt that this was an appropriate risk as less researcher influenced accounts were obtained through the audio diary, and it was this data that was being further developed and directed in this third phase of data collection. This gave greater confidence to the integrity of the data and highlights the argument for using a number of different qualitative methods to obtain rich data. To achieve this it was decided to use a phenomenological interview strategy, as this supported the capture of detailed and in depth description of lived experience (Roulston, 2010). Interviews focussed on using open questions, which allowed participants to provide answers in their own words, exploring feelings, perceptions and understandings of the emotional labour phenomena (Roulston, 2010).

A semi-structured interview design was used to provide flexibility and harnesses the researcher’s ability to modify questions in response to participant answers (Smith and Osborn, 2008; Dica and Bucuta, 2016). It was felt that this approach was useful as the researcher could guide the interview through follow up questions to cover areas of interest that were generated out of the audio diaries, and which were considered to warrant further exploration. The concept of the participant-situation reflexive interview was also addressed throughout the interviews as this further focussed on the reflexivity on the part of the participant - therefore not only discussing their own experiences but reflecting on how those experiences fitted with

96 the wider phenomenon (Riach, 2009). This was done through presenting participants with the themes identified within the audio diaries and asking participants if this reflected their life experience, and how. This overall structure and concept of the interview was informed by Bevan (2014), engaging the participant in the three phases of Contextualisation, Apprehending the Phenomenon, and Clarifying the Phenomenon. The use of semi-structured interviews also lent itself to Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) which also seeks to ‘tap into a natural propensity for self-reflection on the part of participants’ (Smith et al., 1997:68 for further see Analysis section below).

3.5.3.1 Sample.

This phase of the thesis used IPA to analyse the phenomenological interviews. IPA is an idiographic method and is used to analyse in-depth individual accounts requiring intensive analysis of experienced phenomena. IPA is used here for its interpretative quality so that the research could truly explore the individual lived experience of emotional labour, drawing on the rich data found within the interviews, using an iterative method where the researcher becomes truly immersed within the participants’ experience. With this in mind a small sample size was obtained, which is typical for IPA studies. IPA has specific epistemological commitments and is not looking for generalizability, and indeed, rejects the concept of reduction (Smith et al., 1997; Smith and Osborn, 2008; Kafle, 2011). Here, quality of data is of first importance, representativeness is secondary (Ogbonna and Harris, 2004).

For phenomenological interviews to be effective it is important that participants selected are able to talk about the lived experience under examination (Roulston, 2010). Therefore, purposive sampling was once again undertaken, this time the sample population was restricted to serving officers of Inspector and below (including detectives), and retired officers (who retired in the last ten years) recruited from the national police network. This use of multiple case study supports the triangulation of data to identify themes, enrich findings and explore commonality of experience (Cowley et al., 2000; Thompson, 2004, Yin, 2014). The inclusion of ex- officers is a unique contribution within this thesis and the wider academic literature

97 as they provide a perspective that is very rarely captured within research. Including ex-officers’ accounts within this thesis is also particularly pertinent to the phenomenon under consideration – ex-officers may well provide less restricted accounts if they perceive that they are no longer governed by the feeling and display rules of police officers.

Again, the researchers’ personal network was used to recruit participants from the online police Twitter community, tweeting out a request for volunteers. This provided a large reach as the tweet was re-tweed by existing members into their own communities. This meant that again, all but one of the participants were unknown to myself. Four serving officers and six retired officers contributed to the study, all came from different forces across England and Wales. The serving officers comprised of a detective inspector, a uniformed sergeant and a detective sergeant and a uniformed constable. They came from a neighbourhood team, an investigation hub, a tasking team and divisional criminal investigation department. They had between 6 and 27 years’ in service. The ex-officers comprised of a detective constable, uniformed constable, 2 uniformed sergeants, an inspector and 1 chief inspector. They had completed between 10 and 30 years’ of service.

3.5.3.2 Data Management and Ethical Considerations.

Each participant was emailed a participant information sheet (Appendix E: Interview Participant Information Sheet) and the interview questions (Appendix F: Interview Questions) prior to the interview to give them time to consider not only their answers, but also if they felt able to continue with the interview. Once confirmed, participants returned signed consent forms via email, except for one participant who provided a hard copy on a face to face interview. Interviews were either conducted over the phone or in person and were recorded on a hand-held Dictaphone and smart phone (for back up). The digital recording from the Dictaphone was then downloaded onto a computer and saved onto an external hard drive using a participant number for anonymity. Interviews were then transcribed by myself, prior to the analysis, and stored on an external hard drive.

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3.5.4 Phase Four - Role Play and Psychodrama.

The final phase of data collection moves from problem identification to problem resolution and responds to the 5th _{and final research question:}

 How can the feeling rules be adapted to improve police officer psychological health?

In line with the Critical Action Research approach to this study, serving officers were engaged to collaborate and participate in identifying potential solutions.

This took the form of two one day workshops where groups of serving officers were taken through a presentation and discussion of the initial research findings (secondary data review, audio diaries and serving officer interviews), they were also introduced to the theories underpinning the research (emotional labour, reflective practice and action research). This stimulated discussion between the participants as to how they experienced the culture around emotional expression within the police and how this had affected them.

The second half of the workshop involved a role play written by the researcher (Appendix G: Role Play Scenarios and Scripts) and a discussion group. The role play took the form of a pre provided scenario where the protagonist attended the scene of a murder on their own. They entered a domestic premises, where they were attacked by the murderer and lost their baton as the murderer fled. The protagonist then attempted to save the life of the victim. The protagonist is then deployed to accompany the victim to the hospital. There are two other members of the team who support the protagonist and the team sergeant. The role play begins back in the station and participants are allocated roles to play out and demonstrate how they would behave (as their character). There is also the addition of another officer from another team who brings the humour into the scenario. As part of the role play the team sergeant debriefs the protagonist in the report writing room in front of the other officers, they then hold a 121 with the protagonist before going home. The role play was designed from a number of incidents taken from the data collection and the researcher’s own personal experience. The role play was used to support an

99 in-depth exploration of officers’ engagement with feeling rules, exploring perceptions of internal emotional experience contrasted against external emotional display, in accordance with organisational and cultural requirements. Role play is a method that sits naturally in the context of policing, which is a profession taught through role play within training, preparation for large scale events, and used within recruitment selection and promotion centres (Sharp, 2000; Van Hasselt et al., 2008). Exploring the use of surface acting and deep acting, this method was underpinned by the concept and principles of Psychodrama. Psychodrama is a group psychotherapy that uses action and role play to explore and enact life situations and the participant’s experience of them, and is recognised as a technique to explore research and personal development in an non clinical setting (Kellermann, 1992; Wilkins, 1999; Azoulay and Orkibi, 2015; British Psychodrama Association, 2017).

Moreno (founder of psychodrama) argued that ‘every role has two sides, a private and a collective side’ (Moreno, 1946 cited in Azoulay and Orkibi, 2015:10). This truly embodies the concept of social psychology in the sense that social behaviour is understood from the inner experience as well as the observable outer behaviour (Kellermann, 1992). This perspective supports the use of psychodrama in the phenomenological study of emotional labour and emotional inauthenticity (Hawkins, 1988). Moreno (1974 cited in Kellermann, 1992: 37) ‘characterized psychodrama as a form of phenomenological psychotherapy’ and recognised it in supporting emancipatory phenomenological research (Kellerman, 1992). Solutions are sought through group creativity and spontaneity and are used to explore past, present and future events (British Psychodrama Association, 2017; Wilkins, 1999). Existential psychodrama takes an emancipatory stance in supporting the exploration of the authentic self and liberation from others’ and their own false perceptions (Kellermann, 1992). This supports the hermeneutic phenomenological underpinning of this research that is deeply concerned with context and historicality. Psychodrama is also known to support cognitive insight, interpersonal feedback and behavioural learning utilising processes such as action-insight - the process of looking inwards for inner truth and contrasting to the outer world (Kellerman, 1992).

100 Prior to the role play participants worked through a ‘warm up’ as recommend for role play/psychodrama sessions (Kellerman, 1992; Karp, 2010). The warm up used was a simple game of participants writing three unusual things about themselves on a piece of paper and then taking turns in selecting a paper from a hat and reading the three items aloud to the group, where upon the group tried to decide who was the author. After the warm up, participants commenced the role play. The role play process differed from that of psychodrama in that it didn’t ask a protagonist to act out an aspect of their life, it was felt that this would be too intrusive for the level of this research and had the potential to become too distressing for participants. Instead the researcher provided a pre written scenario that provided five character backgrounds and a detail of events - all were derived from the interim audio diary analysis and the researcher’s personal experience. This allowed the participants to act the given scenarios ‘in-character’. Participants who were not acting roles were given observer sheets (Appendix H: Role Play Observer Sheets) and allocated a character to observe. Roles were also reversed, following the principal of psychodrama, allowing participants to experience the others’ perspective (Kellerman, 1992). Once the different scenes were acted out the researcher encouraged conversation about how the different characters were feeling, and why they had behaved in the way that they did. In psychodrama this aspect of the work is known as sharing and encourages the participants to identify with the protagonist and to support each other in their understanding whilst seeking ways in which to resolve the issue at hand (Kellerman, 1992). The sharing is also seen as a therapeutic experience of purging, where participants ‘purge themselves of emotions or insights gained’ (Karp, 2010:8). It is within the sharing that the learning process is captured, and the effectiveness of the session is measured by the depth of the sharing (Karp, 2010). As Karp explains:

‘Psychodrama brings out the internal drama so that the drama within becomes the drama outside oneself’ (2010:8)

After the sharing participants were asked to engage in a round table discussion of possible operational and organisational solutions to the issues identified throughout the day.

101 Throughout the day the researcher engaged in participant observation. This method was used to capture how participants behaved towards each other and with each other in a neutral environment, and also capture interaction with the researcher. This seemed a most appropriate way to capture the observable element of the phenomenon under study and how participants interact based on a shared (or otherwise) understanding (Jorgensen, 1989). This added approach also added to the depth and richness of the data.

The role plays and discussions were audio and visually recorded on iphone, Dictaphone, and omni-directional recording media, which allowed for the capture of multiple voices from different directions.

3.5.4.1 Sample.

One group of participants were students in the first year of a Bachelors’ in Policing (in-service) course. The opportunity to engage with these student/officers came through the researcher’s personal network on Twitter, where they were invited to speak at a university and subsequently afforded the opportunity to enlist a group of students as participants. The second group who attended the workshop were again recruited through the police Twitter network and included some participants who had declined to take part in the audio diary process or interview. Three of this second group were involved in earlier aspects of the research, one had given an interview and the other two recorded audio diaries. All of the participants were of the rank of inspector and under and came from a variety of forces across England and Wales.

3.5.4.2 Data Management and Ethical Considerations.

Prior to the workshops the participants received a copy of the participant information sheet, this was circulated to the group of students by their course leader. On the day participants were initially appraised of the interim findings of the study and the theories used within the data collection, the process of research and publication was also explained. Participants were then asked to sign consent forms. Within the university group, some students who worked in covert operations declined to be recorded and either avoided the camera or stayed quiet during recording. They and

102 other participants were reassured that this was completely acceptable and understandable within their current operational roles. The role play was recorded on the researchers lap top, via an Omni-directional microphone and recording package, and visually captured on my smart phone, which was set up to record on a stand in the corner of the room, near to the action. The sharing/discussion group was recorded on Dictaphone and the Omni-directional microphone, with the use of a smart phone as back up. The Dictaphone recording was uploaded onto the researcher’s lap top and transferred to the external hard drive as was the audible recording of the role play. The visual recording was uploaded to the cloud and then transferred onto the external hard drive, as this was a particularly large file to move.