Dilemmas of Researching a Community Setting Through Participant Observation Using The

Amanda Vickers

Dilemmas of researching a community setting through participant observation using the principles of community development practice

Amanda Vickers

University of Leeds, UK

Paper presented at the 36th Annual SCUTREA Conference, 4-6 July 2006, Trinity and All Saints College, Leeds

Can a community study ever be a negotiated product in which sociologists are not the only definers of the situation? (Warwick and Littlejohn, 1992,19)

Introduction

Coalmining finally ceased in West Yorkshire in 2004. The adults who were the subject of the research study had been miners and miners’ families, residents of a ‘mining village’ for several generations. Their local coalmine had closed in 1993, with the loss of 750 jobs. (CRT,2003)

Since the demise of coalmining as a source of employment and driving force of the local culture, the group of adults formed a community development group called ‘Felton Village Community Group’ (FVCG) with the general aim of regenerating their community. This group was identified for the purposes of the research study as a case of adults who are non-traditional adult learners engaged in informal learning.

Applying an experimental method to the study of the learning experienced by this group of adult learners demonstrated the tensions inherent in the researcher-researched relationship. This paper explores these tensions in order to create a critique of the experimental method. The method can be described as: using the principles of community development practice and applying them to a participatory research model.

Principles of community development

Community development as a field, has principles based on working with others by starting from where they are; and respecting their autonomy and decision-making powers that they as adults bring to the question of how best to improve their living conditions. The Strategic Framework for Community Development (SCCD, 2001) lists the following values, or principles, that should inform community development activity:

1. Social justice – enabling people to claim their human rights, meet their needs and have greater control over the decision-making processes which affect their lives
2. Participation – facilitating democratic involvement by people in the issues that affect their lives. Based on full citizenship, autonomy, and shared power, skills, knowledge and experience
3. Equality - challenging the attitudes of individuals, and the practices of institutions and society, which discriminate against and marginalize people
4. Learning – recognising the skills, knowledge and expertise that people contribute and develop by taking action to tackle social, economic, political and environmental problems
5. Co-operation – working together to identify and implement action, based on mutual respect of diverse cultures and contributions

The principles of the community development approach are explained as a methodology ‘grounded in the values, knowledge and skills required for critical enquiry and participatory methods of research’. (Everitt, 2004).These principles can be listed as:

1. Participatory/developmental rather than a social control model of social work
2. Anti-oppressive values applied
3. Practitioners strive towards a genuine model of partnership with those whom they serve
4. Group members are not treated as objects
5. Bases of ‘knowing’ are shared and made explicit
6. Subjectivity is valued and understood in the contexts of the often vulnerable circumstances of people’s lives

The research study was consciously conducted with the principles and processes of community development as a guiding principle:

‘Empowering practice and empowering research depend on being participatory, encouraging participants to ‘own’ the outcome by setting the goals and sharing in decisions about the most desirable process to be followed’. (Lees and Smith, 1975, 49)

Principles of participatory research

The participatory research movement recognises the relationship between research, knowledge and power. In participatory research, the subjects of research are involved as active analysts in the research process. This has a long pedigree, not least in the traditions of participatory action research and the inspiration of Paulo Freire and his followers. ‘Participatory’ means that local people, including the poor, illiterate, women and the marginalized, are enabled themselves to appraise, analyse, plan and act. The primary method used is dialogue.

Data are created through discussion amongst all participants, both community members and outsiders, in the process of defining and deciding action. The intention of participatory research is to democratise the research process, and achieve greater equality between the researcher, who becomes a listener and learner not a lecturer, and the researched, who are enabled to present their realities and have them respected and used to influence the research process.

The principles of participatory research can be expressed as:

iminimising distortion of the research situation by making sure that the presence of the researcher does not itself affect outcomes;

iiminimising the filtering of information though a different cultural lens, and therefore subjecting it to subconscious judgement;

iiiworking from a position of respect for the established norms of the community, without undue reverence for such norms;

ivconducting the research project in such a way that respondents’ sense of personal agency and decision-making power is not compromised.

The presence of the researcher can be an issue when researching real groups, in real time. If the researcher aims to discover human phenomena through participation, the presence of the researcher as ‘outsider’ must be carefully managed so as not to restrict the natural ebb and flow of contributions from the group.

Distortions can arise when there is discomfort amongst the group members, such as a feeling of being judged or subjected to a set of meanings that they are not aware of or party to. The presence of an utterly silent observer is also threatening in situations where the established cultural norm of the group is warmth and friendliness.

The recognition that this is their community, their group, their lives and their learning is an essential part of the ethical framework under which the study was conducted. Any attempt to distort cultural norms, by pulling the participants into areas too far outside their comfort zones, would have led to a less than authentic set of results. The challenge for the researcher was to gain access to the information needed, through a choice of methods that would not significantly distort outcomes, or force interpretations without understanding of the roots and context of the phenomena displayed.

As a participant observer over two and a half years, the researcher was welcomed to group meetings on approximately the same basis as other ‘outsiders’ or non-residents such as local authority officers and professionals from agencies. Relations with the group members did become closer over time, mainly because the researcher was a regular attendee at monthly meetings, whereas the majority of ‘outsiders’ attended for a few weeks only.

Potential power differentials in participatory research

Participatory research shares the same conceptual (and political) framework as community development practice. Both recognise that devices for maintaining power differentials have no place in truly participative practice. Participatory methods aim to demystify practice and research by being explicit about purposes, values, skills, and knowledge.

Power sources are recognised to derive from (CDX, 2004):

1. Status, or an official position gained through holding a paid job
2. Statutory, power by virtue of office holing within a local authority
3. Wealth, or ‘resources power’
4. Expertise, or power through knowledge
5. Personal, or power through interpersonal skills or charm

Devices used in community development settings, by ‘more powerful’ people to maintain the power differential, include: powerful language or rhetoric, where apparent commitment is given to sharing power. This can mask a tendency to reversion back to a dominant role as soon as decision-making power is actually threatened. A more subtle, and widespread version of this device is a gradual reversion to role over time.

Another set of devices that militate against the values of community development include: agenda setting in advance of partnership arrangements being initiated; prioritising the interests of the more powerful bodies; and maintaining an appearance of participation by the ‘more powerful’ leaving the ‘less powerful’ to decide the minor points of decisions already made:

‘It’s about someone else’s agenda. They just want you to tinker with this bit or that bit. You are never actually asked to set the priorities.’(SCCD, 2001)

Decisions can be presented as a fait accompli, with pseudo-consultation and involvement masquerading as the real thing. This type of consultative process is in fact an elaborate method of making sure there is no opposition to the eventual decisions that are reached. Genuine involvement would stem from early generation of alternatives, and all parameters agreed from the outset.

The handling of challenges can also provide material that militates against true participation. The devices used by powerful individuals intent on neutralising opposition or discrediting opponents can be so subtle they appear to be polite. One device is rebuffing challenges with platitudes emphasizing the challenger’s apparent difference from the status quo. This has the effect of isolating the individual in their views. The powerful individual is probably aware that the challenger’s views may be widely held, but seeks to thwart opposition through intimidation.

Potential opponents can also be disarmed through malice disguised as tact: ‘don’t believe all Susan says…there are issues you know...’ This type of exchange is designed to strip Susan of her potential power base, as it implies that she is untrustworthy and not to be supported. The fact that no reasons are given for this assertion can easily and erroneously be implied to derive from tactful handling on the part of the powerful individual.

Using these devices the dominant body, whether a powerful organisation or a powerful individual, can, and frequently does, carve out a course of action which benefits his or her own agenda, whilst the less powerful partners feel a sense of frustration but can’t identify those aspects of the process which have led to their disappointment.

Power imbalances can be rectified in part by making sure that the community development group is truly owned and run by the group itself. The group needs to be run democratically and with regard for and adherence to its stated set of values. Officials and outsiders can be invited in, on the terms of the group, and must therefore abide by the group’s norms rather than imposing their own. Officials who insist on using their status or statutory power to force group decisions their way, or who overuse or abuse their own expert power in ways that are detrimental to the group’s autonomy, can be made to leave by the group members withholding invitations to meetings.

More subtle power imbalances between the members of the group itself, deriving from personal power or charisma, and strengthened through lifelong, entrenched attitudes, are harder to change. This type of power imbalance, because it is rooted in the culture from which the group members have come and still live, is very hard to challenge directly. It is difficult as even those group members who from the researcher’s perspective were discriminated against, such as women and disabled people, do not necessarily notice or wish to challenge the status accorded to them.

As William Dowling comments in his foreword to Hamilton’s Adult Education for Community Development:

It is no wonder that community development takes a back seat with some adult educators when the power of entrenched forces in communities is considered (p. 4)

Recognising and addressing power imbalances is an important part of the work of a practising community development worker, but proved difficult to reconcile with the researcher’s role of participant observer. Some of the dilemmas encountered are explored below.

Principles applied to fieldwork

At the start of fieldwork, an initial discussion with the group established the knowledge bases of the group in relation to the researcher. The ‘expert power’ held by the group members, about the issues in their own community, the history of the community and group members’ experiences within it, was acknowledged to be of value to the researcher. In assuming ‘participant observer’ status, relative powerlessness through having no expert power in these areas, was a choice designed to equalise power between the researcher and the group members.

The process of giving and receiving information on a basis of equality was established early on. Rather than following a pre-planned research programme, possible elements of the research were raised and discussed with the group members, and the researcher was able to assess which elements would attract willing co-operation, which would require amendments, and which would need to be abandoned.

Early in the fieldwork, the Chair and leader of the group approached the researcher to negotiate some ‘expert’ support for the group (to formally constitute the group) in return for the group’s participation in the research study. The agreement that there would be a reciprocal arrangement helped both sides to feel that the time and knowledge given by group members to the study would not be exploited, but valued and returned.

In accepting this request, the researcher followed community development practice in encouraging the group leaders to use their personal agency to bring in support for group activity. To refuse to support them in this way, perhaps on the basis that it went against a strict definition of ‘participant observer’, would have gone against the principle of community development about working in partnership to achieve common ends.

There was, however, a distinct tension in that actively supporting them could not take place at the same time as observing them. Accepting the request was a necessary part of the chosen experimental method, if it was not to be abandoned at the first hurdle. It was important to stick to the principle of mutual benefit, as defined by them.

‘How many users have participated in academic research without being aware that their time and knowledge have been exploited and not enabled to see why the conditions of their lives have not been enhanced? (Everitt, Hardiker et al,1992, 65)

Because the researcher was present as participant observer, the perspective of the people and issues that was possible to achieve was entirely different from the task-oriented demands of the community worker. This perspective enabled a detachment from the immediate problems of the group that was necessary for the research project:

‘the practitioner allows himself to experience surprise, puzzlement, or confusion in a situation which he finds uncertain and unique. He reflects on the phenomena before him, and on the prior understandings which have been implicit in his behaviour’. (Schon,1983,68)

Originally, four research methods had been tentatively planned for use with the group. The three methods finally used were:

1. Initial interviews
2. Ongoing participant observation
3. Final focus group

The fourth method, the use of learning diaries, whereby volunteers were to be asked to record their own learning in a notebook or computer file, was abandoned for reasons that are explored below.

The interviews were conducted with the full participation and understanding of the group members. The headings of the questionnaire used to prompt and structure the interviews were read out to the group following the monthly meeting. Discussion was invited, and the group could have objected to the questions, but in the event the group members were reassured that the questions would not compromise them and were willingly interviewed.

The interviews were intended to gain material that focussed on these adults’ experience of formal and informal learning and its role in their lives. This intention did appear abstract, and therefore difficult to grasp, to the group members. Their discomfort, which could have led to non-participation, was dispelled when the questions themselves were reassuringly concrete. As the interviews progressed people began to enjoy them. The interviews were structured with space for narrative and stories, which pleased the respondents, but also yielded themes, reflections, and rich material that could be analysed in order to inform the research study.

Another purpose of the interviews that had been originally intended was to identify people willing to keep learning diaries. The process of conducting the interviews, as well as unrecorded private conversations and observations, caused a change in this intention. It became clear that to ask any of the respondents to keep a learning diary would subject them to a counter-cultural practice that would cause them discomfort. From the position of acceptance and mutual respect that the researcher enjoyed within the group, it would have been possible to push through the issue of learning diaries and to persuade perhaps four or five people to keep them. They may have eventually enjoyed and learned from doing so.