Análisis de la novela El misterio de la guía de ferrocarriles

Connolly (2008) has argued that research with children does not represent any one “true” picture of children’s social worlds, but rather that data need to be

conceptualised as social interactions that represent one of many representations of the child’s social world. He further argues that understanding the context of the research is vital to understanding the representation put forward through the data. Part of any context of research is the researcher themselves. In Connolly’s case, he argued that his gender, race and class, as well as the school environments in which the research was conducted, all influenced the data collected and any interpretation placed on that data.

Although definitions of reflexivity vary (Carolan 2003), the need for the researcher’s role and influence in qualitative studies to be given critical scrutiny is widely

accepted (Carolan 2003, Hand 2003, Parahoo 2006). Reflexivity is taken here to be the critical scrutiny of the researcher’s role throughout the research process, through research design to data collection, analysis and data display/ knowledge transfer.

Aspects of reflexivity were included in the research design for this study through the use of the phenomenological device of bracketing.

5.3.1. Researcher bracketing interviews

The controversies which surround bracketing as a method and the various views of the philosophy which underpin it were discussed in the methodology chapter (section 3.3.1. Phenomenology and research with children: potential advantages). The

process itself was outlined in the previous chapter on methods (section 4.5.1). This section summarises the data generated in the bracketing interviews and the insights this process generated.

The data from the two bracketing interviews have been brought together here to give an overall account of the bracketing process. Three main issues emerged from the analysis of the bracketing interviews: being a researcher, research with children in this particular study, and a sociological approach to childhood, nursing and illness (see figure 5.1).

Figure 5.1 Overview of issues identified in bracketing interviews

Being a researcher

The issue of “being a researcher”, emerged as the predominant issue. The personal and professional history of the principal researcher was identified as influencing the approach taken to research with children living with illness. The gender of the principal researcher emerged as a particular issue and provoked a discussion around “hegemonic masculinity” and how the principal researcher’s background did not follow this traditional model, with experiences as an amateur actor and in nursing leading to the development of more emotional and relational skills. This discussion mirrors that of Evans (2002) who refers to a number of masculinities, rather than one accepted “hegemonic” masculinity. Evans (2002) also points out that for men

pursuing careers as nurses it is difficult to claim hegemonic masculinity. Dr Williams Research with children in this

study • Intergenerational issues • Doctoral study of community children’s nursing • Expectations of findings • Methodology /methodological challenge • Sociological approach • Children’s competency and agency as research participants • Profession of “children’s” nursing • Sociology of children’s illness Being a researcher • Gender • Background in community nursing

and the principal researcher both recognised, in the bracketing interviews, that the principal researcher’s gender would influence the perception that children and parents had of him. The principal researcher also proposed that different styles of communication would be required for children of different genders, where boys may respond more to active physical approaches, such as playing games, and girls to more intellectually focused activities, such as drawing and writing. It was also recognised that gender impacted on how the principal researcher intended to prepare co-workers for field work and the impact that co-workers may have on the interview process with children, as all the co-workers were female.

The researcher’s education and class background as well as his gender were seen as aspects which would make him an “outsider” when talking to children, and perhaps more so when talking to mothers. His lack of personal experience of illness, or of having a child who lives with illness, could add to the sense of being an “outsider” to a community of children and adults living with illness in childhood. The bracketing interview also highlighted aspects which could make the principal researcher seem more of an “insider” to children, parents and nurses. These included: being a father of two children in the same age range as the children in this study, his experiences as a community children’s nurse, health visitor and as a children’s nurse, or as the bracketing interviewer (Dr Williams) put it:

Bracketing interviewer On a personal level you are saying that your identity is not traditionally masculine. It’s not hegemonic masculine, but it’s more

contradictory and fragmented, but at the same time you’re also telling me that you come from a background where there is some cash about… So you’ve got the personal and the structural, and I think that you’ve got to be

aware of that, yourself, but that’s not to deny what you told me about your process skills, as a children’s nurse being the major resource in the research project.

2nd Bracketing interview. The “process skills” referred to in this quote related to skills in making relationships with children quickly in various settings, as well as communicating with parents. The skills acquired by the principal researcher through an 18 year career as a children’s nurse and his experiences in community nursing, also informed his approach to research with children. In the second bracketing interview the principal researcher recognised that these “process skills”, gained as a children’s nurse, could also have negative effects.

Principal researcher That’s a danger of those skills as a children’s nurse. That you know, one of the things you have to do is when you get the 2 and 3 year olds is to persuade them that they really want to take this medicine. Well they really don’t and they are quite adamant that they don’t.

2nd Bracketing interview The bracketing interviews highlighted issues of gender and the principal researcher’s background as a children’s nurse which needed to be taken into consideration when entering the field.

Research with children in this study

Issues that related to how this study would be conducted as research with children, as a distinct group, were almost as prevalent in the bracketing interviews as those about being a researcher. These issues could be categorised as follows: intergenerational issues, doctoral study of community children’s nursing, expectations of findings and how the study challenged aspects of qualitative research methodology.

Many of the intergenerational aspects related to the concepts of ethical symmetry and research with children have already been discussed in the methodology chapter (section 3.5.1). Through the bracketing process, the principal researcher was able to explore the challenges of implementing ethical symmetry. While the principal researcher espoused ethical symmetry, putting this into practice was more difficult. On re-reading the data obtained from children, it became clear that on occasions the researcher could be guilty of using his adult status, especially when trying to get the children to focus on nursing (see below section 5.3.3. page 151-152). Other issues about communicating with children revealed by the bracketing interview were perhaps more successfully realised in the field. These included challenging adult to adult conventions of communication, to make sure the researcher talked to children before their parents, and that the researcher joined children in the joint action of play.

The bracketing interviews were also useful in exploring the tensions between the researcher’s phenomenological approach and the instrumental aspects of research into a clinical specialty, as part of doctoral studies. These challenges over the philosophical approach of phenomenology and the possibility that for children, community children’s nursing may not be a phenomenon which has meaning in their lives, led the principal researcher to adopt the approach that the study was influenced by phenomenology, rather than this approach being the sole methodology ( see Methodology chapter section 3.3):

Principal researcher Yeah I think (Pause), I think you’re right. I need to be alive to the possibility that this research could take a completely different tack, that children may well say I don’t really think much about the nurse at all, It’s not a really big part of my life.

The bracketing interviews revealed what the principal researcher thought might be the likely outcomes of the study. In short these were that children would be keen to talk about their community children’s nurses and make comparisons between

hospital and community services, although it was also acknowledged that children in other studies often did not identify nurses as helpful. The principal researcher

thought that important factors would be: continuity of care, whether procedures were painful (or not), the duration of the relationship with nurses, the gender of the child, their cultural background and social position. He also felt that children would compare and contrast receiving nursing from parents with care delivered by nurses and that the relationship between children and nurses in the community setting would reflect a closeness of friendship built up over a period of time. Other issues the researcher was keen to explore were how and what children told their peers about receiving nursing care at home, how transitional objects such as teddy bears were helpful to children receiving nursing care and how children understood nursing, especially what they looked for in nurses, and whether competence as well as personality mattered.

As can be seen from the findings chapters, most of these preconceived ideas about the findings of the study proved to be wrong.

The last aspect in relation to this study and researching with children came from comments made by the bracketing interviewer indicating a view that the study design was challenging, especially the use of visual methodologies and the intention to interview children at home. These discussions allowed the principal researcher to think about some aspects which had not previously been considered, such as whether parents could leave the house during the Photo Talk Diary interviews, leaving their

child alone with the researcher and co-worker. Although these problems were not always realised in this study thinking about the relationship between the researcher, the child and other adults helped to prepare the researcher for field work.

Sociological approach

The issue of how the study was underpinned by the sociology of childhood and other sociological writing (Mayall 2002, La Tour 1993) appeared in a number of aspects of the bracketing interviews. Discussions centred on how the principal researcher saw children as social actors, fully integrated into their society, and childhood as a quasi phenomenon (La Tour 1993).

Aspects of the sociology of childhood were seen to underpin the approach to the study, such as the principal researcher’s approach to children’s competency as research participants, although it was acknowledged that not all adults in the study shared this view of children as competent research participants.

The sociology of the profession of nursing also emerged as one of the issues for this study in the bracketing interviews. It was suggested that professional agendas may contribute to the tensions in the study between research about living with illness and researching community children’s nursing, as discussed above and illustrated in this data quote:

Principal researcher One of the things the CCNs are quite

interested in is, do children appreciate what's being done for them? Which is a very

interesting kind of professional question, but [do] they appreciate that if they didn't come and replace their nasogastric tube they would actually have to go to an A&E department and wait for three hours?

The use of bracketing interviews in this study could be argued to have been

successful, in that they did provide an opportunity for the researcher to reflect on his role in the research and his relationship with the participants. The fact that virtually all the assumptions that were expressed about the likely outcome of the research were not borne out by the actual findings, suggests that an open and flexible approach was enacted. The formalising of reflexivity through the device of

bracketing has then allowed for the approach of the principal researcher to research with children to be critically reviewed.

5.3.2. Intergenerational issues

Despite exploring intergenerational issues in the bracketing interviews, they

continued to surface in the fieldwork of this study. The interactions between adults, adults and children, and children with other children (peers, and siblings), were a constant feature in the fieldwork. These interactions between adults, children and other children, on occasions presented the researcher with difficulty in enacting the approach of children as active research participants, where arguably the intention to treat children as research participants clashed with the child being a child in a social network. Perhaps an example may illustrate this more clearly. Although this example is from a social event, meant as a trust building exercise, and not for the collection of data, similar issues arose in data collection and throughout the study.

The boy in the taxi

The “boy in a taxi” incident is described here and used as an example to explore the relationships between generations (intergenerational issues) which arose in this study. A participant, a boy of six, agreed to attend the bowling event held on a Friday evening, after school, before the focus group the next day. His mother took up the

offer of the research team to pick her son up in a taxi and take him to the event. This resulted in a co-worker, a student nurse, who the boy had not met before, picking him up in a taxi and taking him off to an unfamiliar activity, on a Friday night when he may have been tired. In hindsight, the co-worker should have been introduced to the boy prior to the event, or parents asked to accompany their children to the event. Later in the study it emerged that the boy has had difficulty integrating into school and is quite dependent on his mother. With hindsight it was perhaps predictable that he should decide en-route to the event, in the taxi, that he wanted to go home and not to the bowling. The co-worker, as a student children’s nurse was used to persuading small children to take medication and put up with all sorts of invasive procedures. In this role as a nurse she did what it could be argued many student children’s nurses would do and consistently persuaded the boy that he really did want to go bowling (see data extract above 5.3.1.). On arrival at the event the boy still stated that he did not want to do bowling. Through negotiation with him, it was agreed that he could watch and would have a go on the video games he had seen on his way into the venue. However, once the bowling began the boy joined in. He stated several times at the event how much he had enjoyed the bowling and asked repeatedly and without prompting, to go again at almost every subsequent contact with the principal

researcher.

This incident demonstrates how in this study intergenerational issues were played out. Adult to adult behaviours included the negotiation of childcare between the parents and the research team, with the offer to pick up the child allowing his mother some time free from her commitment to care for her son. Adult to child behaviours can be seen where the co-worker was acting in loco parentis, in persuading the boy to

try something he may have never tried, and the boy is acting as a child in resisting being persuaded or “bribed” with the video game and joining in play and having fun. Child to child behaviours were present when the boy observed the other children having fun bowling and was allowed to join a team and bowl.

There is perhaps a tension between these social interactions and the child’s role as a research participant. While adults often insist that children try new activities, if they did not it could be argued that children would not be exposed to new situations and therefore have restricted social experience. However, in research terms, the boy was refusing consent in the taxi and should have been taken home to his mother. While not condoning the actions of the co-worker, they are understandable in terms of the relationship between adult and child (nurse in loco parentis and child). The danger is of course that children’s refusal to take part in research could be interpreted as “childish” behaviour and ignored. Children could then be forced to take part in research. This could occur unconsciously. Children are used to being told what to do by adults, thus if an adult says “do this activity”, the child may feel that, as at school, the activity has to be done whether they wish to do it or not. The influence of

schooling was felt in this study. Even though it was not conducted in educational settings, some children were keen to supply the right answer, despite the principal researcher insisting no right answer existed and that it was just their experience he was interested in. Although in this study children were given many opportunities not to take part in activities, and to refuse to answer particular questions, because the activities were led by adults, children may have felt obliged to participate.

The effects of intergenerational relationships may also affect data analysis. In this study the use of disposable cameras, and to a lesser extent digital Dictaphones, emphasised intergenerational issues. The boys in the study used the cameras and dictaphones to assert their power over adults in their lives, capturing adults on film, sometimes against their wishes and tricking adults by recording their voices on the dictaphones. However, more often parents used these devices to assert their view of the research and to present a socially acceptable view of the family. When discussing the photographs taken for the project with the children, it became clear that some had been taken by adults (the angle and framing of the picture as well as its contents may also indicate adult production).

Some photographs were taken by adults in order to show the child and family in a positive light. Pictures were taken of children with their friends (the child as a