Resultats entrevistes

The service user group focussed upon single/lone mothers who were aged 18 years or over with dependent children³⁰⁰. Focusing on 18+ individuals in this way was intended to firmly demarcate the study from much of the existing research which primarily problematised teenage mothers, as discussed in section 1.5.1. My aim was to address the service needs of adult mothers and their children. I did not provide a definition of ‘single mother’ in the recruitment material, allowing participants to self-define whether they met this status themselves. On the advice of stakeholders, recruitment materials were developed which asked for 'single mums' rather than 'lone parents' (based on the advice of a service provider who worked regularly with this group) as the latter was felt to be more official and similar to phrasing in government documents. Using ‘mums’, instead of ‘parents’

also made it clear that women were the focus of the study.

Distributing posters and flyers, commencing in October 2014, formed the major part of my recruitment strategy at first, in the absence of focus groups to kick-start recruitment for service user interviews. Utilising the network I had built, I distributed recruitment materials: across notice boards through a BS5 community group; in a regular call for participants through a BS5 community e-newsletter; in flyers distributed across children’s centres/childcare providers/mother and toddler groups, libraries, museums and community cafes, via family support workers and trainers working directly with lone parents who all agreed to pass on flyers. In addition, I attempted face-to-face recruitment by positioning myself in the reception area of a nursery to hand out flyers and ‘meet and greet’ individuals and through attendance and a brief presentation at local area forum meetings³⁰¹. For copies of the recruitment posters and flyers used in the study see Appendix VIII. Locations, online sources and events used for distribution of recruitment materials were included in Appendix III.

This ‘meet and greet’ strategy generated little interest until I was approached via email in late October 2014 by a single mother who confirmed she had seen a flyer posted (by someone other than me) to a Facebook community page. This

300 Office for National Statistics (ONS) (2012) defines dependent children as those living with parents who are aged under 16 or aged 16-18 in full-time education, excluding 16-18 year-olds with a spouse, partner or child living in the household.

301 These are run by Bristol City Council’s Neighbourhood Partnerships to consult with local people on issues of importance to their area

https://www.bristol.gov.uk/people-communities/neighbourhood-partnerships [Retrieved 2/7/2015].

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participant very helpfully served as a pilot interview in December 2014. As time progressed and I received little further interest, I reflected and discussed strategy with my supervisors and as a result modified the recruitment materials on a number of occasions, based on feedback from service providers and stakeholders working with single mothers, and observations from the field to try and ensure it was understandable for a wide audience. I identified that many of the women attended play groups, etc, with a friend and often had children of different ages.

In addition, a stakeholder organisation suggested that possible constraints for single mothers would be lack of time, childcare responsibilities, low confidence levels and lack of money, for example, for travel. I therefore modified the recruitment materials to state that friends and/or children were welcome, as well as emphasising more clearly that all expenses would be covered, refreshments provided and they could choose a location. Furthermore, I introduced the possibility of telephone interviews at this stage, as well as face-to-face to help better fit with participants’ childcare needs. This change of content, however, made the flyers and posters in public spaces no more successful in recruiting anyone.

Other issues also arose relating to recruitment. I asked the organisations in my network to advertise my study but to avoid directly recruiting specific participants, as without my knowing the complexity of individual's relationships with these organisations it was not possible to assume full participant consent. There was also a risk of compromising participant confidentiality as service providers and stakeholders may be able to attribute what service users have said in the resulting write-up. Although I delivered regular – gentle - reminders that participation had to be voluntary, this was not always observed, as some service providers and stakeholder organisations were keen to assist. On one occasion, for example, I had to intervene to stop a receptionist calling individuals who had no prior knowledge of the study on their mobile phones and asking them to attend a focus group within the hour.

In March 2015 and in recognition that my only participant to date had been via a Facebook post I expanded recruitment to include Twitter and Facebook, identifying a number of community interest and single parent groups in Bristol on both of these social media outlets. In order to observe correct netiquette I approached the administrators of these groups, and several allowed me to post recruitment flyers, which led to some success in recruitment and a small snowball of introductions to friends who were also single mothers.

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I recognised that a sample recruited via social media may be self-selecting and biased towards those who are confident online and willing to put themselves forward. Letherby identifies that where it is inevitable “the only thing we can do is to aim to make bias visible” as “it is better to understand the complexities within research rather than to pretend that they can be controlled, and biased sources can themselves result in useful data” ³⁰². In addition, I recognised a snowball sample can sometimes limit findings to the opinions of one particular network of friends and acquaintances, though as only three service user participants were recruited in this way it was unlikely to significantly affect the wider findings from this group³⁰³. One advantage of the move to social media and the resulting subsequent snowball recruitment was that it helped to move away from a potentially problematic gatekeeper situation.

Between December 2014 and May 2015, I interviewed 14 single mother service users. Participants were recruited through service provider and stakeholder referrals (2), a flyer on a range of Facebook community pages (8), a snowball originating from these (3) and Twitter (1). Five service user participants lived in the east Bristol, BS5 locality at the time of the interviews with nine living outside BS5 but who had either lived there and used services at some point during their time as a single parent, or had lived elsewhere in Bristol and used services which are centralised within Bristol City with reach into BS5. Further demographic details are provided in section 4.2.1.1. Seven of the interviews were face-to-face, and seven by telephone. The interviews lasted between 40 and 90 minutes, with the interview schedule and supporting materials provided in Appendix VIII.

Following reflection and discussion with my supervisors, the sample recruited was felt to reach the necessary ‘saturation’ point, ie, that no relevant or new data appear to be emerging and any categories or themes were well-developed, and also taking into account available time and resources³⁰⁴. The recruitment process also demonstrated some of the complexities which can be encountered when attempting to operationalise a well-designed study. Individual lives are often complex and busy and as qualitative researchers we can be required to be

302 Letherby, G. (2003), ibid, p. 71.

303 Foster, P. (1996). Observational Research, in: Sapsford, R. and Jupp, V. (1996). (eds) Data Collection and Analysis, London: Sage.

304 Bryman, ibid; O'Reilly, M., And Parker, N. (2012). 'Unsatisfactory Saturation': a critical exploration of the notion of saturated sample sizes in qualitative research. Qualitative Research 13(2), pp. 190-197.

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responsive and able to change direction when conducting research in shifting circumstances.

3.5.2.4 Generalisability

As a small-scale, qualitative study the findings are not intended to be a comparison of lone parents across other UK local authorities. In particular, this would not be possible for this type of study, which draws on the specificities of the BCC activities to implement the Duty. Differences between local authorities can be significant, as each sets its own priorities and has increasing autonomy from central government with funding and policy based on the unique circumstances within their own locality. Because of this, observations on the way the Equality Duty was implemented in Bristol cannot be assumed to be transferable to other settings, but there may be points of broader relevance. In relation to service users, it can be argued that it is possible to generalise from a relatively small group because of common factors in life-styles and similarities in living conditions which are particular to them³⁰⁵. Therefore, rather than size the key focus for the sample was on its adequacy, ie, obtaining sufficient depth and breadth of experience³⁰⁶ through contextually rich accounts which was successfully achieved with a range of women of different ages, backgrounds and experiences.