Actividad 1: Analizando soluciones

Due to the complexity of the study this section is split into three subsections relating to access to offenders, actual procedure and the translation of the questionnaire.

5.3.1 Access to violent offenders

All data used in the present study were collected in a lawyer’s office in the Northern part of Greece. The researcher was asked by the lawyer not to reveal his name for ethical reasons. The lawyer, who is an acquaintance of the researcher, contacted individually other lawyers and asked them whether their clients want to participate in a research that is conducted by a PhD student from the University of Huddersfield. It is important to mention that all participants were asked to participate voluntarily and anonymously with strict confidentiality. All the participants were clients from other lawyers who were willing to help the researcher for his current research. These Greek participants were involved in acts of individual and collective violence and they were accused by the Greek court to be a part of a criminal organisation, accused of collective group violence. Moreover, those who participated in this study were members of either football/hooligan and/or extreme political groups (extreme right wing). At this point, it is important to mention that the name of football teams and political parties will not be named due to confidentiality and security reasons. It was clearly stated, from the beginning, that the whole project would never make known the identity of such groups.

93 The cooperation between the researcher and the lawyers regarding the access to the Greek offenders were initially obtained by informal conversations during which the researcher explained the nature and purpose of the research. The researcher then was asked to present a paper explaining the procedures for data collection including a copy of the questionnaire, the duration of the participation and ethical considerations (including confidentiality). Permission was approved after the primary lawyer and the researcher agreed to the condition that there would be no access to the questionnaires by the police or any other related authorities. A lawyer (who is related to the researcher) was present for reasons of security and confidentiality.

The gathering of the data was conducted over a period of 15 months, since it was difficult to conduct a meeting with participants and find those who were willing to participate. Most of the participants were highly suspicious and distrustful regarding the whole process, as the representation of the questionnaire reminded them of a police-based questioning. The researcher had to explain that this was part of a study, no names or groups would be identified in any published work and those who agreed took part in the study.

5.3.2 Procedure

Greek violent participants (N = 50) in the north of Greece were given interview-based questionnaires to fill in. All individuals, agreed to participate with no reward. Each participant took approximately one hour to fill in the questionnaire. Anonymity and confidentiality was guaranteed by giving the participants to sign an inform consent explaining that the data will be used only for a thesis.

Participants who agreed to participate in this study were invited to fill in the questionnaires at the lawyer’s office (acquaintance of the researcher) in Thessaloniki,

94 Greece. Inside the lawyer’s office, the questionnaires were distributed to each participant together with the information sheet and the informed consent. The lawyer assisted the researcher, as he was responsible for asking the participants to volunteer to participate in the research, making them to understand that it was a PhD thesis. All the participants who agreed to participate were brought to see the researcher.

It was also called in attention that their responses were entirely confidential to the researcher and the only other individuals that will have access to the data obtained from the questionnaires will be qualified academic and research associates and the International Research Center for Investigative Psychology (IRCIP) and would not be made available to the law enforcement agencies. It was clarified to them that their responses could not play any role in any legal proceedings that they might be involved. On the other hand, it was indicated that if they mention any severe crimes, such as sex offences or murders, of which the police was not aware of or an intention to commit a serious offence then the researcher would be lawfully bound to report that to a law enforcement agency; this was clearly stated in the questionnaire; that they should mention a violent incident that they were involved except murder or rape as previous research has shown that emotions and associated roles for these types of offences are distinct from more 'traditional' violent offenses (Ioannou, 2006).

5.3.3 Greek Translation

All of the above questionnaires were translated by both the researcher and supervisor from English to Greek, as there are no Greek versions of the questionnaires. In order to test the accuracy of the translation, both translations (researcher vs supervisor) were compared. Moreover, a pilot study with a Greek sample of family and friends (N=12) was carried out in order to test the interpretation of the items and how long it would take to complete in

95 order to inform the participants. The questionnaire took about an hour to complete and no revisions were required to it.