Making the Long View:

Archiving, Representing and Sharing a Qualitative Longitudinal Resource

March 2005 – August 2006

Making the Long View

Debby Holder & Jorge Camacho

Sheila Henderson, Janet Holland, Rachel ThomsonSheena McGrellis & Sue Sharpe

Based in the Families & Social Capital ESRC Research Group

London South Bank University

The Inventing Adulthoods study

• A unique QL study combining three ESRC-funded studies from 1996-2006

• Rich biographical accounts of all aspects of life of a diverse group of 100 young people (aged 11-19 in 1996, now aged 20-28) growing up in five areas of the UK

• Methods: biographical interviews, focus groups, lifelines, memory books, questionnaires, research assignments

The Inventing Adulthoods

dataset

Age Questionnaire

Focus Group

Interview Lifeline Memory

book

Research

Assignmt

Youth Values

1996-99 11-17 1800

331

62 grps

Int 1

57 272

Inventing Adulthoods

1999 - 2001

14-23Int 2

121

104

Int 3

98

49

Int 4

83

Revisited at this round

4 groups

Youth

Transitions

2002 - 2006 17-28

Int 5

70

Int 6

64

Inventing Adulthoods Case DataRaw• Questionnaire (up to 3)• Individual interview audio cassette and transcript (up to 6)• Focus group audio cassette and transcript (up to 2)• Lifeline (& follow-up)• Memorybook

Contextual /Research process• Researcher’ fieldnotes• Researcher’ reflections• Young people’s reflections• Young people reflect on listening to their tapes

Analysis• First stage: narrative analysis, case profile• Published and unpublished case studies

Making the Long View: Archiving the Inventing Adulthoods study

Explore creative ways of overcoming ethical & practical problems involved in providing access to a qualitative longitudinal (QL) dataset

OUTPUTS• A detailed, ethically sound, contextualized, partial QL data set of

young people’s experiences of growing up in five areas of the UK at the turn of the century ready for deposit and sharing /-reuse (10 cases)

• A network of secondary users for the archived dataset• An exemplar of good methodological and ethical practice in the

archiving and sharing of qualitative data • An assessment of the costs involved in archiving a QL dataset

Making the Long View: Progress

• (Re)use of the dataset facilitated and these dataset users consulted. An important basis for developing ethical selection criteria and methods of renegotiating consent and of representing data

• Case selection: initial criteria, selection & consent; consent process with 10 yp begun

• Data collation / digitisation (sample of 25)

• Contextualisation process begun

Contextual data collected during the Inventing Adulthoods study

• Methodology development process• Research process and relationship:

- YP’s reflections on the research process

- YP’s reflections on listening to their tapes

- Researcher’ fieldnotes, predictions, reflections

Making the Long View

Contextual data collected for Making the Long View

• Digital audio clips edited from a focus group : researcher reflections

(e.g. Maintaining a research team, sample maintenance, gatekeepers, locality, participatory approach, effects on young people & on researchers, ‘walking alongside’)

Making the Long View

Capturing and describing context: time as the organising theme

Methodology Research TimeCross-sample data Historical Time

Biographical data Biographical Time

www.lsbu.ac.uk/inventingadulthoods

Making the Long View