Accessing the Community: Gaining Insider Perspectives From the Outside

Abstract

Accessing participants for research projects is often treated as unproblematic. However the experience outlined here of negotiating access to participants within a community setting illustrates the inherent difficulties of recruitment. The authors describe the techniques used and practical challenges faced when accessing participants within a socially deprived community for a qualitative research project on social capital. They used a number of different strategies to generate a diverse sample including advertising, snowballing, accessing gatekeepers, and street surveys. The value of a stakeholder analysis is described alongside issues surrounding the use of gatekeepers. Rather than acting as outsiders seeking participants at every available opportunity, a more fortuitous strategy involved the ethnographic approach of "being there" as active contributors to community life. Here, the cornerstones of credibility and trust were addressed in a process of continually negotiating access from a semi-insider position.

Community-Based Participatory Research for Improved Mental Health

“…Widespread implementation of the participatory research model in mental health and medical research can clearly play a key role in reducing health disparities. The communitybased participatory model in which all stakeholders of a community being studied are invited and encouraged to take part in all phases of a research study is an ethical and effective way of conducting mental health research, especially with members of underserved communities (Minkler & Wallerstein, 2003;Sixsmith, Boneham, & Goldring, 2003;Macaulay et al, 1999; Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality [AHRQ], 2003).…”

“…Widespread implementation of the participatory research model in mental health and medical research can clearly play a key role in reducing health disparities. The communitybased participatory model in which all stakeholders of a community being studied are invited and encouraged to take part in all phases of a research study is an ethical and effective way of conducting mental health research, especially with members of underserved communities (Minkler & Wallerstein, 2003;Sixsmith, Boneham, & Goldring, 2003;Macaulay et al, 1999; Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality [AHRQ], 2003).Mental health researchers are recognizing the importance of asking communities to set the agenda and context for appropriate, respectful research. Research that starts "where the people are" has demonstrated that when the realities of community life become an integral part of the process, study results directly address the needs of the target community (Israel, Schulz, Parker, & Becker, 1998; Macauley et al, 1999;Minkler & Wallerstein, 2003;Sixsmith, Boneham, & Goldring, 2003).…”

The interview as narrative ethnography: seeking and shaping connections in qualitative research

“…The project interviewers were all women, but we differed in terms of social class, ethnicity, age and reproductive/family situation (among other things). The specific configurations and intersection of identity and experience, in relation to our research participants, meant that we all spanned an insider/outsider spectrum in complex and shifting ways, as we describe below (see also Mullings, 1999;Brah and Phoenix, 2004;Gressgård, 2008), shaping the emergence of narratives and interpretations (Sixsmith et al, 2003;Thomas, Blacksmith and Reno, 2000).…”

Creating a space for young women's voices: using ‘participatory video drama’ in Uganda

“…Oakley 1981;Standing 1998;Sibley 1995;Sixsmith et al 2003;Emmel et al 2007). Feminist geographers have been particularly concerned to explore and theorise feminist 'ways of knowing' and epistemologies in order to discern gender-based disadvantage and particular knowledges from the standpoint of women (Gibson-Graham 1994;Harding 1998;Rose 1993Rose , 1997.…”