La reducción de las producciones a variables

Field materials were collected in two distinct stages from three different sources commencing in May 2013. In the first stage, informants were observed and interviewed from a support/information group at Salford Women’s Centre, the second from the two women’s refuges in Salford. The sample was, therefore, purposive in its aim of seeking out informants who were known to have experienced domestic abuse. The inclusion criteria for prospective informants were that they were women currently living in Salford who had experienced domestic abuse and were receiving some form of agency support. The decision to seek participants from different settings was motivated by a desire to demonstrate the diverse experiences of female survivors and to produce valuable observations from two very different fields. Initial contact was made with the manager of SIDASS (Salford Independent Domestic

Abuse Support Service) in 2010 during the first year of study. I met with the manager at her office for an informal discussion as to the purpose of my research. She was interested and supportive but as I did not work directly in the field of domestic abuse, she was understandably protective of service-users and acted effectively as a gatekeeper in ensuring she understood the purpose of my study before allowing access to prospective participants. In this sense, my aim of representing women’s experiences was not solely my own endeavour but required the support of others heavily involved in supporting women survivors of abuse. Gradually and organically building up these relationships was crucial in being able to provide a platform to interpret the women’s voices within the study.

3.7.1 Recruiting Participants

Having built networks in the two years of the taught element of the professional doctorate I was able to begin stage one of the recruitment process in the third year of research. In the first stage, participants were recruited through SIDASS. I was invited to attend a lunch for those attending a support/training group run by SIDASS. The group members had all previously been in abusive relationships and had been referred to the group by agencies such as police and social services. Prior to attending the group at Salford Women’s Centre, the group facilitator discussed the study with group members and distributed the information leaflets. After being informed that several women had expressed an interest in participating in the study I attended the following lunch session to meet with them. According to McNamara (2009) women want to know who the researcher is and to understand the purpose of the research and this first meeting was an important part of building relationships, ensuring they were fully cognisant of the study.

Participants for the second stage of the field material collection process were recruited through Salford Women’s Aid which runs two refuges for women and children. SIDASS was, again,

crucial in supporting access to this setting as they put me in touch with the manager of the refuges and indeed encouraged her to meet with me when she contacted them to verify my identity and intentions. I met with the manager informally and she was immediately enthused about the study. She agreed to discuss it in the following day’s residents’ meeting, pass on leaflets to every resident and to approach them personally to ask if they were interested in being interviewed. Arrangements were made to visit again five days later to meet with prospective participants and answer questions about the study. I visited on three further occasions to undertake the interviews with four women, two from each refuge. More women from the refuges than from the group were keen to take part, perhaps as a result of their different circumstances in which their experiences of abuse were still central to their daily lives, preventing them from putting their experiences behind them in a physical and emotional capacity. Building lasting relationships did not appear to be as strong a priority for the participants in the refuge who were in transient situations and whose need to move on, literally and figuratively speaking, was integral for their transition from victim to survivor.

3.7.2 Details of Participants

Seven women were interviewed as part of the research process:

Name Ethnic Identity Age Number of Children Michelle White/British 25 years 1 daughter, aged 5 years

Megan White/British 50 years 3 children (youngest aged 16 years) Serena White/British Not

known

2 children, aged 2 years and 1 year Mary White/British 27 years 2 children aged 8 years and 18 months Sarah Black/Kenyan 23 years 1 son, aged 2 years

Louise Black/Ghanaian 35 years 1 son, aged 10 years (living in Ghana) Carlotta White/British 23 years 1 son, aged 4 years

Table 2: Details of Participants

3.7.3 Interviewing Participants

Ethnographic interviewing is crucial in gathering rich, detailed material from participants within field settings. Combined with observational material, interviews enable a more in-depth understanding of the sense participants make of their experiences and cultural surroundings, thus enhancing material analysis (Heyl, 2001). Participants from the group were interviewed after the lunch which appeared to be advantageous as they were attending the centre specifically to discuss their experiences of domestic abuse and the interviews became an extension of that, thus not intruding on other spaces in their lives. Women in the refuges were interviewed in situ at various times of the day. The purpose of the interviews was to allow women to tell their stories in their own words with as few of my own interruptions as possible. I had a list of questions as prompts, although few were needed. After explaining the purpose of the research, I began each interview by saying, “I am happy for you to tell me about your experience in your own words in as much detail as you feel able. Perhaps you could start at the beginning of the relationship and tell me how you met your ex-partner?” This seemed to work well, even for women who had been in more than one abusive relationship as they were able to decide on the starting point for themselves. Other questions I had written down as prompts included: “What was the relationship like at first?” “How far into the relationship did the abuse begin?” “What kind of abuse was it?” “How often did the abuse occur?” “How did the abuse affect you?” “Who did you tell about the abuse?” On some occasions, I would invite the participant to expand on a previous comment or description by saying “you mentioned [subject] before ... can you tell me a bit more about that?” However, I quickly found that the women who chose

to be interviewed did so because they wanted to talk about their experiences. As a result, the women almost always answered the above questions without my having to ask them and prompts became largely redundant. The interviews that I had intended to be semi-structured became far more unstructured than I had imagined to the extent that several participants made references to domestic abuse in Salford without being asked. This was an extremely positive aspect of the interviews as the women’s voices were heard without the imposition of my own potentially restrictive questions during the sessions. Thus, participants were in control of their stories where they might not have felt in control of the relationships they spoke of, thus avoiding reinforcement of victim status (Ellis, 2004). However, Georgaca (2003) emphasises that the research interview is itself a co-constructed process. The interviewer does not simply ask questions but engages with the informant as a social actor. Georgaca acknowledges the dual positions of social interactor and researcher but, in this case, I held a third position of social worker. This is important to acknowledge as the informants were all women with children who cannot have been immune to the cultural ramifications of being interviewed by a social worker. They may, therefore, (consciously or not) have tempered their responses accordingly. It is also crucial to note that several women’s children were present during the interviews. This was an additional dynamic within the interview as the women had to respond to their children’s needs at various points during the interviews. They may also have been conscious of wanting to ensure that they portrayed themselves as good parents in the presence of a social worker. Using Butler’s theory of performativity, the research interview itself could be seen as a performance by both researcher and interviewee in which the encounter is framed by language and a set of norms about what constitutes recognisable social convention (Butler, 2005). Conversation between researcher and participant inevitably carries certain cultural assumptions. My knowledge of Salford was an asset in this respect as one informant referred to various social locations in Salford by their better-known colloquial names which another

researcher may have missed. Several informants also referred to being the subject of MARACs (multi-agency risk assessment conference) which non-social work researchers may not have fully understood. Acknowledging the constructed element of the interview process emphasises that interpretation and construction of data begins during the interview stage in the unique interactions between each informant and the researcher.

3.7.4 Field Notes

Field notes are a crucial aspect of ethnographic study. They act as the foundation on which a study is built and they can be used to frame or present interview data. Field notes are materials in themselves and they can be as valuable in ethnographic research as themes identified in interviews (Emerson, 1995). Field notes are inevitably selective and act as one representation or construction of a particular event or setting (Emerson et al, 2001). Field notes were kept throughout the data collection phases both in the women’s centre and the refuges. The field notes involved recollections of conversations held by group members as well as descriptions of the settings in which observations and interviews took place. Field notes aided memory and acted as documentary evidence of observations. They also contained reflexive accounts of the emotional impact of undertaking the research therefore, field notes had an almost therapeutic value, something that is common in ethnography in which researchers feel immersed in their surroundings (Van Maanen, 1988). Field notes were written up as soon as possible after observations to recall as much detail and clarity as possible. The value of field notes was integral in being able to include details of Serena’s interview which occurred unexpectedly when no recording equipment was available. Without field notes, her testimony, and the circumstances in which it was shared, would have been lost amid the detailed interview materials from other participants.