ARVAC Bulletin 98

Book Review

Fiona Poland reviews Close Work: Doing qualitative research in the voluntary sector.

This edited collection of insights into voluntary sector qualitative research offers welcome lessons into the rich understandings that closer involvement with action settings can bring. One stated intention of the editors, is to point up to voluntary groups, policymakers and students, the diversity of qualitative approaches now in use. The stimulating range of commentaries and studies presented here, contradicts any notion that qualitative research only means one-off focus groups or interviews which just produce limited, common sense findings.

The books opening commentary disputes any neat division between qualitative and quantitative methods and calls for careful examination of how well specific methods are used to answer a given research question. Each paper that follows draws on empirical work to also challenge pre-conceptions about ‘what research must be’.

Several contributions challenge the notion that research can be conducted without responding to obligations to participants arising from engagement in qualitative researching. These are reflected in the ethical dilemmas posed by researcher immersion in case study settings. One contributor, Ellis, studying Welsh rural development, highlights how closeness or distance were not simply predicted by her gender or her own Englishness, but had to be negotiated in context. Ledwith explaining her use of auto-ethnography within an emancipatory research approach, argues that addressing such obligations is not optional but essential if research is to underpin the critical consciousness needed to develop truly autonomous collective action. Action research studies by Robson, in a range of organisations involving service users, suggest how both research focus and activities were influenced by the nature of relationships between professionals and users within each organisation. The researcher’s role as a sounding board is used by Gaskin to help make visible the links between peoples’ knowledge and their everyday practical concerns. Glasby and Manthorpe show how historical case studies of voluntary organisations such as the Birmingham Settlement can trace their development in response to previously unmet local needs, but needed to guard against relying on too few types of data source or assuming that records simply and transparently document events.

Other papers explore the opportunities and dilemmas offered by collaboration rather than detached observation. Examining the impact of contract culture and other external agendas on organisations, Russell and Scott comment on how collaboration may provide greater researcher access to differing perspectives and to sensitive materials, but such openness may also pose research partners to risks which must be managed responsibly. In a social analysis study of seven organisations collaborating in the field of AIDS/HIV support, Rochester found that building closer relationships also meant researchers having to compromise by setting limits on their access to external stakeholders and the study period. Engaging with the concerns of participants can bring deeper understandings of what will be relevant to them, well-illustrated by Alcock’s action research evaluation of Regional Action West Midlands. Here, collaboration helped organisations with limited resources to share improved employee policy and practice.

These studies offer accessible examples of how distinctive methods and creativity can emerge in response to the relationships built within qualitative research. In any further volume, it would be good to see more on how the closer engagement of qualitative research with voluntary sector contexts can inform understandings of what proves especially useful for promoting community action in those settings.

Fiona Poland is ARVAC’s Vice Chair

The book, edited by Pete Alcock and Duncan Scott, was published by Pharaoh (2005) for Charities Aid Foundation.

For a copy contact Professor Pete Alcock, p.c.alcock@bham.ac.uk d.scott@man.ac.uk. Price £8