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The philosophical bases of qualitative research - Epistemology i.e. the philosophy of knowledge; what knowledge is and how we can know something, and Ontology i.e. the philosophy of being and the nature of reality, affect everything from the question the research addresses to how the data is analysed (Nagy Hesse-Biber & Leavy, 2010). Willig

a outli es the i po ta e of ide tif i g the esea he s episte ologi al sta e because only through making clear what knowledge the researcher set out to generate is it possible to judge whether the research has been effective. Accordingly, in this section I describe my epistemological basis in order to make transparent my perspective on the relationship between people and the world, the knowledge I sought to generate, and my understanding of the role of the researcher.

Willig (2012a) suggests that the assumptions that are made about how participants interact with the world will directly affect the way the data is analysed and the type of data

p odu ed. IPA s philosophical background locates the participant in the context of their world; hence the person can only be understood as a function of their involvement in that world (Larkin et al., 2006). The present research assumes that the person and their context are inseparable and that this applies to both researcher and participants. I have identified numerous contexts associated with the topic of the present study, it concerning criminality and imprisonment. There is the immediate context of the prison environment and the cultures contained within; there is the context of a prison system that is located within a political and social context; and differing cultural contexts within which the participants and researcher exist.

There are a variety of ontological positions conceptualising research knowledge. For example, realist positions hold that there is a reality that is independent of our thinking (Kirk, 1999) and that this can be accurately captured by research investigations (Guba & Lincoln, 1994). Within this position, moderate critical realists acknowledge that research data is not a direct reflection of reality but the outcome of interpretation, allowing the possi ilit that the e a e diffe i g lai s to the atu e of t uth Willig, a .

At the other end of the ontological continuum, the relativist position considers reality to be o st u ted peoples eliefs, thoughts a d la guage Gu a & Li ol , . F o this pe spe ti e, the e is o o e t uth a out ealit , ut a possi le t uths. Va ious Social Constructionist positions lie within relativism. Willig (2012a) describes how these vary from

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radical social constructionists, who argue that there is no reality bar that which is

o st u ted a pe so s la guage, to ode ate so ial o st u tio ists, who are likened to critical realists in their outlook.

The latter is the position adopted in the present research; it is the position of a critical realist with affinity to the position of a moderate social constructionist. It is assumed that there is a real, wider social world with political and social structures that shape the way both participant and researcher construct meaning (Willig, 2012a). Participants and researcher position themselves within their contexts and are subject to discourses surrounding specifically, crime and imprisonment. Their experiences are influenced as a result of their contexts and the data generated is not necessarily an accurate depiction of an objective truth. Harper describes critical realist social constructionists as believing in the i po ta e of goi g e o d the te t i o de to add a fu the la e of i te p etatio – by setti g hat is said i a oade histo i al, so ial a d ultu al o te t , p. . I ha e endeavoured to present data that accurately captu e a d ep ese t the pa ti ipa ts (subjective) reality and experiences, though I acknowledge it cannot have been perfectly apprehended (Guba & Lincoln, 1994).

Broadly, the type of knowledge the study sought to generate was phenomenological knowledge, revealed through the dual analytical processes of IPA (Larkin et al., 2006; Reid et al., 2005; Smith et al., 2009). These processes aimed to generate descriptive and i te p etati e i sight i to the phe o e a u de i estigatio ; the apists e pe ie es of working with prisoners. Within the phenomenological approach, information is sought that

aptu es the atu e a d ualit of the pa ti ipa ts e pe ie e a d o laim is made as to the o je ti e t uth o a u a of thei ealit Willig, a .

Fu the , the pa ti ipa t s e pe ie e is i te p eted a su je ti e esea he ho d a s out underlying meaning (Willig, 2012a); in this way, the researcher is not an independent, detached observer but an active investigator with a biographical presence (Smith, 2004). Therefore, the knowledge generated is presented alongside reflexive statements

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