Catálogo de publicaciones - revistas

<jats:p> This article draws on the authors' experiences conducting research on-board cargo vessels as part of a project on Transnational Seafarer Communities. It considers dangerous fieldwork in a hazardous occupational setting. Specific attention is given to the ways in which the ambient risks of particular research sites combine with the situational risks associated with being a female researcher in a male-dominated, rigidly hierarchical setting with a strong occupational culture. It concludes that issues of researcher health and safety are frequently under-emphasized and under-reported in both written and verbal accounts of fieldwork. The article highlights the extent to which gender contributes to situational risk in some research contexts and ambient risk acts to amplify situational risk potentially creating a dangerous environment for fieldworkers. Whilst some risks are immutable, greater steps should be taken at both an institutional and a personal level to minimize the dangers associated with fieldwork. </jats:p>

<jats:p> This article seeks to move beyond typologies of the ways in which quantitative and qualitative research are integrated to an examination of the ways that they are combined in practice. The article is based on a content analysis of 232 social science articles in which the two were combined. An examination of the research methods and research designs employed suggests that on the quantitative side structured interview and questionnaire research within a cross-sectional design tends to predominate, while on the qualitative side the semi-structured interview within a cross-sectional design tends to predominate. An examination of the rationales that are given for employing a mixed-methods research approach and the ways it is used in practice indicates that the two do not always correspond. The implications of this finding for how we think about mixed-methods research are outlined. </jats:p>

<jats:p> The purpose of deliberation as a research technique (as opposed to policymaking or public consultation) is distinctive: to uncover the public’s informed, considered and collective view on a normative question. Such questions often arise in relation to research on poverty and inequality, where there is a need to justify the thresholds and concepts adopted on a deeper basis than convention alone can offer. But can deliberative research provide the answer, and if so in what circumstances? By comparing deliberative research to more traditional methods, such as in-depth interviewing, attitudinal surveys, ethnography and participatory approaches, this article reveals that deliberative designs involve a number of assumptions, including a strong fact/value distinction, an emphasis on ‘outsider’ expertise and a view of participants as essentially similar to each other rather than defined by socio-demographic differences. Using an example of deliberative research in which the author was involved, developing a list of ‘capabilities’ for monitoring inequalities in Britain, it also demonstrates that normative decisions permeate the design and implementation of deliberative research in practice. Thus, while deliberative research has the potential to provide uniquely considered, insightful and well-justified answers to the problem of defining a collective position on key questions in social science, it is currently under-theorised as an approach, and transparency at all stages of the process is essential to avoid the charge of simply reflecting the researchers’ implicit values. </jats:p>

<jats:p>In this article, I reflect upon access in the context of qualitative research, which I define as the process by which a researcher and the sites and/or individuals he or she studies relate to each other, through which the research in question is enabled. Access is a dynamic and multidirectional process, which depends on the researcher’s ability to access and to develop a ‘multiple vision’, and on the researcher’s and the research’s accessibility. Access influences the research process and results, and is shaped by power dynamics. Awareness of the complexity of access will help qualitative researchers to make more conscious and deliberate decisions, for example on which vantage points to include or exclude, or on how to protect participants and themselves. I illustrate my points of reflection with the help of vignettes from my research on the organizational dynamics behind the Greenpeace campaign against Norwegian whaling. I discuss implications for practice, and argue that perceiving of qualitative research as craftwork can help researchers to sustain complex notions of access.</jats:p>