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Box 1. 4 ethnographic and qualitative
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BOX 1. 4 ETHNOGRAPHIC AND QUALITATIVE
RESEARCH THAT ADDRESSES THE CHANGING NATURE OF YOUTH IDENTITIES IN CONTEMPORARY BRITAIN
Winlow, S. and Hall, S. (2009) ‘Living for the weekend: youth identities in northeast England’, Ethnography, 10(1): 91–113. The author’s empirical data comes from eth- nographic and qualitative research that addresses the changing nature of youth identities in contemporary Britain. To whet the reader’s appetite, a brief description of the methodology is given here:
· 43 young people between the ages of 18 and 25 were interviewed.
· Interviews were conducted in order to gain some insight into their attitudes towards:
¡ marriage
¡ relationships and kids
¡ work
¡ leisure
¡ body image
¡ fashion
¡ consumerism
¡ friendship and life course.
· Interviews were unstructured and included friendship cohorts.
· Key research contacts and snowball sampling were used,
Case study research
Case study research is also an important approach to doing criminological research. Kathleen Daly, in Chapter 21, begins by stating that despite its long and varied his- tory in social science related research, case study research is not well understood
amongst social scientists. Case study research is a complex and far-reaching approach to doing criminological research and there is no one way to deliver it. It has a back- ground in the Chicago School of Criminology, utilizing a range of data, methods of investigation and approaches to analysis and interpretation. Case study research usu- ally focuses on a case or cases, and utilizes a range of methods and types of data collection and analysis to bring depth and breadth to the topic area under review. It can be both quantitative and qualitative in nature.
Visual Methodologies
Ronnie Lippens in Chapter 19 provides a robust overview of the development and use of visual methodologies in criminological research. As such, he begins his assessment honestly by noting that the ‘emerging field of visual criminology is quite varied and many criminologists have their own ideas about what it should comprise’. Certainly, there is no one definition of what visual criminology comprises. For us, given its emer- gent status (despite being around longer than you would initially think, dating back to the late nineteenth century in one form or another), such methodologies can involve both secondary and primary research approaches, and are used for a variety of reasons. For some, it can involve social media, participatory diagramming and the use of visual research tools, and visual media. You may use images already available in archives or galleries, or in individual collections (such as the photographs that you or I take with our families and friends, or on holiday). Here, your key aim is to make sense of the image, use the image and understand what the image is about and why. The image can also be used as method – to allow for a discussion or to tease out specific reflections or thoughts from a research subject. And the image can also be an outcome of the research itself. For example, you could use this as part of a research project looking at the way in which the image, rather than the voice, can be a means through which individual actions, behaviours, thoughts and ideas can be captured and presented. For example, one of us, Peter Francis, along with Rachel Pain (Pain and Francis, 2003), used the visual image alongside participatory research methods to capture the ideas and lifestyles of a range of young people in a northern city (see also Francis, 2007).
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