2b - Methodological issues – How has gender been researched, and how successful has this been? Flashcards
Skeggs - Formations of class and gender: becoming respectable
Skeggs used ethnographic research for the feminist view that all understandings are relative. She used a longitudinal study which lasted for 12 years (living in the community), 3 of which were participant observation with a sample of 83 white women from Lancashire to research their lives and how women create a sense of self, and the part social class and a search for respectability plays in female working class identity. To support her observations she used biographies of the women, information on the economy and interviews with the women and their parents/friends/teachers.
Skeggs objectivity
Feminists like Skeggs who use interpretivist methods argue that although their research may appear to be subjective they can increase objectivity by doing three things. Firstly, respondent validation is the idea of checking your interpretation with the respondents themselves, after the research is completed. Doing this increases objectivity because you can check your analysis with those studied and they can express their values and impact your findings. Secondly reflexivity is the idea that a researcher considers their role in the research and tries where possible to avoid imposing their values. Finally they should try to avoid researcher imposition by using grounded theory. This means going to study people or groups without setting any agenda but instead observing or interviewing them and finding out what concerns them, you should then steer your research towards the issues you find. This is called grounded theory because it starts from the ground (nothing) and builds upwards.
Thiel – construction industry workers
Darren Thiel spent one year carrying out overt participant observation by working with the builders, he also carried out 32 open ended recorded interviews and also noted many more informal conversations on field notes. They were aged from 16 – 69. The ethnic mix was very diverse and included Irish, Gujarati’s (Indian), White British, Scottish
