Reflections on the research

As Pearson (1993, p.vii) examines: ‘published accounts of fieldwork are invariably cleansed of the ‘private’ goings-on between researcher and researched’. I however aim to reflect upon the research highlighting these ‘private’ issues and matters that I faced as a researcher for example; my methodological stance, political issues, access to the field and my experiences of data collection.

I am aware that my presence and positionality as a researcher may have affected some people’s accounts, leading to possible under-reporting of some issues and exaggeration of others; however I feel by using the BNIM and having minimal intervention as the researcher I have minimised this. Narratives are co-authored since they are all to some degree co-constructed between the participant and the researcher (Jones, 2004, Bolton et al., 2005). I was aware of the role of the researcher in the collection of narratives since any probing questions that I used could potentially influence the data collected, as it may direct the participant in their answers. The BNIM approach minimised this due to the very low level of interviewer intervention. Each participant was only steered towards the themes of the study, however it was made clear that I was interested in the individual experiences of each participant and what they thought was important to them. Eliciting stories depends on asking the right questions and I followed the interview protocol ensuring that all SQUINs asked in sub-session two were based on themes that the participant had already mentioned, and I always used the participants own words for these. In this respect, no themes were discussed about which the participant had not chosen to talk openly.

It needs to be noted that a narrative is reproduced for a specific audience. In this case this is a research project and this may, therefore, influence the stories given. I recognised that when using the narrative as a research method where there is a lack of interviewer interventions and direct questioning and some participants did not talk about what I was interested in specifically. In this respect a theme which emerged as important in one interview was not always touched upon in a following interview

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with another participant. This reveals how all interviews are highly individual reflecting how the narrative was produced naturally, and was not constructed under pressure from me. It has been noted that it can be difficult for some participants to leave their history ‘behind’; this can result in parts of the narrative being side-tracked or on a ‘tangent’. By looking at life stories in this way; women are able as individuals to prioritise what was important to them in their story and therefore this may mean that certain aspects are missed out. However this forms the basis for why narrative was chosen as the method of enquiry as it allows an understanding of alcohol in aspects to women’s lives. Narrative is a human centred approach: it is structured by normative/shared experiences.

I feel that the use of BNIM and its limited interviewer interventions, limited this power differential as it gave the participant power over what was discussed during the research process. I, as the researcher, ultimately chose whose quotes to use, whose stories to tell. Yet the narratives of the women who participated each highlighted different themes, with different emphasis because of the nature of the data and its reliance upon the individual experience. If I was to concentrate on one of the other themes that is evident from the data I have which space here would not allow, voices from other women in the study may become more prominent. I therefore have to accept my responsibility and the power I had within the research. The data analysis and conclusions of this research are all shaped by my positionality. I also tried to negate the power differentials through the avoidance of taking a position as ‘expert’ during the research process. In fact the opposite became true; my positionality made the women interviewed the experts in motherhood, pregnancy and childcare. As a single, white, English childless woman, I felt that the participants within the study were happy to share their experiences with me and at all times I identified myself as a researcher (Gillham, 2005) and made my social status as a doctoral student clear. All participants were aware I was not a mother, as most women asked this either on first meeting at the mother and toddler groups or during general conversation at the time of the interview. The women were inquisitive to know if I had a child and if I would be able to relate to them on this level. I do not think that being childless hindered me in my research; instead I would suggest the opposite, as it led to the participants feeling like educators. The women interviewed had existing knowledge and experience into something that I did not know about and

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therefore sometimes I felt like they were enlightening me in the process of becoming a mother and what I should expect for the future. I would argue that the women interviewed were more open to talk about issues such as alcohol consumption during pregnancy with me because of this. In this respect their experiences were not affected by any worry that I may have had a different experience or different belief on some matter relating to pregnancy and motherhood i.e. choices around breastfeeding.

I was therefore a young woman they could teach or tell important information to, or things to look out for if I get pregnant or have a baby; or informed of things that the women had wished people had told them when they were pregnant. The participants therefore shared experiences with me both within and outside of the interview that they thought were important to be told or to be learnt from. This included experiences with midwifes, health visitors and breastfeeding support groups as well as breastfeeding issues and labour. As a childless woman who has not ruled out the idea of having children at a later stage in my life, they had something to tell and effectively teach me about what the experience of pregnancy was really like, what labour actually entailed, for example how it was worth all the pain in the end. I also endeavoured to treat each participant afresh, listening to their story as if it was the first that I had heard, that they might have something new to be told (Gillham, 2005). I had no prior knowledge of what I would be told in each interview; with this narrative method women produced their own individual stories so each story was, therefore, new to me.

I recruited women for this study from mother and toddler groups. Some of my data collection coincided with the news headline that a nursery nurse within the UK had been abusing children. Some women were therefore very reluctant to talk to me, a stranger at the group. However, at the same time I was wonderfully welcomed by some mothers who were always keen to introduce me to other mothers in the group or other people that they knew who they thought might be interested in the study. Other issues that had to be dealt with in the construction of my methodology were that I was an English researcher from Liverpool and I had to conduct my research within Scotland, this therefore presented time limitations but also meant that I had no background within these communities in the field. I was as a result robbed of

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physical and social context and had never previously had any face to face contact with anyone in these communities. Researchers in this context face limited options, so to negotiate this I spent time in Scotland and after initial contact via telephone and through posting information sheets, I went and made personal contact with the mother and toddler groups from which I recruited. The interview became a reciprocal process (Undurraga, 2012). When asked for my experiences or life history, it was given. For example, some participants wondered why I was from Liverpool and what had made me interested in this issue in Scotland. Investigating the participant’s life experiences, we must realise that completing this interview is also part of their life experience now and my own as researcher (Presser, 2005). I felt that I could not expect these women to be open to me about their experiences if I was myself not also willing to share my story.

This is not a gender neutral topic that I am studying. Some feminist theory such as the work of Finch (1984) and Oakley (1981) advises that women who interview women should be from the same position. The work of Stanley (1990), Skeggs (2005) and Stanley and Wise (1990) also touches upon this subject but deals more about class sensitivity. To be from the same position would imply that perhaps the interviews would have been better suited for a mother to carry out. However I would oppose this view and argue that, as a childless woman, the participant was not threatened by my birth account as I don’t have one. There were therefore no contradictory views or experiences between myself and the participant. Instead, as previously argued, the participants seemed to want to teach me their experiences of childbirth and motherhood to prepare me for me possibly undergoing it in the future. Most women indeed asked if I intended having children in the future and I was given the opportunity to learn what ‘real’ motherhood and pregnancy entails, ‘what the books don’t teach you’. This aligns with the work of Fonow (1991), Grosz (1994), Lawler (2000), Maynard (1994), Oakley (1993), Rogers (2006) and Wolf (1996) who also provide similar feminist reflections.

It was evident that this research method suited some women over others as some women found it easier to talk for long periods of time and account their story, whereas some women struggled a little at first with getting used to the interview method, and one participant did ask if I could just ask her some questions. I did then

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ask her a few questions but after this the participant seemed to follow the BNIM method and provided narrative.

I have tried here to reflect on the research process, as other feminist writers have (Waterson, 2000b, Oakley, 1981). I am extremely grateful to all the women who gave their time to participate in this research. As Oakley (1981, p.43) describes ‘I was asking a great deal from these women in the way of time, co-operation and hospitality at a stage in their lives where they had every reason to exclude strangers altogether’. I have been honest about the limitations of this research with reflection on the part of the researcher, highlighting my sensitivity to the inherent power structure of the interview process.

From my experience with research into women’s alcohol consumption during pregnancy I now have a heightened awareness of how agenda has to be negotiated in research. It is clear that within any research it is to a point co-constructed between the participant and the researcher. A different methodology would have inevitably changed women’s responses in some way; closed questioning would have led to women talking about alcohol. However it would not have shown how choices that women made around alcohol were influenced by other social and cultural factors in the women’s lives.

Because I was working alone, away from home various safely issues had to be negotiated and I set up a safety procedure for each interview. The experience that I had from this fieldwork has enabled me to become more skilled at locating myself at different positions in the field.

One issue that further needs to be reflected upon was the fact that this research is sponsored by the Scottish Government and the ESRC. This affiliation was made clear to each participant and I am sure for some women this acted as a way of legitimising and giving the research credibility. However, I recognise that it may also have put some people off taking part as they did not want to disclose information because of political issues. I think possibly some women thought that the research was government controlled and this put them off being interviewed.

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3.8.THE DATA ANALYSIS AND ANALYTICAL METHOD USED

It is acknowledged that the process of transcription forms part of the analytic process and this process, although timely, allowed for an increased familiarity with the data set. Through this process an early analysis was born, allowing for re-occurring themes to be distinguished. Narrative interviews require interpretation and different approaches of narrative analysis were examined for suitability. This assessment of the variety of different ways in which communication could be examined led to a long consideration for the different analytical approaches that would be best used. It was decided that narrative analysis would be conducted, and that a combined method of thematic analysis and structural analysis would give the most rigorous results. A thematic analysis allows for a further understanding and a more detailed picture of the context of a transcript, therefore examining the ‘what’ and ‘why’ aspect of a narrative. The exclusive focus of this type of analysis is on the content of the narrative examining in detail what is said. The main perceived benefit of using a narrative thematic approach is that it allows for the finding of common thematic elements across a number of transcripts and differing experiences. For an example of thematic narrative, the work of Williams (1984) and the illness narrative was examined. This method of analysis was suited to this study as it concentrates upon the meaning behind the stories given, and it was thought that this would therefore be useful for examining women’s experience of alcohol consumption, their understandings and how these impacted their decisions around alcohol consumption during pregnancy.

On the other hand a structural analysis emphasises the way a story is told, focussing on the form, organisation or structure of the narrative. This close examination into language has been recognised as a highly useful method of narrative analysis, with many researchers adopting it ‘to notice how a narrator uses form and language to achieve particular effects’ (Riessman, 2008, p.81). It therefore examines the function behind an analysis and goes deeper than a thematic analysis would to examine what is being portrayed by the participant, revealing what they think is the most important aspect of their stories, giving attention to personal meanings through detailed consideration to narrative form and lexical choices (Reissman 1989)

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Examining the way in which a story is put together is useful for examining the meaning behind it and its use yields different findings than observed with a thematic analysis (Riessman, 2008). This examination into the form of the narrative allows ‘topics and voices to be included in qualitative research that might be missing otherwise’ (Riessman, 2008, p.80). The structural model proposed by Labov and Waletzky is one of the most recognisable and widely used analytical perspectives examining the structure of narratives. Labov and Waletzky (1997) maintain that narratives contain six elements which are used by the participant to construct and make sense of the story: the abstract, the orientation, the complicating action, the evaluation, the resolution and the coda. On closer inspection of this mode of analysis proposed by (Labov and Waletzky, 1997), I feel it is too inflexible for my data in that it is more suitable for shorter stories, rather than a narrative that may not be completely temporally or chronologically ordered. However elements of their analysis may be useful, for example the evaluation which ‘conveys to an audience how they are to understand the meaning of the events that constitute the narrative‘ (Elliott, 2005, p.9) is something that would be important to analyse. Its limitations as a model for analysis have been recognised and it has been identified as un-suitable for life history interviews. It is, instead more suitable as a method for examining shorter, more bounded stories. Some of the data collected for this study would fit into what Elliott (2005, p.46) examines as material which ‘has a story-like form but does not strictly consist of a sequence of event clauses’ and ‘often include a whole set of different narratives’ within the interview. The benefits of using this approach for shorter narratives are well founded. However, I did not recognise it to be the best form of analysis for my data which quite often contained multiple stories and were not always chronologically ordered.

The approach to transcription used by Delanty (2005) based on units of discourse is defined as an ‘ethnopoetic structural approach which is suitable for lengthy narratives that do not take the classic temporal story form’ (Riessman, 2004, p.2). This method of analysis requires attention to subtlety, focussing on how the narrative is spoken. It organises the narrative into idea units, stanzas and strophes based on the way in which the narrative is spoken and therefore effectively examines the relationship between the form of the narrative and the meaning conveyed within it. Great detail is paid towards the linguistic devices used by the participant to convey

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their story such as differences in pitch, tone and false starts use of metaphor, and repetition. These are more easily examined through the process of breaking the text up into these small parts. As developed by Delanty (2005, p.36) ‘narratives can have a global organisation even when they are not being repeated from memory as stored wholes, even when the narrator does not necessarily know in advance where she is going and where she is going to end up’. This process of analysis leads to ‘intensification and evocation of meaning’ (Ohlen, 2003, p.565) as it is argued that fundamental meanings that are evident within the structure and form of a narrative are lost when this form of telling is ignored (Kitchin and Tate, 2000).

Its benefits as a research method for ‘analysing extended narratives of experience’ (Riessman, 2008, p.93) are well acknowledged and it is practical for narratives where the text is not clearly bounded or is in part organised topically rather than temporally. This method of analysis suits the data collected for this research more than the method proposed by Labov and Waletzky (1997) because of the ways in which some of the narratives collected are very long and contain multiple stories. ‘Because structural approaches require examination of syntactic and prosodic