The adaptive research process: fieldwork and data analysis

3.5.1

Introduction: adaptive theory at work

Twin themes of this research that have strongly influenced the research process have been first, the adaptive and iterative nature of the research process and second, working in the "middle ground" between theory and data that I described earlier (Section 3.3). In this section I provide an account of the adaptive research process and describe how the fieldwork took place. However, before presenting the detail of this I now provide a brief overview of the way the research process developed. As described earlier (Section 3.3), adaptive theory gives the researcher the freedom and flexibility to develop the research process and adapt it as it progresses, rather than working within a fixed, inflexible research design. I took advantage of this flexibility in the empirical data gathering as follows. From the first case study (Chapter 1 and see next paragraph) I realised that I needed to give the interviewees more freedom to say what they wanted to say, so I simplified the questions. From the second case study (Chapter 1 and discussed later in this chapter) I realised that some interviewees were willing and had the ability to engage with the subject matter of the interview on a different, higher level than just talking about the facts of the conflict and their perspectives of events. From their comments I could see that they could easily engage in a higher level discussion of justice and fairness that included the conflict but also drew further implications beyond it. This led to the design of “round three" which entails key informant interviews with specifically chosen interviewees. These interviews differed from those in the case studies because I shared the findings of the case studies with the interviewee and talked about my research openly in order to generate a broader discussion of the issues: the interview process was a two-way conversation. While round three is described later in the section, the main point here is that the concept of round three emerged from the experience of interviewing in the preceding case studies. Figure 3.4 depicts this adaptive research process whereby research experience and research findings are used adaptively in the design of the next step of the research method.

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Figure 3.4 Adaptive research: methods development

3.5.2

Overview of the NSW carry-over water study and the Victoria

pipeline study

The two case studies, introduced in Chapter 1, were chosen because they involved important water-related societal issues and were also active social conflicts at the time. The first concerned a 2006 government decision over irrigation water allocation in the state of New South Wales (NSW), which I describe here as the "NSW carry-over water study". My attention was drawn by a newspaper headline in the Sydney Morning Herald, a metropolitan newspaper, "Water thieves leave farmers parched" (Lewis, 2006) which described a rally organised by irrigation farmers in protest at the government decision. That this had caught the attention of a metropolitan newspaper and involved 2000 or so protesters was sufficient information for me to realise that this was a significant conflict in which matters of fairness and justice were likely to be salient. The second case study was located in the state of Victoria and concerned the North South Pipeline and Food Bowl Modernisation Project initiated by the Victorian government in 2007. I refer to this as the "Victoria pipeline study". The Victoria pipeline study is also characterised by significant social conflict manifested as protests in several rural locations in Victoria as well as in Melbourne, the state capital. However, the Victoria pipeline study differs from the first case in that several communities were involved in the protest and the water dispute centres on water being transferred from one catchment area to another through a newly constructed pipeline. The Victoria case study is therefore more complex and has broader ramifications than the NSW case study. The case studies are described in Chapters 5 and 6

which provide the first level of analysis. While the case studies do have similarities and differences, the aim of this research is not to explore these per se, rather it is to explore the case studies for themes relating to people's perceptions about fairness and justice decision processes and outcomes.

3.5.3

Interviewee selection and the interview process in the two case

studies

An important objective of the research was to explore as full a range of perspectives of each social conflict as possible and this was the driving force of interviewee selection. I started the interviewee selection process by networking with my own academic and research contacts, such as those from conferences and other events, by asking if they knew someone with knowledge of the region and social conflict who might be a good starting point for my interviewee selection process. From this point interviewees were selected using the snowball or networking method (Ritchie et al., 2003) whereby each interviewee was asked to nominate further interviewees they thought would share different perspectives on the conflict. Interviewees usually had some degree of awareness of their nominees' perspectives about the conflict and whether they were opposed, neutral or in favour of the issue. Different perspectives could be obtained from a diverse range of stakeholder groups within the communities such as irrigators, dry-land farmers, conservationists, small business operators, local government employees, landholders affected by the pipeline construction in Victoria, tourism operators, elected councillors, retirees, members of industry associations, professionals such as accountants or teachers, and government agency representatives. Interviewees were chosen according to the different perspective they might hold and their attitude to the decision or project: those opposed, those in favour and those who were undecided, neutral or midway between these positions.

I contacted potential interviewees by phone (or infrequently e-mail), explained my research, and arranged to meet them at a location of their choice which could be their home, workplace or a local cafe. Interviewees were provided with an information sheet on the research (Appendix B) and were asked to sign a consent form (Appendix A). I emphasised the confidentiality of the research and reassured interviewees that their identity would not be disclosed and that publications would exclude identifying information. After receiving permission1

1

Only one interviewee did not give permission to record the interview

I recorded the interviews with a digital recorder and made notes as the interview progressed. After the interview had finished I thanked the interviewee and later made some summary notes about the impressions gained from the interview and the most important points raised by the interviewee. This formed an important part of my analysis because the interview

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was fresh in my mind and I found that each person generally made between three and ten key points that could be captured by this first-level analytical process.

I continued interviewing in the two case studies until I felt that I was not gaining any new perspectives or significant insights into the conflicts (coincidentally, in both case studies this was after 43 interviews, making a total of 86 for the case studies). In qualitative research this is known as "saturation" which is where "nothing new is coming up" (Richards, 2005:135). However, in the NSW carry-over water study I was unable to interview anyone from the government department responsible for the water cutback decision. I put the lack of response to my interview request down to rumours of legal action at the time. It would have been difficult for any government employee to speak freely about the matter. However, I was able to interview government agency employees in NSW and Victoria in round three.

In the first case study I was also interested in gathering facts about irrigation communities as well as obtaining detailed information about the conflict. I wanted to understand what the different types of stakeholder groupings in the community were and how interviewees fitted into these. An early finding was that it was difficult to distinguish clear boundaries between stakeholder groupings: many people had played several roles within communities and wore several different hats, so to speak. In fact, the notion of stakeholder groupings in this research was not a useful categorisation. Importantly, another objective was for me to understand as much as I could about the social conflict in question: there was little information publicly available in either case study to provide a detailed overview. While the media ran frequent articles about aspects of the Victoria pipeline study (for example, Ker, 2008; Davidson, 2008; Wallace, 2008) there was little detailed information publicly available from the proponents or the opposition groups.

3.5.4

The NSW carry-over water study fieldwork

The fieldwork was carried out in two stages. In the first stage 12 interviews were conducted in the Deniliquin area of NSW in January, 2007. The interview questionnaire was then modified slightly to simplify some questions. The second stage of interviews was carried out in the same area in February, 2007. A total of 43 interviews were conducted. All the interviews took place after the government decision to cut back the water allocation and after an Extraordinary Assistance Package had been announced (Chapters 4 and 5).

3.5.5

The Victoria pipeline study fieldwork

The fieldwork was carried out in Victoria in September and October, 2008. During this period 43 interviews were conducted. Nineteen of these were in the Yea district to the north of Melbourne (the area affected by construction of the North South Pipeline), two interviews were conducted in Melbourne and the remainder took place in the Goulburn Murray Irrigation District (where the Food Bowl Modernisation Project was about to start) in the state's north.

The interviews took place before the pipeline construction work had started, although work crews from the construction company were arriving in the Yea area and assembling worksites and making preparations. In the irrigation district the interviews took place while the Northern Victorian Irrigation Renewal Project was setting up as an entity but before the Food Bowl Modernisation Project work had started in earnest (Chapters 4 and 6).

3.5.6

Overview of round three fieldwork

As described at the start of this section, the concept of round three emerged while I was conducting the second case study. During the Victoria fieldwork I realised that some interviewees had experiences of decision-making processes that enabled them to engage with issues of justice and fairness at a higher level than many other interviewees. Thus in round three key informants were chosen on the basis of their experience and knowledge of natural resource management and their current position in government, politics, agriculture or natural resource management. My aim was to find people in senior positions well-experienced in the issues embedded within the conflicts, and who would be generally familiar with the interactions between farmers, governments and government agencies and associated social tensions. I interviewed 10 key informants who fitted these criteria and who were familiar with the two case studies, some in more detail than others. These key informants were located in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT), NSW and Victoria. None of these informants had been interviewed previously. The 10 interviews were conducted in November and December, 2008. Each was conducted along similar lines to the interviews in the two case studies, described above, the only difference being the discussion within the interview.

In round three interviews I started the interview by describing my research, including the concepts of procedural justice and distributive justice, and outlining the findings from the two case studies. I then asked each interviewee for their perspectives of either or both of the case studies, depending on their experience and knowledge of them, and what they thought in general about procedural justice and distributive justice in natural resource management. While I did have a set of questions to guide the interview, the majority of the interviews were conducted as open discussions or conversations around the findings of the case studies, experiences recalled by the interviewees and fairness and justice themes that emerged.

3.5.7

The interviewing experience: establishing empathy and being

adaptive

An interview is both the most ordinary and the most extraordinary of ways you could use to explore someone else's experience – it is as ordinary as conversation, and as amazing as a brilliant film. It offers insights you never expected would come your way. (Richards, 2005:38)

It is useful to reflect on the interviewing experience and how this influenced the research process. As Richards neatly summarises in the quotation above, a research interview is

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multifaceted and the researcher must operate on many levels to gain insights, both from the interview experience itself and from what the interviewee is saying. This is important for the research process as well as the research content. How the researcher establishes rapport, how questions are asked and how the researcher adapts the interview process to interviewee responses are all important aspects of the interview (Wengraf, 2001; Legard et al., 2003). The researcher must also consider maintaining continuity between interviews: for example, asking questions consistently yet recognizing that some questions will not be relevant in all interviews. There are two areas of the interviewing experience in this research that I highlight. First, establishing rapport and empathy with the interviewee and second, being reflexive and adaptable about questioning within the structure of the interview.

Setting up the interview so that the interviewee felt at ease with the research topic and purpose of the research was an important first step in interviewing and critical to the success of the research as a whole. The research tools described above (the information sheet and consent form) established the research context and that matters of confidentiality were understood and had been thought through. I was then able to engage with interviewees on a number of levels due to my background in farming, knowledge of the industry and interest in rural matters. I was able to talk as easily and comfortably with dairy farmers as I was with academics or executives. During the interview I was sensitive to how people wanted to talk about the issues: the way people responded to questions was very different. Some talked nearly non-stop about the topic for the first part of the interview, whereas others needed drawing out through sensitive questioning. It was important that I sensed where the discussion was going and how people wanted to tell me what they felt was important, and this sensitivity enabled me to conduct the interview with empathy while retaining some structure (Wengraf, 2001). In several cases interviewees became quite distressed talking about close, personal impacts of the social conflict: I needed to be sensitive about these insights which were clearly troubling to them. Having the cards on the table with "justice" and "fairness" (to which I added "injustice" in the second case study) contributed to the sympathetic nature of the interview because people were reminded that my research was not so much about the conflict in particular but that I wanted to understand what they thought about fairness and justice through the conflict. This was a subtle but important nuance: while I was connected as a researcher to the social conflict through the interview I was also kept at a distance from it by my overall research aim. People were therefore comfortable to share general thoughts about fairness and justice as well as divulge specific views on the conflict.

A further area in which I adapted the interviews was in the questions about the decision- making process. These questions were arranged to follow specific aspects of the process (for example, notification, information, timing, being treated with respect) and in some interviews these were not relevant where the interviewee had not experienced the full process. In some cases the interviewee had already described aspects of the process in their opening remarks and

following the exact questioning structure involved repetition. As a result of this experience in the first case study I made the questions more open in the second case study. This adaptation proved useful in the second case study because interviewee's experiences of the social conflict were markedly different from community to community. Some were involved in aspects of the decision-making process whereas others had no involvement at all and were bystanders. The interview needed to be approached with flexibility to adapt to the interviewees' experience of the conflict. Finally, and importantly, I changed the question about being treated with respect between the two case studies to make this a more open question in the second case study. The question "do you feel you were treated with respect?" became "how do you feel you were treated during this process?" (Chapter 8).

3.5.8

Dealing with the data: transcribing, coding, analysis and writing

After the fieldwork the interviews were transcribed and the data stored. As noted earlier the analysis started during the interviewing process with the summary field notes. The analysis then became an ongoing activity throughout the subsequent transcribing and coding processes. I constantly recorded ideas, isolated thoughts, connections with the theory and connections between aspects of the data. Transcribing each interview gave me familiarity with the data: transcribing was rather like a re-run of the interview. The investigative framework helped structure the formal analysis into question areas which could then be summarised. For the first case study I used the software package NVivo to organise interview extracts around questions. Use of the investigative framework was helpful in the analysis because it already grouped questions into areas and effectively constituted the first step of the analysis. This organising into categories or groups is known as coding (Richards, 2005). The activity of coding encourages the identification of themes relating to the groups of data coded and helps isolate groups and distinguish between them. As Richards (2005: 86) describes it "the goal is to learn from the data, to keep revisiting it until you understand the patterns and explanations".

After completing the first case study interviews I wrote a paper describing the methodology and preliminary findings from that case study. After peer review this was published in Human Ecology Review (Gross, 2008). I then wrote a second paper which I presented at the International Society for Justice Research conference held in Adelaide in August 2008. This paper described the key finding of perceptions of injustice in the NSW carry-over water study. The paper was submitted to Social Justice Research following the conference. Extracts from both these papers are incorporated into this thesis.

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Figure 3.5 Adaptive research: findings interplay

Analysis of all three studies involved a constant cycling between theories of justice and the