Resistencia al cambio en el aspecto emocional

Whitehaven

Barrow-in-Furness

Penrith

Keswick Carlisle

M6 M6

Lake District National Park

CARLISLE

EDEN

SOUTH LAKELAND ALLERDALE

COPELAND

BARROW-IN-FURNESS

Cumbria with Local Authority and National Park areas shown 20km

Case study 4 Case study 6

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4.4 Gaining access to the field London

Having identified broad case study areas and individual shared ownership

developments, the next stage in the research was to negotiate access to the field for a more sustained period of fieldwork. Despite the fact that early contacts had been made through scoping interviews and site visits, a number of barriers had to be overcome before the research began. An organisational restructure that had taken place across the housing association meant that management structures and front-line personnel had changed significantly in both case study areas. In London, key staff who had facilitated the initial period of scoping fieldwork had already moved on, or were phasing out their involvement in the management of shared ownership units in the area. As a result work needed to be done to get new staff on board with the research project. Contact was made with senior managers in the area on the assumption that they would be key gatekeepers into the field. However, after a number attempts to make contact through emails and phone calls this approach failed to achieve results. In February 2012, direct contact was made with a housing assistant who had been working in the area during the initial scoping period of the research. She was more than happy to help with the project and an interview and site visit was arranged. This proved to be extremely useful and she became a pivotal gatekeeper who was able to provide introductions to a number of shared ownership households, as well as colleagues responsible for managing shared ownership. She also arranged a meeting with the housing manager who subsequently agreed that the researcher could spend Feb-April 2012 working on the management patch with front-line housing staff.

In order that the presence of a researcher would not be an added burden to staff, a period of voluntary work was arranged in which administrative tasks were carried out to support housing officers working in case study 1. This period of

participation and observation provided a window onto the day-to-day practical and wider social issues faced in managing a mixed tenure estate. It also provided

privileged access to events, activities and experiences that would have been missing from the analysis otherwise. These included working shifts with the estate’s cleaner who has also lived on the estate for a number of years; volunteering at a community breakfast that provides free food once a week for older people living in the area;

participating in sales visits, eligibility and affordability checks for newly developed shared ownership units; and carrying out post-sales home visits with new shared

ownership households to make sure they were happy with and knew how to use the equipment in their new homes.

Gaining access to case study 2 and 3 required a different strategy. Having made contact with housing staff in the region it was straightforward to arrange tours of the housing blocks and shadow staff on estate inspections. However, it proved much more difficult to meet residents and get them involved in the study. In the first case study site, where shared ownership units were located within a larger estate of housing association owned stock which included a housing office on site, it had been relatively easy to arrange interviews with residents. The stand-alone nature of case study 2 and 3 meant that making contact with households was more of a challenge. Neither site had a housing office or community space on site, and due to the small number of housing association units housing officers spent far less time working on these developments. As a result staff were less able to provide introductions to households who they did not know personally, and there was less opportunity to meet people on an ad-hoc basis.

In order to recruit more shared owners, formal letters were sent out to tell them about the research and to invite them to participate in an interview (see Appendix 2). This letter was followed up by a phone call to see if they would be interested in participating in the study. Unfortunately, it proved to be difficult to involve these households in the research, and the take up remained low. The credibility of qualitative research is not threatened by a low sample size and the research was never predicated on the involvement of a large number of informants. However, as Baxter and Eyles (1997) argue in qualitative studies sample size is determined along the way by the need to involve ‘as many experiences as possible’ until ‘saturation’

that is until ‘no new themes or constructs emerge’ (1996: 513). At this point it seemed that there was still a lot to learn from shared ownership households. As a result the fieldwork period was extended to June 2012 in the first case study area.

The contacts made during the fieldwork in the first three case study sites had opened up some new lines of enquiry that, as a result of the extended time, could be pursued. Existing contacts were able to facilitate the recruitment of additional shared ownership households who were their relatives, friends and colleagues.

Although these households lived outside of the developments that had been identified during the scoping exercise, with steer from supervisors they were recruited in order to address the imbalance in the research in line with the

‘purposeful’ sampling logic employed. Although researched less intensively and without a sustained period of time working with housing officers responsible for the management of the shared ownership units, these interviews proved crucial in developing a picture of the varied views and experiences of shared ownership from the perspective of different households in London.