Transcripción encuesta Sergio Barreda

In this part of the chapter I outline the conceptual tools I use to work with the data. I briefly outline the standpoint position I come from in relation to the development of this approach. I clarify how the conceptual tools I use are applied on the

understanding that the information I collected is to be viewed as discursive accounts through which key power/knowledge effects that shape worker’s responses in the sexuality support area can be isolated and unpacked. I then summarise key significant

dilemmas researchers using this approach have encountered when treating ‘authentic autobiographical accounts’ as representations of discursive constructs. This aspect of the chapter provides further verification of the methodology employed to deconstruct the textual data.

My Own Position

A thorough literature review was central to the development of the analysis section of this thesis. The most striking thing to emerge from this review was the lack of

significant or sustained engagement with the influence of wider social and emotional factors on worker’s practice in the sexuality support area. Recommendations from papers contained in the review seeking to influence the expectations and operations of the worker role also lacked significant engagement with these difficult to elucidate yet very important factors. This lack raised two key questions. While the impact of the wider social and emotional issues from which worker’s actions derived remained unexamined, how could the outcome of research undertaken in this area be of good use to service organizations and those who work in them? Would unpacking something of what these contexts contained and how they impacted on the worker position enable a more holistic view of the actions of individual workers? How I engaged with these questions shaped where I was to stand in relation to the analysis I undertook.

An examination of lines of theoretical discussion about the nature and function of the terms ‘disability’ and ‘sexuality’ influential to how individual workers behaved was the other key aspect that shaped the development of the analysis section. Through the review process I had found that underpinning assumptions about worker’s moral and personal attributes were intrinsic in these discussions. These debates grounded these assumptions in idealised yet often unstated examples of certain socially valued attitudes and behaviours. These attributes constituted ‘the truth’ about sexuality support from which the practices of ‘good and bad’ workers had been created and considered. I had come to believe that while workers continued to be judged relative to idealised versions of what ought to be happening in the area of sexuality support, intellectually disabled people’s access to this area of their lives would continue to be compromised. What conceptual tools I used to verify this belief was a very important

consideration in view of the adverse judgement calls that can be made worker’s support practice. I expand on this point below.

These ideas fixed the position I take for this analysis firmly within an interpretive, rather than a critical, feminist or phenomenological post-modern framework. In raising the questions I outline above, I had ‘interpreted’ a particular set of underlying meanings from the academic texts I had read. In doing so I had committed myself to developing the analysis within the ambit of an interpretive framework. Within this framework certain aspects of text are presented and probed not as examples of fixed, descriptive statements but as fragmented moments of intention and interaction in which wider discursive effects can be located and unpacked. Significant wider social meanings related to the terms ‘disability’ and ‘sexuality’ within a support context contained in these textual moments are uncovered and commented on.

In choosing an interpretive post-modern position I was also committing myself to keeping this analysis as flexible as possible, as a deliberate intention. Readers are not exhorted to either agree or disagree with the interpretive statements they read. However, readers are asked to engage with the underlying social ‘positions’ uncovered by the moments of intention and interaction presented for interpretive scrutiny. Readers are asked to evaluate these moments not only in respect of already- present idealised views of sexuality/(intellectual) disability and support work, but also in relation to their own theoretical and experiential knowledge of the wider social impact of these terms on the attitudes and behaviours of individual citizens. Such an evaluation I believe may help to produce different knowledges about the operation of sexuality support work, and thus may open up further possibilities for the

development of the socially transformative practice sought by research initiatives already undertaken.

However, as Salazar suggests, participants in research studies can be put at “grave risk of manipulation” (Salazar, 1991, p. 313) through the use of unreflective data transcription process Being clear about how the information is to be viewed is necessary because by its very act, data gathering represents an intervention in already present systems of power/knowledge effects that researchers are in a far better

position to leave than are the research subjects. The inherent inequalities contained in these effects, with their potential for “treacherousness” (Salazar, 1991, p. 313) are difficult to avoid, while the effects of this kind of judgement call on those who give information can be powerful (Lamb, 1996). How these difficulties are taken into account and worked through in a post-modern context are outlined below.

Representations and Ethical Problems

For Burman & Parker, adopting a post-modern approach to data analysis means working within a conceptual structure that enables examples of material practices collected at interview to go through a “formal process of accounting” (1993, p. 175). This process transforms the data into representative textual accounts. However, a number of issues are raised through this re-positioning of interview material. These issues include a key consideration, how to show respect for the innerexperiences of the people interviewed while assessingthe discourses that form the talk on whichtheir lived experiences are based. Issues also cover the challenge this process makes to the idea of the validity of the data as authentic material. In this case, the challenge this process makes to the status of the data as representative of ‘the truth’ about what is going on in the support role. If accounts collected for academic research purposes cannot be definitively regarded as ‘the truth’ about the subject under discussion then what are they, and what value do they hold?

Both difficulties contain implications for any ‘researcher’ position within an academic institution. Salazar’s (1991) description of the difficulties researchers encounter when confronted with the collection and transcription of research data accounts provides a useful way forward in consideration of these points.

Transforming Accounts into Texts

For Salazar (1991), any position where a spoken account becomes a written text represents an inevitable and significant inroad into the ‘true account’ status of any material. This incursion compromises any researcher’s ability to present as ‘the truth’ any information taken from spoken dialogue, thus to present this information as completely authentic to the speaker. This process of destabilisation begins with the

loss of openness and authenticity, which happens when texts are produced as transcripts of verbal remarks. This loss includes the lack of emotional animation, voice tone and pitch, (bodily) performance elements and the silences, not easily contained in written accounts.

During this time of transformation, interventionist strategies designed to modify and shape the information are also used. These strategies are highly influential. They include the chronological patterning placed on the material itself as it is subject to editing, processing, re-processing and finally “being given a title” (Salazar, 1991, p. 98). Given these changes, interview data can no longer be considered completely ‘accurate’ or ‘true’, or as completely representative of any one individual. Any written text made through transcription can no longer be said to be definitive or tied to any specific location.

The advantage of decoupling the information from the participants concerned for this thesis is that new possibilities for exploring more diverse ways of creating alternative support possibilities can be developed. That the data gathered for this project will be pre-read before publication by a number of people provides a significant safeguard against potential negative outcomes in respect of how the information gathered is subsequently used. The analysis chapters will be scrutinised for their degree of fitness and conformation to the academic qualification sought. Academic supervisors and final assessors are important moderating influences on interpretive analyses at these times, as their assessments pay attention to how respectfully the data is handled in respect of the methodology and method used. As text material has also been handed back to interviewees for scrutiny and re-editing, workers themselves too have had an influence on the analysis process.