Reflections on Methodology

Gusterson (2008) talks about how, while conducting semi-structured interviews, he found himself not only having conversations with individuals but also with a single entity or ‘discourse community’. This was also my experience. The WPS community is a distinct discourse community consisting of a relatively small number of individuals who are instrumental in defining the agenda, who see themselves as

‘guardians’ of the WPS narrative, and who have a strong sense of shared values and are fighting for the same cause. Many of my informants clearly also regarded me as being a member of this same community (by virtue of me being a women, coming from a ‘WPS-friendly’ UN member state, and having served as a consultant to the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs during the production of Norway’s National Action Plan).

Under such circumstances, a researcher can easily go blind and find that her research concludes in a manner that serves the discourse community, her funder and/or ‘the cause’. The danger of becoming too close and ‘embedded’ with one’s

research objects is particularly prominent when one’s research is government-funded, when one has had a long working relationship with one’s funder, and when many of one’s informants also represent one’s funder or have close political or donor ties to one’s funder.

The way in which I tried to avoid this was to constantly be self-reflective regarding my own role, the methods I applied, and how I applied them. In order to increase the robustness of my findings, emphasis was put on data triangulation, the cross-checking of my data by drawing information from multiple sources. This revealed, among other things, the under-communication in much of the secondary literature of the influential role of actors other than NGOs in promoting the WPS agenda, as well as important processes taking place within the UN system beyond the entities dealing with women’s rights (Tryggestad 2009).

As outlined above, interviews have served as an important source of data in my dissertation research. I had the privilege of gaining access to a number of key individuals playing important roles in the process under study. However, once a first contact has been established, the next challenge is to have individuals share information or data during an interview. This will only be achieved if the researcher manages to build trust and rapport, which can be particularly challenging in cases where research is conducted on politicized or sensitive issues. Building rapport is about ‘establishing trust and familiarity, showing genuine interest, assuring confidentiality, and not being judgemental’ (Glassner and Loughlin, cited in Miller and Glassner 2004: 133). Silverman (2006: 110) adds that it is about attempting to see the world from the viewpoint of respondents without ‘going native’, something that can be very hard to do. Trust can be built by being open about who you are, and what

52 the aims and purposes of your project are, and by offering to share findings with the individuals or organization in question.

Many researchers also apply the ‘known sponsor approach’ (Shenton and Hayter 2004: 224). Being open about who is sponsoring your project lends a kind of

‘official status’ to the project and might strengthen the credibility of the researcher(s) involved in the eyes of the informants. However, there are also major concerns associated with the ‘known sponsor approach’: ‘Researchers may suffer by being continually seen as extensions of their political sponsors within the setting despite their denials to the contrary’ (M. Punch, cited in Shenton and Hayter 2004: 224).

In order to build trust with my interviewees, I took care to obtain their informed consent to be interviewed. Interviewees were provided with my background information, including my institutional affiliation to an independent research institute in Norway, and an outline of the research purpose. I generally also applied the

‘known sponsor approach’, being open about the fact that the research was being funded by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

As a consequence of my adoption of the ‘known sponsor approach’, I experienced on several occasions the challenge of having to get my informants to understand that I was an independent researcher, not an official of the Norwegian government. This experience naturally led me to question the validity and reliability of the data I had obtained during the interview. Did the interviewee share with me her true opinions and views? Or did she give me the data or information she expected that I would like to hear, based on her knowledge of Norway both as a key donor and as a key actor in promoting the WPS agenda?

The information provided in interview situations takes on a particular form, a form that might have been different if another person had asked the same questions.

The interview subject constructs the narrative according to his or her social world (Miller and Glassner, 2004). This is a problem endemic to all sorts of interview research, but perhaps particularly when the ‘known sponsor’ strategy is applied on research topics of a political nature. In order to strengthen the reliability and validity of data, emphasizing triangulation of data from different sources became important. In addition to official sources of information (such as formal documents) and interviews, observation also played a key part in my data generation. This source of information was particularly important for tracing the unofficial aspects of the process under study.