Professor Bren Neale School of Sociology and Social Policy - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Professor Bren Neale School of Sociology and Social Policy University of Leeds

Overview

— Why a dynamic approach to social research? — Qualitative Longitudinal (QL) Research:

qualitative enquiry that engages with time.

— Re-thinking time: time as vehicle, time as a

theoretical framework and substantive topic that drives enquiry

— The contours of QL research: focus on design,

data generation and analysis.

Ra*onale: The Dynamics of Society

— There is widespread recognition of rapid social change in

the contemporary world. Societies are in a perpetual state

• f flux and change, biographically and historically

— Time is the lynchpin for understanding the relationship

between biography and history, the personal and social, agency and structure, and between lived experiences and policy processes – the relationship is essentially dynamic.

— ‘At a time when social forces are making instability a way

• f life, researchers are developing new modes of enquiry

that take account of the dynamic nature of people’s lives. Approaches to ‘thinking dynamically’ have triggered the beginning of an intellectual revolution (Leisering and Walker, preface to The Dynamics of Modern Society, Policy Press , 1998).

Longitudinal & Life course research

— Longitudinal Research: tracking the same people (a panel of

participants) prospectively, in real time, as lives unfold. Looks forwards and backwards in time. Can track varied cohorts in the panel, people who go through a similar life experience at the same time (e.g. birth cohorts, cohorts of school children)

— The life course is the central organising framework for

longitudinal research: the unfolding course of a life that flows through the life span, shaped by a multitude of personal, relational and historical events and circumstances.

— Can be understood biologically (age related from birth to

death); biographically (a relational construction from cradle to grave); historically (the times into which people are born and live out their lives); geographically (the places that shape how lives unfold).

— Key conceptual tools: turning points, transitions and

trajectories

From snap shots to movies

— ‘Longitudinal Data offers a movie rather than a

snapshot’ (Berthoud 2000)

— Since societies are not static we need to move away

from snap shot pictures of the social world to construct a moving picture that captures social processes (Richard Berthoud 2000, Seven years in the Lives of British Families: 15).

— A snap shot is captured synchronically, at one moment

in time. A movie is dynamic, developed diachronically, through time.

— But what kind of movie?

Epic movies

— classic longitudinal studies that are quantitatively driven. — Large survey and cohort studies measure chronological

change through set questions asked at regular intervals: what changes, for whom, the direction and extent of change, where and when and how often change occurs.

— Map broad social trends across large populations,

generating big, ‘thin’ statistical data.

— Offer a grand vista, a birds eye view, a broad, ‘surface’

picture of social change

— The dominant framework in the longitudinal canon

In*mate movies

— Qualitative Longitudinal (QL) Research has a dual identity:

— Within the longitudinal canon — Within the broad field of Qualitative Temporal Research (social

anthropology, sociological re-studies, biographical/ oral history research).

— As qualitative enquiry:

— generates rich, detailed, textured data about individuals and linked

lives, using an array of interview, ethnographical and narrative methods

— Discerns social practices, subjective experiences, identities, beliefs,

values and so on

— Derives meaning from context and complexity to produce finely

grained social understandings (thick description Geertz 1973)

— Addresses how/why questions: significant explanatory power — Authenticates human agency and subjectivity: the meaning that

events hold for those who experience them.

— Also concerned with wider social processes but agency and

individual experience is the core concern.

… as longitudinal enquiry

— Tracking people, in ‘real’ time through rich, in depth studies

enables us to understand the ‘how and why’ of change, continuities, transitions, endurance, causality

— Why life journeys are undertaken and the nature of the

journey along the way (the Odyssey).

— Human agency and subjectivity are understood as

dynamic concepts:

— A micro-dynamic focus on how change is created, lived

and experienced;

— the interior logic of lives as they unfold; — Discerning the causes and consequences of change and

continuity in the social world, and the agency of

individuals in shaping or accommodating to these processes.

The status of QL research

— QL research is steadily growing in popularity, but still a poor

cousin of large scale longitudinal studies.

— Bridging the gap between micro and macro studies

— Through mixed longitudinal methods — Through scaling down of large studies to community level (e.g.

Born in Bradford) and challenges to the idea of large samples being representative (Rothman et al 2013)

— Through scaling up QL research to create a third kind of

movie: Qualitative Panel Studies: intimate epics

— Larger sample size, greater geographical coverage, longer time frames,

but, crucially, retain the depth and explanatory power of Qual enquiry.

A short journey through *me…

— Time is a self evident and straightforward: creating a

moving picture that charts changes over time.

— BUT… lives do not necessarily unfold in chronological

• rder, in a linear direction or at a uniform pace.

— How self evident is the concept of time in temporal

research? how is it implicated in the unfolding of lives? How do we re-think time?

Re-thinking Time: Fixed *me

— Adam (1989): two broad ways to conceptualise time: — Fixed (mechanical) time, clock and calendar. Time is a

constant, unvarying, cumulative, objective, metrical construct. It has a relentless, recurrent, linear or cyclical motion that is expressed numerically.

— Time emerges as chronology, sequence, duration, interval.

A shared, taken-for-granted background, an external entity or structure within which we measure, plan, organise and regulate

• ur lives, and through which events unfold:

— Events occur in time because time is external to them: the

clock becomes time. the top down approach to time.

— This is the pervasive view of time since late C17th (Newtonian

physics).

Temporality – a kaleidascopic view

Re thinking *me: fluid *me

— Fluid time: Temporality/Social Time/ Timescapes:

flows of time in human experience.

— A plurality of times exist beyond chronology, linearity,

circularity, repetition, uniformity. - relative, subjectively defined, context dependent, recursive, intersecting in complex and unpredictable ways: bottom up view of time.

— Flows of time are embedded in our day to day lives – emerging

from our social events, practices and experiences. Our social world does not occur in time, rather it constitutes time.

— Adam turns our common sense notion of time on its head to

consider, not events in time, but time in events.

— Predates Newton, re-discovered through C20th relativity theory,

quantum mechanics, chaos theory and ecological biology.

Rethinking Causality

— Fixed time: causality is implied in the linear, orderly

progression from past to present to future. Cause and effect are tied to this chronology

— Fluid time: causality is integral to the world of experience:

a subjective, ongoing, and emergent process, bound up with multiple influences that accumulate slowly, imperceptibly.

— While we may see correlations between point A and B,

tracing outcomes back to a single, objectively defined cause becomes questionable

— Subjective understandings of causality (Laub and

Sampson).

x

… life … must be lived forwards. … But … it must be understood backwards. Sǿren Kierkegaard

The rela*ve status of fixed and fluid *me

— Adam stresses that these are not either/or formulations: both

need to be taken into account as empirical realities that influence every day existence. But she reminds us that clock and calendar time are only part of the temporal picture and she invites us to consider all these dimensions, to discern how they are interconnected.

— 25 years on there is some progress in importing Adam’s ideas

into social scientific thinking.

— Fixed time still dominates, with life course researchers – both

qual and quant- build up a moving picture through the simple expedient of conducting our studies through calendar time.

— QL research, however, is also centrally concerned with flows of

time – time as a rich theoretical construct that drives data generation and analysis .

Intersec*ng planes/flows of *me

— Past–Present–Future: passages, temporal gaze

— Chronology (fixed), Temporal gaze (fluid) – how we re-interpret the past, and

refashion the future(seeds of change). — Intensive-Extensive: tempo, timespans, pace

— Pace: how do people manage the pace, speed and cumulative effects of

change? (Flowerdew and Neale 2003) — Micr0-Meso-Macro: magnitudes, angle of lens

— Understand the intersection of biography and wider historical and structural

processes (C. W. Mills 1959) — Time-Space: settings, geographies of time

— Fixed time is empty, free floating, fluid time is grounded in and constituted

differently in particular localities — Continuous –Discontinuous: synchronicities

— e.g. ruptures in personal time- bereavement, migration, school exclusion –

sense of living out of time, taking each day as it comes, losing sight of past and future. — These planes all implicated in how lives unfold, they flow into each other,

with endless possibilities to discern their interconnections (Neale 2015).

Theory to prac*ce: research design

— Design is dynamic, a journey and the researchers are time

travellers.

— Key dimensions of the research process (sampling, recruitment,

ethics, data generation, analysis) are not one off tasks, but recur in cycles, tied to the waves of fieldwork

— It is also a craft, involving imaginative artistry

— QL researchers are methodological jackdaws and draw on a

repertoire of approaches to construct a bespoke design.

— Main considerations

— Building a prospective/retrospective gaze

— (past- present- future)

— Building a tempo/timeframe

— (intensive-extensive)

— Building a biographical/historical lens

— (Micro-meso-macro)

Prospec*ve/retrospec*ve gaze

— Prospective gaze (forward looking)

— tracking the same people, in ‘real’ time, as lives unfold (a key

feature of longitudinal research). Has a forward momentum, builds knowledge cumulatively over time. Discerns ‘change in the making’ (Mills 1959)

— Retrospective gaze (backward looking)

— life histories, revisiting studies, aim is to understand lives

‘backwards’ from the vantage point of the present day.

— Can be conducted sychronically, at one point in time and therefore

cheaper and easier but can’t discern ‘change in the making’

— Backwards gaze discerns causality – crucial to temporal research

— QL research combines these approaches:

— Builds retrospective elements into a prospective design, so gaze is

both backward and forward in time.

— Walkerdine et al (2001) Growing up Girl, used three cohorts of young

women of different ages, and used prospective methods with two cohorts and retrospective with a third, ethnic minority cohort.

Tempo/*meframe

— Timeframes: need a clear baseline and closure point for a study:

defined biographically or historically or both

— Tempo (number, duration and spacing of visits to the field): two visits

to the field are needed to create a comparative frame

— But the tempo is flexible, framed according to the research questions,

characteristics of the sample, and practical/resource considerations

— Tempo of a study mirrors the process under investigation In

educational research, for example, school years are often used as the unit of study (Saldana, Yates and McLeod, Pollard and Filer). — Spectrum of approaches:

— Intensive/continuous tracking through a discrete transition or policy

process, usually over short periods. ‘walking alongside’ people, with each wave of fieldwork informing the next – flexible process.

— Extensive tracking over years or decades – longer gap between visits

means historical processes emerge, but minutae of change is lost.

— In combination: — e.g. Gordon and Lahelma (2003) began their school based study with

ethnographic immersion, and then followed up with yearly interviews through the seven years of high school. Worth planning for longer term follow up, subject to further funding.

Biographical-historical lens

— How to discern the links between biography and history? — Use an extensive tempo: The longer the study, the greater the

historical reach,

— Build retrospectively on existing data and earlier studies. — Capture a particular historical moment. E.g. Patrick (2017)

study of welfare recipients began at the point of a major reform in welfare policy in the UK – a timely moment.

— Temporal Sampling: for different age or generational cohorts

— Elder’s Children of the Great Depression 1974 Retrospectively

followed the fortunes of two age-cohorts of families, with children who were either infants or in their teens. Dramatic contrast between the two groups, older children contributing to family support.

— Can sample across different cohorts of children to discern the

impact of changes in educational policy

— Generational cohorts: Bertaux and Delcroix (2000) suggest at

least three generations to create the necessary historical reach.

— Shah and Priestley 2011

Individual-structural lens

— Build in breadth of study by sourcing data from

different spheres or domains of influence, expanding from a narrow to a wide angle lens:

— Individuals e.g. students (micro); — collectives e.g. parents, family, teachers and school culture

(meso);

— social institutions, policy landscapes (e.g. education

commissioners, educational policies and wider statistical pictures (macro). (Bronfenbrenner’s ecological model, or different domains of change, Lewis 2007).

— Compton-Lilly (2007) in her study of the dynamics of

reading in a disadvantaged school in New York state, sampled children and parents, set against a backdrop of structural inequalities and ‘the well intentioned but discriminatory practices of educators’. (p8)

Genera*ng Data in the field

— Four Basic approaches

— Ethnography – walking alongside — Interviews (in depth, individual, also collective)

— Life history, future interviewing, recursive interviewing, revisiting past

and future at each research encounter

— Self Generated Data

— E.g. time maps, diaries

— Documentary Sources

— Extant datasets, published diaries, blogs, memorabilia (Plummer’s

Documents of life).

— A palette of methods that can be combined in creative ways to

design a study.

— Bornat and Bytheway (2010) in their study of the Oldest

Generation, combined retrospective life history interviews with diary methods: they discerned the long sweep of a life, lived over decades, alongside the every day contingencies and risks of increasing dependency.

EMILIA (YLT, age 15)

SOPHIE (YLT, age 15)

Data management and analysis.

— Generates huge, unwieldy datasets that need good management for

longitudinal analysis and for archiving

— Analysis is complex, in three dimensions

— cases, themes, time (waves).

— Building Blocks

— Case analysis through time: Building individual biographies by

bringing together case data across the waves

— Thematic analysis through time Discerning key themes within

cases, through time (e.g the role of grandparents in the lives of young fathers).

— Cross-case analysis through time : Building a comparison of varied

trajectories and varied themes across the sample and through time

— Tools to condense data:

— Pen portraits and case history files for each case that are built up over time:

descriptive analysis.

— Framework for capturing transitions and trajectories over the life course.

Framework Grids: Housing

Participant Pre-interview Wave one Wave two Wave three Jimmy Living with his mum and brother Lived with partner at her mum’s house for a while, now returned to live at his mum’s house. Jimmy, his partner and their child are now living between his mum’s house and his partner’s mum’s house. Now lives with a friend from college after a fall out with his mum. Tarrell Living with his mum (father is deceased) Still living with mum Unable to contact participant Now living with partner and two

• f his four

children at partner’s house Jason Living alone after moving

• ut of foster

care Still living alone In prison Unable to contact participant

Framework Grids: Jimmy Case data

Theme Pre-interview Wave one Wave two Wave three Housing Living with his mum and brother Lived with partner at her mum’s house for a while, now returned to live at his mum’s house. Jimmy, his partner and their child are now living between his mum’s house and his partner’s mum’s house. Now lives with a friend from college after a fall out with his mum. School employment In school when became an expectant dad Had left school and without a job Temporary job but was sacked. Looking at training schemes. Joined a college course Relationships In relationship with mother at age of 15 Volatile but still in relationship during pregnancy Now living across households with partner and Relationship with partner highly volatile

Policy and Impact

— QL research can discern how lived experiences intersect with

wider policy processes

— Gives insights into ‘what matters’ ‘ for people, over what time

spans, as a precursor to understanding ‘what helps’ people (‘what works’)

— QL research is a powerful tool to use where people are required,

• r encouraged or are seeking to change their practices or life

styled, or where they need to adapt to changing circumstances

• r environments (Corden and Millar 2007). This applies very

much to the educational sphere.

— Can be used as a refined evaluation tool and a potential

navigational tool for running alongside policy interventions

— Potential to create impact as an integral part of the research

process, for example, through the co-production of knowledge with practice or policy partners (Neale and Morton 2012).

The importance of QL research

— A powerful tool for understanding the interior

logic of lives, discovering the unimaginable

— A paradigm shift– engaging with time creates a

new way of knowing and understanding the social world.

— Can address some of the grand challenges of

social science in a world of rapid social change.

— Seeing things qualitatively through the lens of

time ‘quite simply changes everything’ (Barbara Adam)

References and sources: key texts

— Adam, B (1990) Time and Social Theory, Cambridge, Polity — Corden, A. and Millar, J. (2007) (eds.) Qualitative Longitudinal research for social policy.

Themed section of Social Policy and Society, 6, 4.

— Huber, G. & Van de Ven, A. (1995) (eds.) Longitudinal Field Research Methods, London,

Sage.

— Neale, B (2013) Adding Time into the Mix: Stakeholder Ethics in QL research.

Methodological Innovations Online (special issue). December.

— Neale, B (2015 ) Time and the Lifecourse: Perspectives from Qualitative Longitudinal

• Research. in N.Worth and I. Hardill (eds) Researching the Life Course. Policy Press.

— Neale, B. and Flowerdew, J. (2003) Time, Texture and Childhood: The Contours of

Longitudinal Qualitative Research International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 6, 3: 189-199

— Neale, B (2017 forthcoming) What is Qualitative Longitudinal Research? London,

Bloomsbury.

— Saldana, J. (2003) Longitudinal Qualitative Research: Analysing change through time,

Walnut Creek, Altamira Press.

— Thomson, R., Plumridge, L. and Holland, J. (2003)(eds.) Longitudinal Qualitative

Research: a developing methodology: International Journal of Social Research

• Methodology. 6, 3. Special Issue.

— Thomson, R. and McLeod, J. (2015) (eds.) New Frontiers in Qualitative Longitudinal

• Research. International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 18, 3.

References and sources- educa*on

— Compton-Lilly, C. 2007) Re-reading families: the literate lives of urban children NY Teachers

College Press.

— Gordon, T. and Lahelma, E. (2003) ‘From ethnography to life history: tracing transitions of

school students’, IJSRM 6,3, 245-254

— Lemke (2001) The long and short of it: Comments on multiple timescale studies of human

activity, Journal of Learning Science, 10, 1-2, 17-26

— McLeod, J. (2003) ‘Why we interview now: reflexivity and perspective in a longitudinal study’,

International Journal of Social Research Methodology,6,3,201-211.

— Pollard, A. with Filer, A (1996) The Social World of Children’s Learning: Case studies of children

from four to seven, London, Cassell (and subsequent volumes).

— Walkerdine, V. et al (2001) Growing up girl: psycho-social explorations of gender and class,

Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan.

— Yates, L. and McLeod, J. (1995) ‘And how would you describe yourself?’Researchers and

researched in the first stages of a qualitative longitudinal research project’, Australian Journal of Education, 40,1, 88-103.

— Yates, L. (2003) ‘Interpretive claims and methodological warrant in small number, qualitative

longitudinal research’ IJSRM 6,3, 223-232.

References

— Abbott, A. (2001) Time Matters, University of Chicago Press. — Adam, B. and Groves, C. (2007) Future Matters, Leiden, Brill. — Bertaux, D. and Delcroix,C. (2000) ‘Case histories of families and processes’, in P.

Chamberlayne et al (eds) The turn to biographical methods in social science, London, Routledge.

— Bornat, J. and Bytheway, W. (2010) ‘Perceptions and presentations of living with

everyday risk in later life’, British Journal of Social Work, 40, 4, 1118 - 1134

— Brannen, J. (2006) Cultures of intergenerational transmission in four generation

families, Sociological Review, 54,1, 133-155.

— Bronfenbrenner, U. (1994) Ecological models of human development International

Encyclopaedia of Education, Vol 3, 2nd ed. 1643-1647.

— Dearden, C. et al (2010) Credit and Debt in low-income families, York, Joseph

Rowntree Foundation

— Elder, G. (1974) Children of the Great Depression, University of Chicago Press. — Flowerdew, J. and Neale, B. (2003) Trying to stay apace: Children with multiple

challenges in their post divorce family lives’, Childhood, 10,2, 147-161

— Freeman, M. (2010)Hindsight: The promise and peril of looking backward, Oxford, OUP

References cont.

— Haracopos, A. and Dennis, D. (2003) Maintaining contact with drug users, International

Journal of Social Research, 6,3, 245-54.

— Harden, J., Maclean, A. et al (2012) ‘The family-work project: Children and Parents’

experience of working parenthood,’ Families, Relationships and Societies, 1,2, 207-222.

— Laub, J. and Sampson, R, (2003) Shared Beginnings, Divergent Lives: Delinquent boys to age

• 70. Harvard University Press

— Lewis, J. (2007) Analysing Qualitative Longitudinal data in Evaluations, Social Policy and

Society, 6,4, 545-56.

— May, J. and Thrift. N. (2001( (eds.) Timespace: Geographies of Temporality, Routledge. — Mills, C. Wright (1959) The Sociological Imagination, Harmondsworth, Penguin — Neale, B. and Flowerdew, J. (2007) ‘New structures, new agency: The dynamics of child-

parent relationships after parental divorce’, International Journal of Children’s Rights, 15, 25-42.

— Neale, B. and Morton, S. (2012) Creating Impact through QL research, Timescapes Methods

Guide Series no. 19, www.timescapes.leeds.ac.uk/resources.

— Patrick, R. (2017) For whose benefit? The every day realities of welfare reform. Bristol, Policy

Press.

— Plummer, K. (2001) Documents of life 2, London, Sage. — Rothman, K., Gallacher, L and Hatch, E. (2013) Why representativeness should be avoided,

International Journal of Epidemiology, 42, 1012-14

— Shah and Priestley (2011) Disability and Social Change, Bristol, Policy Press.