March 1993 Socio-economic Survey 205 205
September 1993 Case Studies 7 14
September 1996 Sub-sample Survey 40 61
March 1997 Focus Group 6
TOTAL 252 286
Table 4: Summary of Multi-Pronged Research Design
A notebook was also kept in the field to record themes as they emerged, nuances and significant body language, and other relevant observations from the field.
4.6 Strengths of the Research Design
The major strength of my multi-staged strategy was obviously its thoroughness in validating data and, hence, the richness of the data both in breadth and depth of coverage.
The use of different voices and, therefore, interviewing all household members strengthened my arguments significantly. The juxtaposition of different voices along gender and generation lines illustrated the different positions from which husbands, fathers, wives, mothers, daughters and sons perceived the world, and interpreted what was going on. Also, analysing the distance between the perceptions of reality of different household members (from each others point of view, and of each other) gave me a sense of the speed by which change in household relations was realistically possible. But analysing this distance also strengthened my ability to understand the interplay between the three dimensions in the sense that there are elements of “public” and “private” accounts to be discerned (Wilson, 1991).
Had I only considered single voices, I would have missed the quality of gender and generation relations in these households. Because of the framework within which I located my analysis, I believe I was sensitive to the concerns raised by Pringle: “In the past those other voices, the voices of women and children, have traditionally been drowned out by the louder voices of men. In giving a voice to men, it is vital that we do not (perhaps inadvertently) once more drown out the voices of the former” (Pringle, 1995:9-10).
The strength of the various qualitative tools lay in allowing me to also recognise the contradictions, ambiguities and marginal voices, and even interpret non-verbal communication. I was also able to analyse “dissenting” voices and not marginalise them as “insignificant”. In this way I covered the ground between ideology and reality more comprehensively.
I also found that spreading my fieldwork over three and half years brought in significant advantages that I had not necessarily anticipated. First, rapport with the households increased as I moved along, and this was useful for capturing the qualitative data. Second, I was able to systematically document changes and analyse the impact of these on the relations in the seven case study households, particularly in respect of income. This deepened my understanding of inter-linkages between the three dimensions of the household, as outlined in my conceptual framework. Third, the time
frame gave me space to analyse and follow through on themes and gaps. This increased data validity.
But a word of caution is also appropriate here. One can also be obsessed with closing the gaps to the point of endless data collection. This creates immense problems in the analysis and writing up stages. You can also be easily side-tracked by a multitude of issues and loose focus. By its very nature, household studies are fascinating because they strike very close to home. So as a researcher you have to stick to your focus, whilst being open minded to emerging new themes.
Finally, this multi-pronged methodology was quite a challenge for me to manage, particularly in the analysis and writing stages. As a planner by training, I was much more comfortable with the positivist approach. Also, attempting to probe sociological, cultural and psychological processes that impact on the built environment was a challenge to me as a built environment professional.
4.7 Limitations of the Research Design
Although I consider the research design to have been fairly comprehensive, a number of limitations are worth noting because they might highlight biases in the analysis, even if these might not be significant.
First, a component of the data was dependent on the respondent's recall. According to the literature this has implications for the reliability of the data. In my study this was complicated by the fact that the views of different household members were sought on the same data set. Therefore, where contradictions existed between two people, I had to be cautious in the analysis to determine whether this was the result of incorrect recall or real contradictions between the views of different household members. But I believe that the enlargement of the body of the qualitative data through the sub-sample minimised possible bias that might have resulted from incorrect recall. However, two factual sets of data proved too unreliable and were dropped from the analysis: year when the specific improvements were done; and cost of improvements. As the latter data set was important for my argument I compensated by sourcing average costs from furniture shops and builders, for furniture and physical improvements, respectively.
Second, both Stage Two and Stage Three show that few sons were interviewed, relative to the other categories, despite efforts to increase their number. Even when appointments were made, they were not honoured. Therefore I acknowledge that the voices of sons were somewhat overshadowed. But this is also indicative of the position
of sons generally in these households, as will be elaborated in Chapter Ten. Maybe more information could have been elucidated from these young men through a male researcher or an older female researcher.
On the converse, the voices of women were dominant, at least in terms of the numbers interviewed. This was not a limitation as such because I intended interviewing people in their different positionalities within the household. For women this meant making a methodological distinction between wives and woman-headed households; hence the seemingly louder voice of women.
Fourth, my analysis was based on a snapshot of contributions to housing improvement. A more comprehensive approach would have entailed tracing each household member's contribution historically, and analyse contribution to housing in Newtown within that context. However, the period between 1980 and 1997 was nevertheless
long enough to provide a significant time period for the analysis.
Finally, secondary household members were not included in Stage Two, Three and Four. However, reference will be made to their contributions through the socio economic data and the comments of the primary household members who formed the core of this study.