RESEARCH METHODS IN EDUCATION

Research Methods in Education

“Pictures of Caring”

1. Data collection procedures

For this research study we used photographic participation and elicitation techniques. The children and young people in the study participated directly in the research process by using cameras to demonstrate visually their caring experiences when parents had serious mental health problems. Over the space of two weeks the children and young people created a visual diary, which constructed a narrative of their caring lives. The direction they received was to take photographs that they felt were important in demonstrating what it was like to live with, and help to care for, a mentally ill parent, and other meaningful aspects of their lives. A content analysis of the photographs was undertaken to generate themes and categories. The elicitation stage involved using the visual images to stimulate discussion with the participants about

their caring and other meaningful experiences. The narratives created during this stage were thematically analysed.

2. Data quality procedures

This study used ethical and consent procedures in accordance the British Psychological Society's guidelines (,'working with vulnerable children and young people'. Children and parents were asked to give written permission and consent to take part in the study (with the understanding that they could withdraw at any time) and consent for their photographs and narratives to be used in any outputs. This also included

gaining consent from those who children and young people photographed in the course of the visual data collection phase. Access to children and families was gained via young carers projects whose staff were asked to identify potential children and families who fulfilled the research criteria.

3. Data management and analysis

In this research interpretation of the data does not rely on the voice of the researcher but on the voices of the children and young people themselves. In this photographic study, the voices of the children and young people (through their narrative accounts) serve to reinforce the eloquence and importance of the photographs themselves. The children and young people who participated in the study did not ask to show their work in an academic type report, although they were happy to accept that this would be one of a number of necessary and important outputs resulting from the research. Those children and young people who took part wanted to show visually, more than they wanted to tell verbally, their day to day experiences of living with and caring for parents with mental health problems.

References

www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/ss/centres/YCRG/youngCarersDownload/Pictures%20of%20young%20caring%20research%20report.pdf

“Haredi Jews in the UK”

1. Research design

This descriptive cross-sectional in-depth interview study used qualitative methods to investigate an under-researched area (Ritchie, 2003). Qualitative research is much more subjective than quantitative research and uses very different methods of collecting information, mainly individual, in-depth interviews and focus groups. The nature of this type of research is exploratory and open-ended. Small numbers of people are interviewed in-depth and/or a relatively small number of focus groups are conducted.

Participants are asked to respond to general questions and the interviewer or group moderator probes and explores their responses to identify and define peoples' perceptions, opinions and ...