As Coffey and Atkinson (1996) point out, reflexivity is an essential component of credible qualitative research because, as outlined above, there is scope for the qualitative researcher to allow her/his subjectivity and biases to contaminate and skew the research findings. Also, on a more positive note, if the researcher takes reflective account of her/his thoughts and feelings throughout the research process, this can add to the richness of the research findings. Below are some of my more salient reflections on the research.
At the beginning of the research process, I found that I had to overcome a degree of embarrassment about going back into Area B where, as explained above, I had worked a few years earlier as a main grade probation officer. I had left the probation service to go to work for a well known national organisation, specialising in working with sex offenders which, from my personal experience within the probation service, would be perceived by most main grade probation officers as a ‘step up’, career wise. I was now returning in order to conduct research which might further enhance my career. I felt almost as if I was exploiting former colleagues and other probation officers still engaged in arduous day-to-day practice, which I no longer had to do. I was also concerned that ex
colleagues would be either resentful or competitive, and perhaps block the progress of the research.
The above concerns proved unfounded. It had been four years since I had worked in the probation service, and many of my former colleagues had left.
Others had gone into managerial positions, so probably felt no sense of having been left behind, career wise. I actually met relatively few former probation officers I knew. The ones I did meet were friendly and helpful. In fact, being an ex-insider may have proved a distinct advantage in terms of access: making me less threatening, and affording me greater credibility as 'knowing what the job was really about.’
At the time of conducting the research, I was a man in my mid to late forties, although most people take me to be younger than this. I was interviewing sexual offenders, who are a distinctly marginalised group in society. Many of the probation officers I interviewed were females, younger than me. I could not escape the structural power afforded to me, by virtue of being a white, professional man, living in a society which, arguably, is still patriarchal in some respects. However, the structural power afforded to me was counterbalanced, to some extent, by the fact that I was totally reliant on the good will of the probation officers and sex offenders, and their decision to grant me the opportunity to interview them.
Many of the probation officers I interviewed were women, and I was in the position of asking them about some very personal matters; how they dealt, both
practically and psychologically, with encouraging men to talk about sexual deviance. A number of female officers stated that they found it difficult at first to talk to strange men (sex offenders) about sexual details. It was never remarked upon that, in the research interview, they were in a similar position, talking to an unfamiliar male about sexual matters. At times I was tempted to remark on this irony but desisted, not wishing to risk social embarrassment.
I am used to talking about sexual matters in detail with female therapists at the Lucy Faithfull Foundation. However, these therapists are generally of a similar age and status to me, working in a professional environment where discussing sexual matters is a daily, routine part of the job. However, in the role of researcher, at times I felt uncomfortable talking to younger or relatively inexperienced female probation officers about sexual issues, as a significant power differential was in operation; I was an older and/or more professionally experienced male, and it was my impression that they were not so used to talking about sexual matters as my female colleagues at work. As is explained in Chapter 7 (Section 7.6.), a number of male probation officers talked about feeling contaminated by working with sex offenders, as if, metaphorically, the ‘disease’
of sexual abuse is catching. I sometimes felt a version of this when interviewing female probation officers, neurotically thinking at times, ‘Am I misusing power to gain satisfaction from talking to younger females about sex? Will they suspect that I am doing this?’
There were moments in the interviews with sex offenders, in which I trod a fine line between research interviewing and therapy. This was a particular danger for me, as it was easy to go into automatic therapist mode when asking questions related to sexual offending. Before each interview, I made it clear that the focus of the interview would be on the supervision process, not on the details of their past offending. However, there was inevitably some overlap.
The first sex offender I interviewed (Offender 1) had finished probation supervision two years earlier. However, he still kept in touch with his probation officer on an informal basis, and valued the support this offered him. He talked about how, since being released from prison into the community, his probation officer was the only person he could talk to about his offending. In the interview, it seemed as if, in part, he wanted to use the time with me for a similar therapeutic purpose. He was clearly intent on talking about the remorse he still feels about offending against his stepdaughter when she was a child, over twenty years ago, and how the guilt of his offending had marred his life. The interview was rich in relevant detail, but I was aware that the participant was becoming emotional and I was concerned that he would be distressed leaving the interview, as the following statement made by him towards the end of the interview illustrates:
Yeah, I can’t get rid of it. It’s no good people keep on saying, ‘don’t keep beating yourself up about it’. You’re not a bad person, that’s all right for that moment, and you go away and it all comes bloody back again. I see people in the street, and say, what the hell was wrong with me? I could be
like that. Look what you’ve done, you know. It’s like it’s part of your punishment, that’s the way I look at it. It will be with me until I die, I suppose (Offender 1).
I was not sure if the research interview was causing the respondent unnecessary distress, or whether the interview was serving a cathartic purpose for him, so I inquired about this.
... are you going to be OK, leaving here? (Interviewer)
Well, it (the interview) brought back bad memories. It used to feel like this on the course (sex offender groupwork course), travelling back on the train. I’m alright about it. I got a wife to look after. I got responsibility there.
I’m one of the lucky ones. My family stuck with me, even though my offences were connected to the family (Offender 1).
I was satisfied that the respondent had made an informed choice to disclose the information and that I had gone to reasonable lengths to ensure adherence to the four ethical principles that should be applied to any research, outlined by McCleod, (1994, p. 16): “beneficence (acting to enhance the participant’s well being), non-malfeasance (avoiding doing harm to the participant), autonomy (respecting the rights of the person to take responsibility), and fidelity (treating everybody in a fair manner).”
With Offender 3, I was also faced with a dilemma about the degree to which I should use my interview skills to extract information, when this could cause the respondent some distress. In my professional role, particularly in assessments, I routinely attempt to overcome an individual’s resistance to disclosing information
about sexual offending, albeit by using non-confrontational techniques such as motivational interviewing, a method described in the previous chapter. However, individuals frequently end up disclosing information which causes them some degree of psychological pain. In the context of my professional work, there are usually further sessions with the individual to support him or her through such distress. Moreover, causing some degree of distress in an assessment or rehabilitation context is arguably unavoidable in some cases, when the protection of children is at stake. However, in the research interviews, no such immediate child protections concerns were present.
Offender 3, who had been convicted of the rape of an adult female, was one of the most psychologically closed offenders I interviewed, often giving very brief answers. He appeared to me to be determined to say what he perceived to be the correct, pro-social statements about his rehabilitative experiences in the probation service. In her study on sex offenders undertaking groupwork programmes, Hudson (2005) talks about the dilemma of not knowing for sure if offenders are, to use an oft-quoted phrase in the probation service, ‘talking the talk’ - paying lip service to issues such as remorse, responsibility taking and victim empathy, in order to gain advantages and liberties. This issue is further discussed in subsequent chapters of this thesis. Whatever the case with regard to whether Offender 3 was ‘talking the talk’ for much of the interview, I could feel myself getting slightly irritated with him, perceiving him as being particularly closed and defensive. I was aware of the need to internally acknowledge these
feelings and then to bracket them, an internal process I am very familiar with from my clinical work.
However, toward the end of the interview, I felt that there was an opening in the conversation whereby Offender 3 was beginning to talk more genuinely about his previously problematic relationship with women, and how he had dealt with this through his rehabilitation.
Urn, also women; it has given me a bigger perspective of women as well. I respect them so much more now than I did do. I didn’t have that respect in the past. Um, cause of relationships breaking down and things like that, I wasn’t really bothered, you know (Offender 3).
Yeah, I understand them more and talk to them more openly about my past, which has helped me you know. I’m able to move on with them. I don’t know what it is. It had brought it home, prison life (Offender 3).
I sensed that the respondent was getting upset at this point, which he then verbalised:
I don’t want to get emotional (Offender 3).
At this point in the interview, I was eager to gain more information from the respondent about an interesting and relevant area to the research. I was also aware that, as stated above, I felt few positive feelings toward the respondent, which could potentially render me less caring about his well-being.
Acknowledging the danger of this, I resisted probing further. Although this meant losing potentially valuable data, I considered that further disclosure would be
likely to prove significantly distressing for this particular individual who, as stated above, appeared to me to be significantly psychologically defended. I consequently moved the interview on to a less threatening topic, in order for the respondent to regain his composure.
Schon (1983) recommends that practitioners should be aware of the inner thoughts and feelings occurring in the ‘here and now’ of practice. This can help the practitioner identify why s/he feels about, and wants to respond to, the client in a given way. Such awareness enables practitioners to make more informed, conscious choices about helpful intervention, whether this is a question, silence, change of focus etc. The same issues are relevant for the reflective research interviewer.
4.9. Conclusion
To conclude, this research project adopts a qualitative research approach, as the method considered to be best suited to capturing complex social and personal relations. This qualitative research method is based on a ‘subtle realism’
epistemological position which assumes that truth is too complex to be fully discovered and that social phenomena are always partially socially constructed.
However, there are unique realities to be usefully discovered. Given the position that social reality is always socially co-constructed, qualitative research can never be free of the researcher’s biases for good or ill; hence the need for the
researcher to reflect upon her/his influences throughout the research process, with the aim of both moderating significant partiality, and contributing to the richness and depth of the research enterprise.
Given the extreme sensitivity of the research topic, semi-structured, in-depth counselling interviews appeared the most feasible and sensitive way of collecting the data. A semi-structured interview format was used, but the spontaneous counselling techniques used to facilitate the disclosure of relevant information from each individual were equally important. Although such counselling techniques proved invaluable, unlike with a clinical interview, I sought to understand and contextualize what interviewees were saying, rather than make judgments about the veracity of it, or provide therapeutic input.
I undertook three sample interviews, before conducting the research interviews, with each research interview being audio recorded. The data were analysed using a grounded theory approach. The research sample was purposive. Due to the difficult-to-reach research population, the sample was relatively small and, in the qualitative research tradition, I sought to obtain depth rather than breadth of information. The subject area researched was a highly sensitive one, so it was important to ensure the welfare of the respondents by clearly and repeatedly informing them about the nature of the research, being clear about confidentiality issues, and conducting the interviews in as sensitive a manner as possible.
Reflecting on the research process was not only necessary to avoid obvious
bias, but to ensure sensitivity was maintained, concerning the potential vulnerability of the respondents, in particular the sex offenders interviewed.
Chapter 5