The original plan was to recruit a sample of thirty families directly through the DWP tax credit data base. Families that fitted the criteria in the west end of Newcastle would be contacted directly by letter, informing them they had been chosen for the study and giving them an opt-out. However, at the end of 2007 the DWP decided, as a result of the Child Benefit data loss scandal, that only those working directly for the department should have access to its databases. A new recruitment strategy therefore had to be devised. As interviewees would now have to be recruited one-by-one, the sample size was reduced to twenty. Recruitment would now be done through Sure Start in Newcastle’s west end. Local Sure Start centres were contacted and the research explained, but it soon became obvious that Sure Start in the west end was suffering from ‘research fatigue’; local staff had no enthusiasm for yet another research project, and after three months not a single interviewee had been identified. A crisis meeting with supervisors led to the development of a third recruitment strategy, relying on my personal community connections in the east end of Newcastle. The staff of the East End Community Development Alliance, of which I am trustee, were keen to help, as were Sure Start Newcastle East and Fosse Way. Within a few days the Alliance staff had found the first interviewees and I was invited to
attend a series of Sure Start play groups to meet potential interviewees. Six of the final sample of seventeen interviewees were recruited through the Alliance, and the rest through Sure Start Newcastle East and Fosse Way.
The key alteration brought about by the change in the research strategy was the shift from an ‘opt-out’ to an ‘opt-in’. Previous experience within DWP had established the direct approach as a very successful recruitment method. This would have generated a large number of interviews which accurately reflected the composition of the sample population. Getting potential recruits to ‘opt-in’ was obviously more challenging and it also probably changed the nature of the sample. Singh (1997) has called this the ‘happy sample’ approach, and suggests that it reduces the number of interviewees experiencing serious marital conflict or financial crisis. Only those mothers attending Sure Start settings could now be recruited and only the more confident mothers were likely to come forward to be interviewed. On the other hand, it meant that those who did come forward had taken a pro-active step and were very willing to talk about their family finances in the interview. The high quality of the interviews is a reflection of this. The original sampling strategy would certainly have generated more
interviews, but the quality may well have been reduced. Overall, the change in recruitment strategy meant that, unintentionally, quantity was probably
sacrificed in favour of quality.
Even with the help of the Sure Start team and the Alliance staff, recruitment proved slow. By April 2009, after a full year of recruiting, leads were drying up. It was decided to stop recruiting and settle for a sample size of seventeen. Across the population as a whole, about 3% of households fit the criteria for this project and in the east end of Newcastle, an area of high deprivation, the concentration should have been considerably higher. So where were all the potential recruits? Once I started to recruit women in face-to-face settings such as play groups it was clear that many were keen to participate. A personal introduction from the group organiser and the offer of a £10 gift voucher were both useful tools. However, in group after group there were very few women who fitted the research category. Many potential interviewees had to be
rejected because they were single mothers, on benefit, on too high an income, a grandparent or a child minder. To get a sample of seventeen interviews, it was
necessary to speak directly to over two hundred women. The kind of women who fitted the research categories seemed not to be the kind of women who
attended Sure Start groups; these are aimed especially at isolated women or those on benefit. Women working in the day time were of course particularly hard to find and their absence from the sample group is discussed below. Finally, the fact that the researcher is a man will certainly have put off some women. This was a particular problem with women from ethnic minority communities, where there may be cultural taboos on a woman meeting with a male stranger. However, about two out of three women who fitted the research category did agree to be interviewed, so gender was not a major barrier to recruitment. What methods might have proved more successful in recruiting interviewees remains unclear, an issue discussed in more depth below (section 6.2.4).
In a qualitative study, it is hard to judge how many interviews is the ‘right’ number. I do not feel that I reached the point of ‘saturation’; the seventeenth interview conducted did produce some new insights. But because every family is different and relates to its money in different ways, the process of interviewing could be endless, new insights are always possible. Ultimately the decision to stop at seventeen was a pragmatic one; it was getting harder and harder to find new interviewees and the interviews had already generated a huge amount of useful information. Although only seventeen women were recruited for
interview, in hindsight this was certainly sufficient. Over a hundred thousand words of interview transcript were generated. In Chapters Seven to Ten this information is analysed and discussed and in Chapter Eleven key conclusions drawn; the interview responses allowed all of the research questions to be fully answered. The quality of the interviews is clear from these chapters. Although frustrating at the time, the recruitment difficulties experienced did not
therefore ultimately effect the quality of the study or off the conclusions it produced.