The interview schedule

The decision to rely primarily on qualitative in-depth interviewing with some quantitative elements was justified in the previous chapter (section 5.2 and 5.3). The initial sources for the interview questions were the Poverty and Social

Exclusion Survey (Pantazis et al 2006) and the unpublished question schedule

used in Purse or Wallet? (Goode et al 1998), which Ruth Lister kindly supplied. These questions were heavily adapted, moving to a semi-structured approach designed to give the interviewee the chance to give longer, fuller answers and to allow exploration of experiences and beliefs in her own words. Further changes had to be made during the pilot study, which covered the first four interviews. An entire section on ‘Perceptions of income according to source’ was removed. This section had been designed to establish whether interviews thought ‘his money’, ‘her money’ ‘Child Benefit’ or ‘tax credit’ should pay for particular

items such as mortgage, car and food shopping; such ‘tagging’ of money had been strongly suggested in previous research (see section 4.3.1). However this did not seem relevant to the way the interviewees thought; they had no clear concept of ‘his money’ and ‘her money’. This finding has implications for the conclusions of the study, (discussed in section 9.1.2). These questions were therefore removed; encouraging interviewees to discuss what was relevant and meaningful to them was much more likely to produce an understanding of their circumstances. A question asking how much income was received from state transfers was also dropped, as interviewees were unable to say how much they got from tax credits. In the revised schedule, they were simply asked to state whether or not they received CTC and WTC, and a spreadsheet was used to calculate the amount of tax credit a household would receive based on the wages of its members (see Appendix One). A final ‘minimal’ interview schedule was then drawn up. Thirty two main questions would now be asked, grouped under eight topic headings. An additional fifteen sub-questions were used in the material deprivation section. An outline of the schedule follows below, with the full version given in Appendix Four.

Having established the family circumstances of the interviewee (section 1 of the schedule), the first substantial section of the interview dealt with sources of

income (section 2 of the schedule). Based on a series of simple questions on

potential sources of income, an EXCEL spreadsheet was used to calculate a weekly income figure for each household. For each family, income was then equivalised for family composition and converted into a percentage of the estimated national median household income for 2008/09. This is exactly the same methodology as used in Households Below Average Income (DWP 2010). The figures for each family are presented in Chapter Seven (tables 7.4 and 7.5), while Appendix One sets out how household income figures were calculated.

The next part of the interview considered the experience of life on a low

income. Entitlement to money and Making ends meet (sections 3 and 4), used a broad set of open-ended questions to assess whether participants were able to meet their material needs, including social life and recreation. It also gauged participants’ own views on this, and considered the psychological impact that life on a lower income had on those interviewed. The questions aimed to

generate a clear impression of the material circumstances of both the woman and children within the household. Division of labour when managing money (section 5) used a set of open-ended questions specifically aimed at opening up the reasons for the way money was distributed within the household and the emotional consequences of that distribution.

The gender beliefs held by the interviewee were explored next, focusing on the five beliefs outlined in section 4.4 (section 6 of the schedule). Placing the

questions about beliefs into their own section was allowed the exploration of differences between belief systems and actual practice. In order to tease out some of these potential contradictions, the questions were prefaced with the statement ‘I am now going to read a series of controversial statements. For each one, I’d like to ask for your personal views. I want to hear your views on each one, rather than hear about what you actually do in your present situation.’ The questions were deliberately phrased using the format ‘Some people think that…’ to avoid giving the impression that this was the interviewer’s own belief.

Finally, the measurement of ‘material deprivation’ was undertaken (section 7). The questions used were taken from the material deprivation questions in the DWP third tier measure (Willitts 2006, DWP 2010). Their reliability as indicators of deprivation has been supported by extensive statistical evidence (MacKay and Collard 2004). The questions were adapted to separate out the poverty of

women from that of the household as a whole; five questions were selected to measure the deprivation of the family, five for the mother and five for the children. As discussed in section 3.4.2, Payne (1991), set out five criteria for a poverty measure aimed especially at women: focus on the individual experience of deprivation, inclusion of both material and social elements, highlighting of experiences which might differ for each sex, inclusion of measures of social isolation and incorporation of the value of unpaid household work. The fifteen questions selected met all of these criteria except the last.

Three additional questions appeared as the conclusion to the interview (section 8). A question on the role of gifts was added in order to explore the possible importance of financial contributions from outside the household (Goode et al 1998, Morris 1984). A question on what would make life better financially for the

interviewee was added after the initial pilot, as some interviewees had clear suggestions to make. The final question asked if anything had been missed, a chance for the interviewee to add anything not covered by the question schedule.

It is important to stress that these questions were not designed to be

prescriptive. They were intended to open up particular areas of discussion. If interviewees talked freely and in depth, some questions could be missed out, or additional ones used in conversational form. On the other hand, a number of suggested prompts were included in the schedule in case an interviewee gave short answers or did not speak in much depth initially. Thus each interview would develop differently; not all the interviewees would be asked exactly the same questions, but the same topics would always be included.