Final sample
Overall, 560 young people completed the preliminary questionnaire survey and 15 families (intended as youth and parents) were interviewed in the second stage of this research. The 15 families involved 52 individual interviews: 25 interviews were conducted with young people and another 27 with parents. Within the overall sample of 15 families, 5 families were selected through the survey in schools and the additional ten families were recruited through snowballing techniques. Figure 5.1 summarises the process which led to the selection of the final sample of interviewees in the second stage of the research.
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Figure 5.1: Final sample achieved through survey and snowballing (families: youth and parents)
560
Overall sample fromsurvey - STAGE 1 -
78
/560Overall Number who volunteered to stage 2
26
/78South Asian Muslim volunteers
46/78
Non Muslim volunteers
6/78
Muslim but not South Asian volunteers
11
/26South Asian volunteers interviewed from the
survey
10
Families interviewed which were recruited through snowballing5/
11Families interviewed which were recruited through the survey
15
Overall number of families interviewed114
Getting the schools involved in the research
The initial approach adopted in this study involved accessing young people and their parents by using the channel of schools in the targeted areas. In this way, I aimed to reach different types of Muslim families and maximise their diversity.
Schools were firstly contacted by letter with a detailed description of the study, followed by emails and telephone calls as detailed in Appendix A. Following Becher’s (2003) experience of difficulties in securing school participation, I made contact with all 32 schools, a mixture of public and community, in the 2 targeted areas (London and Oldham). The schools were sent a preliminary introduction letter at the end of August 2009. Other letters addressed to the headteachers followed in September 2009. Two schools in London and one in Oldham opted not to take part on the study. The first one explained that they did not have the staff capacity to be involved; the second school informed me that it was undergoing several changes and was under special measures while the third school in Oldham did not provide specific reasons for the refusal. Catholic and Church of England schools did not reply to letters and emails in both areas. In all the other cases, it was difficult to get in touch directly with the headteachers and to identify alternative members of staff to talk to. I often left several messages to headteachers’ PAs and never heard back from some of them. Finally, three out of 17 secondary schools/colleges in Newham and one Sixth Form College out of the 15 schools and colleges contacted in Oldham agreed to take part in the study.
The contact people in schools explained that the main reasons for participating in the study were because they felt the issues addressed in the questionnaire were relevant to multicultural education, the citizenship curriculum and the sociology module. It was also the case that racial and faith issues were perceived as a problem in the schools. The schools which responded were predominantly multicultural including high proportions of South Asians and Muslim students but within a very mixed environment. Young people were given the option of leaving their contact details in the last page of the questionnaire conducted in the classroom in London or, in the case of the Sixth Form in Oldham, in the last section of the web questionnaire. Appendix A includes the primary tools used to access the field. The idea was to interview young people first. After their interview, I aimed to give them a letter for their parents, which explained
115 about the research and asked for their contribution. Following the experience of Becher, who worked with younger children and carried out most of the interviews in the participants’ homes. I was also hoping to meet the parents in the homes while carrying out the interview with young people but most of the young people preferred to speak to me at school rather than home. The lack of direct access to their homes became an obstacle in reaching the parents and therefore, other sources of recruitment were used as detailed later in the chapter.
The survey response rate
The overall response rate to the questionnaire was 42 per cent: 413 young people filled in paper questionnaires in the three schools in London and 147 answered the online survey in Oldham. Response rates varied between the three London schools and the college in Oldham (see Table 5.2).
The paper questionnaires were taken to the schools and then collected after completion. In some cases, I stayed in the class while students filled the questionnaires which allowed me to supervise the process and answer questions. I felt that being in the classroom maximised the response even though it was not possible to attend every class because of clash with timetables. Because of resources and administrative issues, it was instead decided and agreed with the sixth form college to adopt the on-line option by using Survey-Monkey. The contact person in the school, the Deputy Head, expressed preference for the on-line option as she felt it would limit disruption in the class and allow students to decide whether to take part or not. The Deputy Head emailed the survey link to the students and a brief introduction about the study was given in class by teachers. The 450 students aged 16-18 years old undertaking social science related subjects including sociology and psychology in Oldham were given about 8 weeks to complete the questionnaire online by the 18th December 2009. The response is summarised in the table below.
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Table 5.2: Survey response rate
Number of questionnaires
distributed N % Response rate
London School 1 23 19 83
London School 2 100 82 82
London School 3 750 312 42
Oldham 450 147 33
Total 1323 560 42
Looking back, there were several advantages and disadvantages to using two differing methods of data collection. The paper version was more time-consuming and required a lot of administrative work including data inputting. However, the response rate was higher and in some cases, it allowed me to supervise the process and provide guidance. The online version saved time as data inputting was not required but the overall response was lower. The two samples also differed in terms of students’ motivation to take part. Students at Oldham were older and taking social science modules and therefore showed a deeper understanding about the aim and context of the research.
The main characteristics of the survey sample
Overall, 560 young people completed the questionnaire between October and December 2009. The final response from schools was higher than expected and the final sample exceeded the initial target of 400 students. Most importantly, the required South Asian Muslim sample was achieved and overall 44 per cent of the respondents were from South Asian ethnic background. However not all of them were Muslims: the proportion of South Asian Muslim young people was 33 per cent of the all young people who took part in the survey.
Seventy four per cent of the respondents attended secondary schools in London Newham and 26 per cent a sixth form college in Oldham. There were differences between the sub-samples of respondents in London and Oldham that were taken into account in the analysis. The two sub-samples had different gender distributions and the majority of Oldham participants were girls (83 per cent compared to 17 per cent of boys) whilst in Newham the proportions were much more balanced with 60 per cent of the London sample composed by boys and 40 per cent by girls. The ethnic distribution,
117 particularly important in respect of the South Asians, also varied across the two sub- samples. In London, Pakistani and Bangladeshi respondents were equally represented (16 per cent Pakistani and 15 per cent Bangladeshi) and 5 per cent of the respondents were from Indian background, whilst in Oldham Pakistani were the most represented of the South Asian groups. Pakistani comprised for 20 per cent of the compared to 12 per cent of Bangladeshi and 2 per cent of students from Indian background. The proportion of White British was much higher in Oldham: 71 per cent of the participants in Oldham, compared to 29 per cent in London. Moreover, Black Caribbean, Black African and respondents from other Black backgrounds were hardly represented in Oldham (2 per cent) while they accounted for the 18 per cent of the London sample. Appendix C provides a detailed description of the survey sample.
Multicultural schools
The schools which volunteered were very diverse, students were originally from a number of different countries and 22 per cent of them6 were first generation migrants not born in the UK. The majority of non UK born respondents were born in Lithuania and Pakistan (2 per cent); Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Kenya and Somalia (1 per cent each country). Of those born in the UK (78 per cent), 25 per cent said England was their country of origin and the others 56 per cent said instead their country of origin was the United Kingdom.
There was a variety of languages, other than English, which students spoke at home reflecting the multicultural environment of the sampled schools. Just over a half (53 per cent) of the 541 respondents who answered the question about language, spoke only English at home; while 18 per cent spoke other languages rather than English and 29 per cent spoke English and another language. Amongst the other languages spoken at home, Bengali was the most common, (22 per cent of all the students in the survey who spoke more than 1 language at home N=255) followed by Urdu (19 per cent); Tamil (9 per cent); Gujarati (7 per cent) and others did not specify any language (9 per cent).
6
118
The processes of recruiting participants for the interviews (stage 2)
As explained above, I aimed to recruit a sub-sample of South Asian British Muslim interviewees from the school survey. The original idea was to target about 15 young people and both their parents to achieve a total number of interviews of about 45 individuals. However, during the data elicitation I experienced a number of challenges. Firstly, conducting the interviews at school prevented me from reaching as many parents as I first set out to do. The parents of six of the 11 young people who were recruited through schools could not be reached. Some of these young people explained that their parents were busy and thus refused; others pointed out that their parents had low English language skills or did not reply to emails and phone calls.
Secondly, using the schools as the primary source of selection led to recruiting families from low socio-economic background with often unemployed parents as a consequence of the areas selection, as both Newham and Oldham are deprived areas with high unemployment rates (ONS, 2004). Thirdly, there were other aspects of the sample diversity, such as including non Sunni groups that were not met by the preliminary sample obtained through the survey. Therefore, the requirement to adopt a more pragmatic sampling strategy emerged and led to the introduction of alternative recruitment strategies.
As summarised in Figure 5.1, 78 of the 560 respondents (14 per cent) to the survey agreed to participate to the second stage of the research and left their contacts details. Amongst these 78, 44 attended a sixth form college in Oldham and the remaining 34 were in the three secondary schools in London. However, respondents from different ethnic and religious background, not only South Asian Muslims, left their details and volunteered to take part to the qualitative interviews. Only 26 of the 78 preliminary respondents who volunteered to take part in the interviews were South Asian British Muslims. Of these 26, 11 young people were finally interviewed. The table below summarises the characteristics of sample obtained through schools.
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Table 5.3: Qualitative sample of young people obtained through schools: main characteristics
Gender of young person 7 females
4 males
Ethnic background of young person
5 Pakistani 6 Bangladeshi
1 Indians
Geographical area 4 London
7 Oldham
Other routes were researched in order to refine the sample of interviewees and include also families from higher socio-economic background. Overall, other 14 young people were recruited through contacts and snowballing but only 10 families were finally interviewed as the parents of two of the 14 young people could not be reached (and in two families brother and sister were interviewed).
Two local community centres in London Newham and one charity (Mosaic) dedicated to provide mentoring to young British Muslims identified three families. An organisation in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets (the Limehouse Project) providing training and employment support mainly to Bangladeshi women, was particularly useful and helped to identify five young people which led to interview with three other families. By using other available personal contacts I finally recruited two families (one was a non Sunni) who put me in touch to the other two final families (one of which was non Sunni).
The characteristics of the families in the final qualitative sample are summarised in Table 5.4 below and further details about family circumstances are provided in Table D.2 in Appendix D, which also reports pseudonyms as all the original names were changed for confidentiality purposes.
The final qualitative sample
Overall, the sample of South Asian Muslim interviewees reflected a good gender balance. New geographical areas were introduced in addition to the originally targeted areas of Oldham and London Newham and included a mixture of inner and outer
120 London boroughs, Manchester and Eastbourne. The final sample of families reflects ethnic diversity and covered the three South Asian groups and in all families parents and young people were from the same ethnic religious background. However Pakistani families were the least represented in the final sample and the most difficult to recruit. As discussed in Chapter 11, the difficulties with recruiting Pakistani could relate to the routes adopted for snowballing, which led to mostly Bangladeshi and Indian families. In addition, Pakistani are particularly under the spotlight and therefore more reluctant in taking part to research. Minority Shi’a groups were also included in the families interviewed.
Generation and socio-economic background of families in the sample
The focus of the thesis was on second generation young people and first generation parents: overall most of the young people interviewed were second generation UK born (except two), whilst 22 out of the 27 parents were first generation migrants who were not born in the UK as also summarised in Table 5.4 and Table D.2.
Importantly, in selecting the families, I took into account their socio-economic background identified by the parents’ jobs, employment status and qualifications. Overall, the sample reflects a good socio-economic balance: as summarised by Table 5.4, eight families were from lower socio-economic background and the remaining seven from higher middle class background. In the families from lower socio-economic background, parents had no qualifications (or had low qualifications from their country of origin), all mothers were unemployed and fathers were in lower socio-economic occupations. In two cases (Amina and Zahra) both parents were unemployed. All six young people recruited from school but whose parents were not reached were from families with both unemployed parents. I also had the chance to access very marginalised and isolated families selected trough snowballing: Tahir and Ali both lived in lone parent families with unemployed mothers with low English language skills. As detailed in Chapter 3, lone parent households are much less common and less accepted within South Asian communities and therefore more isolated.
As explained above, because of the characteristics of the selected areas five of the eight families recruited through schools were from lower socio-economic background and to increase the socio-economic diversity of the sample, I finally adopted
121 recruitment through snowballing. The families from higher socio-economic background included some highly qualified parents (including two parents with PhD) in high professional careers as described in Table 5.4.
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Table 5.4: The main characteristics of the final qualitative sample
Total Interviews 52 Young people interviews 25
Gender of Young Person 13 boys
12 girls
Young people Location 15 London & South East
8 Oldham & Manchester; 2 South East of England
Parental Interviews 27 parents (13 fathers and 14 mothers)
Family groups 15
10 families included mum, dad & 1 young person
2 families included mum, dad & 2 siblings (Haroon and Tania; Farooq and Sarah)
2 families were lone parent families (mother & young person were interviewed in both cases)
1 family only daughter and father were
interviewed (Mum refused as she could not speak English)
8 young people were interviewed but parents could not be reached (6 of them were recruited through schools and 2 through snowballing)
Ethnic background (all family members were from the same ethnic background)
5 Indians
7 Bangladeshi
3 Pakistani
Muslim Sect The majority (13/15 families) of respondents were Sunni. Two families belong to a minority Shi’a sect:
Haroon & Tania family
Yasmeen’s family
Generational status 23 young people were second generation UK born; 1 boy
(Yusuf) and 1 girl (Zahida) were first generation both born in Pakistan.
22 parents were first generation migrants born outside
the UK in Pakistan, Bangladesh or India.
2 fathers (Mariam & Zahra) and 3 mothers (Davar’s and Haroon & Tania’s & Yasmeen) were second generation born in the UK. Yasmeen’s mother was born in Bangladesh but she grew up in the UK and told me she considered herself second generation.
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English Language skills 4 mothers (Hania, Davar, Tahir, Nasreen) and 2 fathers (Yasmeen, Asif) had low English language skills. They could understand the questions but found difficult to answer in English. The interviews were conducted with the support of an interpreter who was a family member.
Fathers working status – Low socio-economic background
2 unemployed; 1 worked at the Royal Mail (unloading mail); 2 worked in take away restaurants; 1 self-employed.
Fathers working status – Higher socio-economic background
1 self-employed (with UK degree); 1 finance officer for the council (Indian qualifications); 1 worked at a money exchange (Indian qualifications); 1 father worked for his wife as admin officer (qualified as a teacher); 1 scientist (PhD); 1 travel agent (Bangladeshi qualifications); 1 father worked in pharmaceutical sales (Qualified as a medical doctor in Pakistan).
Mothers’ working status – Low socio-economic background
7 unemployed looking after children and home (with no qualifications). 2 of these 7 were lone mothers.
Mothers’ working status – Higher socio-economic background
1 worked for a community centre (UK GCSE); 1 IT manager (with UK master degree); 1 higher education teacher (with PhD); 1 retail manager (Pakistani qualifications); 1 support teacher (UK qualifications); 1 legal consultant (qualification both India and UK); 1 worked in retail (Pakistani qualifications).