A difficult negotiation: fieldwork relations with gatekeepers

Abstract

This paper explores the challenges the researcher faced when undertaking ethnographic fieldwork within a Probation Approved Premises. How access to research sites is achieved is increasingly being discussed, particularly in ethnographic accounts. These discussions often focus on the practical and ethical challenges of entering fieldwork sites. In contrast, how researchers leave study populations or sites is rarely explored, although perhaps as complex and sensitive to negotiate as access.This paper reflects upon the practical, ethical and emotional dilemmas experienced by the author when conducting research with sex offenders and staff in a probation hostel. The focus of the paper is on how access was gained and how the site and the people who took part in the research were left at the end of the fieldwork. Key issues include: formal and informal gatekeepers to study sites, participants and forms of data; rapport; attachment to researchers and; deciding when to end fieldwork. Issues of gender are alluded to in this paper, but will not be focussed on as they will be dealt with in detail elsewhere. It is concluded that negotiating access is different to gaining entry to a research site, and that these negotiations include considerations of the relationship between the researcher, the research and the researched.

Mixed-sex in sport for development: a pragmatic and symbolic device. The case of touch rugby for forced migrants in Rome

“…Moreover, the frequent turnover and the irregular patterns of the refugees' attendance, together with the 'screening' attitude adopted at times by some of our gatekeepers at Liberi Nantes (Scourfield 2012) to protect the participants and limit the research intrusiveness (Reeves 2010), further reduced the opportunities for ethnographic fieldwork and direct contact with the refugees involved in the programme.…”

The problem with community cohesion

“…Jackson (2005) (Higgins et al, 1996;Agada 1999;Arcury and Quandt, 1999;Reeves, 2010). In total there were four gatekeepers who introduced the people that were required to be interviewed.…”

“It’s a case of access.” The problematics of accessing research participants

“…The process of accessing the research site and participants is paramount to the successful achievement of educational research outcomes, yet may be less under a researcher's control. More recently, over the past 15 years, researchers have carefully considered and analysed encounters related to accessing a research site and participants (Cheah & Parker, 2014;Clark, 2010;Corra & Willer, 2002;Emmel, Hughes, Greenhalgh, & Sales, 2007;Horwood & Moon, 2003;Hoyland, Hollund, & Olsen, 2015;Lund, Panda, & Dhal, 2016;Reeves, 2010;Roguski & Tauri, 2013). In this body of research, the relationships and power dynamics between the researcher and the researched comes to the fore, demanding careful consideration.…”