ESRC/ NCRM Training Seminar on Cross-National Research: Research design

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ESRC/ NCRM Training Seminar on Cross-National
ResearchResearch design scientific and
pragmatic rationales for choice of countries,
case studies and their contextualisation

• An EU qualitative study on housing
• Deborah Quilgars,
• Centre for Housing Policy, University of York

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Why consider this issue?

• Growth in cross-national research
• Yet, relatively small body of literature on
  cross-national research, especially qualitative
  methods
• Challenge greatest for qualitative work?
  Interpretation across historical, cultural and
  socio-political contexts.
• There are both scientific and pragmatic choices
  need to make these explicit

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The research study aims

• Origins of Security and Insecurity (OSIS)
  -Citizens and Governance Programme (6th Fr)
• Housing as site of restructuring interplay with
  jobs, household structures, finance, welfare etc
• Key aims
• Analyse factors processes that have impacted on
  households
• Establish how households perceive patterns of
  security and insecurity how affected personal
  strategies

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The research study methods overview

• Two key stages
• Quantitative analyses at macro and micro level
• Qualitative work
• Qualitative studies
• Institutional studies
• 30 household interviews in each country,
  exploring perceptions, attitudes and extent to
  which housing is a resource and repository of
  wealth
• Today mainly focussing on qualitative work

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The countries and researchers

• Belgium - University of Antwerp
• Finland - University of Turku
• France - ANIL, Paris
• Germany - University of Bremen
• Hungary Metropolitan Research Institute,
  Budapest
• The Netherlands OTB, Technical University of
  Delft
• Portugal - Centre for Studies for Social
  Intervention, Lisbon
• Sweden - Uppsala University
• UK - Universities of Birmingham York

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Choice of countries

• Scientific rationale
• selected to enable comparison across different
  welfare regime types (Esping-Andersen etc)
• different housing markets (renting/ home-owning
  split etc)
• Pragmatic rationale
• Cooperation - previous partnerships
• Compromise - availability and interest

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Identifying case studies ISelecting
geographical areas

• Pragmatism of one case study in each country
• impossibility of reflecting experiences across
  localities (the compromise of selecting an
  average area)
• location influenced by budget. (comparing
  Budapest with York a compromise)
• reality that household responses may have been
  different if rural areas selected

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Identifying case studies II Selecting the
respondents

• How important is it to select the same
  categories of respondents?
• Losing the reflection of individual countries but
  gaining the comparison e.g. ratio of home-owners
  renters
• Finding the respondents
• Same or different recruitment methods?

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Contextualisation I

• Analysis as the biggest challenge
• Importance of agreed analytical framework (and
  coding frame)
• Locating analysis within institutional
  understanding essential
• Layers of analysis layers of interpretation?...
  Linguistic issues means analysis of country
  material not transparent.loss of cultural
  messages and understandings?

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Contextualisation II

• Problem of moving from country reports to
  overview report Compromise of two countries
  combining the material. Could we ask for funds
  for everyone to be involved?
• Risk of ethnocentric focus by leading country/
  countries
• Cooperation as means of accentuating the
  advantages minimising the dangers

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Cooperation is all

• Direction or over-direction?
• Past experience important?
• Knowing your fellow researchers
• Establishing open methods of communication
• Value of virtual meetings

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Conclusions

• Cross-national research is by its nature a
  challenge
• Cooperation essential and compromise inevitable
• need to be pragmatic but scientific rationale
  and methods prevail overall, if work hard enough!