Theme Subordinate Theme (1) Subordinate theme (2) Referencing
(Chapter 8)
Formative References Children’s Violence Fairness Reasoning Niceness
Public School Comparative References to
other professions
Obedience and Order
Witnessing and Responding to bullying across a career. Grounding references to
extended church experience
Elision of poor hierarchical working relationships over time
Elision of experiences of gender discrimination over time.
Geographic elision of experiences. Activating Experiences (Chapter 9) Pastoral Crisis Tradition
Tradition and gender Hierarchy Power (Chapter 10) Use/misuse of power Servanthood Scapegoating Subjectivity Ambivalence (Chapter 11) Unwillingness Problem with Contemporaneous identification
118 Bullying traded against
positive outcomes Lack of biblical support Fallen world Help and hindrance (Chapter 12) Helpful people Vocation
Barriers to seeking help The place of self
Moving Forward (Chapter 13) Exit Accommodation Strategic Alliances Future hope OVERVIEW OF INTERVIEWEES
The three interviewees who have ministered as their main profession describe
significant negative encounters over a period of decades. Interviewee six also refers to negative encounters over a period of decades, however, these were in his previous profession as well as during his time in ministry. Of the remaining interviewees three have been on the fringe of negative encounters relating to others which have had an impact on their thinking and one only speaks in theoretical terms throughout. Only two interviewees have a strong focus in the present and near past. These accounts are distinctive from definitions of bullying within the measurement school as here the concern is primarily what has happened over the past six months. The interviews generally reflect a concern for what has happened over decades. Further these
interviews represent a reaching back into understandings of human nature from whole life experience. The lack of coherence in this material indicates the understanding of bullying as a work in progress even for those most open to engagement with the area. Excerpts from the interviewees’ transcripts demonstrate a process of soul searching. There is a sense of emotional reconciliation with their past experiences as an ongoing process, they want the church to learn a lesson from their experiences and imply that it has not been learned yet. The incidents themselves for the most part are no longer active but they have a power that I believe will live on until the church is no longer the
119 As part of maintaining the anonymity of interviewees I am not clearly distinguishing their quotations as bringing these together with the summaries of lifetimes may lead to identification. For instance, if I used alternative names then such a clear picture of that person may be formed that they are recognisable. Therefore, although I regret the loss of individuality, I feel it is ethically appropriate. The focus is learning from the people in the diocese now with the experiences they bring now. This means it is not always clear in which diocese particular events happened. Again this helps preserve anonymity. For the purposes of this work it is not significant which diocese was involved, simply that it happened and that the relevant member of the clergy is now in the diocese of study. Due to range of experience that interviewees bring they offer a multifaceted window on bullying which has value as a rich resource of perspective. There is no intention to achieve a comprehensive overview of bullying by speaking to eight people. However, this narrative data is strengthened by the numerical data which sets the transcripts of individuals within the broader context of a diocese whose clergy experience significant levels of negative acts indicative of bullying.
There is a movement in the following analysis which reflects the foundation of IPA as double interpretation. I begin with close attention to what the interviewees are speaking about but then move to forming my own interpretation. The following analysis has been arrived at by detailed study of individual interviews aimed at generating themes.
However, I have then presented the material selectively and thematically to allow a sharper focus and again defend anonymity. It is characteristic of IPA analysis that more of the interviewees words and story are included than might be expected from other methods of analysis. The words of the interviewees are of intrinsic value as a rich description of their experiences in ministry. This stands irrespective of higher level interpretations and conclusions. Sometimes the process of reading the accounts leads to wondering how other parties in the incidents described would have interpreted the incident. However, this phase is about dwelling in the interpretation offered by the interviewee and moving towards my own interpretation. Sometimes a more distant stance will be taken but the overall position will remain as working out what I can learn from these people in my interpretation of their experiences.
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THE WARRANTABILITY OF NARRATIVE FINDINGS.
Within Plowright’s FraIM, the warrantability of findings is preferred over discussion of validity (2011, L. 2470). Although the use of IPA in the practical theology context seems to be limited to this work, it is well established in the field of psychology. Therefore, I assess below the warrantability of my narrative findings based on seven categories generated by Elliott, Fischer and Rennie (1999) for the purpose of evaluating qualitative work in psychology. The following discussion is my assessment of the warrantability of my findings with the intention of demonstrating that this work can reasonably be considered warrantable.
OWNING ONE’S PERSPECTIVE
“The authors describe their theoretical, methodological or personal orientations as those are relevant to the research.” (p.221) My theoretical and methodological orientations are introduced in chapter one and detailed in Chapters Two and Five. Chapters Three and Four orientate the reader to significant personal and professional influences. It was a significant structural consideration that these chapters should be included in the main body of the thesis so my perspectives are offered to the reader as integral to the thesis. A significant aspect of my perspective relates to being an insider researcher. A positive aspect of this was participants’ willingness to be interviewed and the frankness of their accounts. A notable phrase that reflected this was you know. This had two functions which are hard to disentangle. Interviewees used this phrase as a verbal space filler as well as to indicate shared knowledge. Sometimes my mental response was yes I do know, sometimes it was no, I don’t know. I think some of the more revealing statements were made because interviewees felt I would already know, so they were not speaking out of turn. Negative aspects of the insider perspective are clearly possible in that there will be assumptions in this work that an outsider would not have made. As this thesis has the potential to be a confidential document and I will write a separate report for the diocese, I do not believe that the integrity of the work is impinged significantly by my being part of the hierarchy I am critiquing.
A facet of insider research has been the re-revaluation of my own past experiences. For instance, listening to an account of a conversation in a meeting with a bishop, I felt the presence of my own inhibitions regarding what you can and cannot say to a bishop. Having been at meetings where a tirade has been let loose, I can now identify that I have conspired in judging outbursts as unreasonable rather than wondering what was behind them. This process of re-evaluation is an indication that as an insider I could engage
121 with the significance of what was being said but was not limited by having
preconceptions.
SITUATING THE SAMPLE.
“Authors describe the research participants and their life circumstances to aid the researcher in judging the range and situations to which the findings might be relevant” (p.221). I have not done this to the fullest extent possible as the interviewees would become quickly identifiable. However, it is my hope that through the sample being limited to priests in the Church of England and the information I do provide around career path, length of service and gender would be sufficient to support the reader in their judgement of this area.
GROUNDING IN EXAMPLES
“Authors provide examples of the data to illustrate both the analytic procedures used in the study and the understanding developed in light of them” (p.222). The narrative data presented within this thesis is substantial. The data and my analysis are presented in such a way that it is clear what I am drawing on in the forming of my conclusions. The intermediate stages of data analysis have not been included. However, they are still in existence and an interested reader might, by arrangement, gain access to this material. PROVIDING CREDIBILITY CHECKS.
“Researchers may use any of several methods for checking the credibility of their categories themes or accounts” (p.222). A method for achieving this which I rejected was going back to the interviewees to offer them a chance for feedback on my analysis. I avoided this for two reasons. First, the interviewees had already risked emotional pain through participating in the interview in the first place. To put them in the situation of returning to painful material seemed unreasonable. This is partially reflected in the explicit words of an interviewee who wanted the response by the diocese to be action not words. This seemed to be putting them through another layer of words. Secondly, the IPA method explicitly recognizes double interpretation so although I stay close to a naturalistic interpretation of their words, there is a sense in which my interpretation may be different to what they were intending to convey. A strand where this can be seen is ambivalence. Participants are overtly supporting a response to bullying but are, according to my interpretation, demonstrating resistance to responding to bullying. They may be discomforted by my interpretation. To analyse in such a way as to avoid discomforting the interviewees would be to skew the thesis as a whole. This is avoided through an alternative approach to credibility checking.
122 The main credibility check I did use was through supervision. In the early stages of analysis, a supervisor carried out a parallel categorizing process to mine so we only saw each other’s categories after we had arrived at our own. Although these categories and the arrangement of material was different, the interpretations were compatible. A
second credibility check through supervision was through a second supervisor critiquing the inferences I had drawn from quotations. This led to a discussion of whether some of my inferences were too much towards reading the person. There was a degree to which some of this was justifiable and perhaps a consequence of using a primarily
psychological methodology, however, there were also examples where the inference was discarded or further justified.
COHERENCE
“The understanding is represented in a way that achieves coherence and integration while preserving the nuances of the data” (p.222). The table of themes (xvii) in Chapter Seven arranges subthemes into intelligible groupings. These are expounded in Chapters Eight to Thirteen, with a clear link between evidence and the subtheme supported. This achieves the connection between theme and the nuance of data. The summary table at the end of these chapters form a link between the subthemes and their practical application. Chapter five introduces a specific theoretical lens which offers a further level of interpretation. This is unusual in IPA although considered to be acceptable (Smith and Flowers, 2009). There is some disjunction as the themes do not neatly match key Girardian concepts. However, I believe there is enough similarity to offer the reader a sense of coherence. This is a methodology where categories develop from the data so I did not want to force the analysis by deriving categories theoretically and fitting the interviewees words to them.
ACCOMPLISHING GENERAL ‘VS’ SPECIFIC RESEARCH TASKS.
“Where a general understanding is intended it is based on an appropriate range of instances (informants or situations)” (p.223). This research is of a general nature as it examines the responses of a wide selection of priests. The sample included a female rector, a male rector, a male priest in charge, a female priest in charge, a female ordained local minister, a male ordained local minister, a female priest taking a break from stipendiary ministry holding permission to officiate and a male priest working in the context of the wider diocese. This was not a deliberate design feature of the study as these were the people who demonstrated an interest in response to the initial survey. In order to achieve a breadth of response these are all the candidates who offered, I did not
123 select them. Although the balance of gender and diversity of ministry were
strengthening features I am conscious that these are all white British, nominally heterosexual clergy. The absence of perspectives on bullying from LGBT clergy is a serious weakness. I attempted to mitigate this to a small degree through reference to the bullying of gay clergy in the press. This could also be addressed more comprehensively by further work where instead of being dependent on people expressing an interest, particular members of clergy could be approached. The lack of ethnic diversity was in keeping with the make-up of the diocese at the time of the data gathering phases. This again points to the benefits of repeating this study across a range of dioceses.
One area in which the interviewees fell short of my aims for achieving a general picture is that ideally eight full interviews would have been analysed. Due to one member of clergy moving out of the diocese and another withdrawing her offer to be interviewed I ended up making use of six full interviews and two pilot interviews. I did make some use of the pilot interviews to improve breadth of response but I did not attach the same weight to them as the full interviews.
This thesis can be situated as indicating the breadth of experience within a single diocese. This is clearly not completely separate from the Church of England as a whole but I do not inappropriately generalise my material for different diocese or different denominations. For instance, some dioceses did adopt anti-bullying policies in 2008 and I would expect these to be significantly different. Again there is the potential for further work in forming a comparison.
RESONATING WITH READERS
“The manuscript stimulates resonance in readers/reviewers, meaning that the material is presented in such a way that readers/reviewers…. judge it to have represented
accurately the subject matter or to have clarified or expanded their appreciation and understanding of it” (p.223).
Supervision discussion indicate that this resonance is present. Also aspects of this work presented to an audience of doctoral students was received with great interest. There is a sense in which this material picks up on the notion that people had always thought it might be like this but not seen it represented so fully as a body of evidence. This again relates back to my decision to include extensive quotations from the interviews. The interviewees words have a power of their own in addition to the levels of analysis. Therefore, the bringing together of words and analysis enhances the sense of resonance.
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CONCLUSION
This thesis meets all of Elliott’s criteria and therefore I consider I have demonstrated the warrantability of this research to the best of my ability.
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CHAPTER 8 REFERENCING