chapter 3
Methods and research design
“‘Method’ has to do, first of all, with how to ask and answer questions with some assurance that the answers are more or less durable. ‘Theory’ has to do, above all, with paying close attention to the words one is using, especially their degree of gen-erality and their logical relations. The primary purpose of both is clarity of concep-tion and economy of procedure, and importantly just now, the release rather than the restriction of the sociological imagination” (Mills, 1959: 120)
Introduction
This chapter is central for understanding and assessing the content of all the subsequent chapters, and for evaluating the merit of the research project as a whole. It describes how the data on which this book is based were gener-ated and analysed. This study employs a contextualist life course perspective with a biographical grounded case-study approach. The first section begins to un-pack, piece by piece, what this rather long and wordy label is meant to signify. The second part of the chapter describes the research process step by step. It explains the sampling rationale, how the survey and interviews were conducted, and, finally, the analysis process.
A contextualist life course perspective with a
The Sociological Imagination, that the relation between history and biography be made a central topic in sociology. He suggested a conception of social sci-ence as “the study of biography, of history, and of the problems of their inter-section within social structure” (2000/1959: 134). More generally, Mills emphasised how social action was embedded in historically specific institu-tional contexts. This was partly inspired by Mead’s emphasis on the processual nature of the self and how social action is constituted in the present, and partly inspired by the more continental tradition of Weber, Marx and Mannheim (see Gerth and Mills, 1963[1954]; Mills, 1939; Mills, 1940; Mills, 1960).1
From a contextualist perspective follows a goal of providing contextualised answers to research questions. One implication of this is that questions of structure and agency are approached in terms of layers of context which can be specified empirically with reference to the action in question. This type of specification of context has required that the project make use of a rich array of data and information. In addition to making use of existing data (such as that available from Statistics Norway), this project has generated original data by making use of two different methods of data collection: first a postal survey and then, life story interviews.
In accordance with this broadly Mills-inspired contextualist perspective, the study applies a life course approach. Life course research is a body of research that crosses several disciplinary boundaries, and is especially well- established in psychology, demography and sociology. Elder (et al 2003: 10) defines the life course perspective as “a theoretical orientation that guides research on human lives within context”. His classic study The Children of the Great Depression (1974) was conducted at a time when much social research aimed at producing knowledge that presumably transcended specific contexts.
Elder’s research constituted a persuasive critique of this type of search for uni-versal (ahistorical) knowledge about human lives. This was achieved by an
1 The epistemological foundations of this contextualist perspective are in accordance with what Mjø-set has termed “the contextualist approach to social science” (see MjøMjø-set, 2009). This position defies the often presumed dichotomy between realism vs. constructionism. It would require much space, and extend beyond the purposes of this dissertation, to account for all of the epistemological debates potentially relevant for this project. It suffices here to state that the epistemological position assumed in the current project is in accordance with the “contextualist approach to social science” as outlined by Mjøset (2009) and, more specifically, with previous work that has suggested a combined approach to the use of life story data, emphasising both the social/historical context and narrative aspects concern-ing how stories are told (Kohli, 1981; Nilsen, 2008; Nilsen, 1994).
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empirical demonstration of how the same historical event (The Great Depression) influenced individuals differently depending on differences in their chronological age. The significant implication of this was that research concerning human lives should be designed in a ways sensitive to the relation-ship between historical time and age. Since this classic study, the body of life course research has grown, and Elder has been among those to forward it as a suitable “translation” of Mills’ programme of contextualisation into appropri-ate research practice (Elder et al., 2003).
The way in which placement in time is specified is perhaps the most distinc-tive feature of life course research (Mayer, 2004). The question of how lives are embedded in history is approached by placing emphasis on specified types of temporality – historical time and biographical time – and on the relationships between them. In other words, by stressing the timing of various events in the life course of individuals. Life course research can investigate the relationships between historical context and human lives. The great emphasis on historical context in life course research does not imply that individuals are viewed sim-ply as “products” of their context (Mayer, 2004: 180). On the contrary, life course research can serve to accentuate the ways in which different types of action take place “within the opportunities and constraints of history and social circumstance” (Elder et al., 2003: 11).
An important conceptual tool for the performance of this type of contextu-alisation is the concept of the cohort. The first to elaborate the analytical poten-tial of this concept in the social sciences was Norman Ryder (1965). Ryder defined a cohort as: “the aggregate of individuals who experienced the same event within the same time interval” (1965: 845) and argued for its potential in the study of social change.Ideally, the concept of the cohort enables different types of influence on individuals to be specified in a precise way – arguably, in a more precise way than that provided by alternative concepts.2 The differentia-tion of influence deriving from age, cohort and period have since been a pillar in life course research. However, notably, an estimation of their “effects”
2 The term “cohort” is related to the term “generation”, and the two are often confused. Both terms refer to placement in historical time, but this commonality does not make them equivalent. The concept of generation has largely been abandoned within life course research due to its “multiple meanings”
and the related “conceptual confusion” (Alwin and McCammon, 2003: 24). As Elder and colleagues (2003: 9) have put it, the concept of generation has a more “loose connection to historical time” than cohort, which invites a “more precise historical placement”. Because kinship bonds are not central to Mannheim’s classic concept of generation, it bears affinity with the concept of cohort.
(relevance) is always provisional since age, cohort and period are necessarily confounded (Elder et al., 2003: 9).3
The approach to data collection and data analysis in this project can broadly be termed grounded. This means that the study has made use of a range of dif-ferent perspectives and concepts, but not privileged any particular theoretical apparatus. It does not mean that it has strictly followed the procedures sug-gested by those who first launched the term “grounded theory” (Glaser and Strauss, 1967). Contrary to more “strict” varieties of grounded research, both the main research questions and the sampling rationale in this study were developed based on a close reading of previous research. However, the exact focus of each of the empirical chapters was decided based on the findings that emerged through the empirical analysis. In accordance with this grounded approach, the data has served as a guide in determining which parts of the existing research literature were relevant and useful.
The methodological approach of this project can be termed biographical.
A biographical account can be defined as “a story told in the present about a person’s experiences of events in the past and her or his expectations for the future” (cf. Nilsen, 1997). With a biographical approach to data collection and data analysis, the context of social phenomena in biographies is central. This is one way of investigating how social action relates to experiences in specific historical and institutional contexts. In particular, a biographical approach was considered ideal for the current study because (as explained in the previous chapter) its main research questions concern both historical processes and biographical processes. A main goal has been to provide knowledge on the relationship between these two types of process – that is, the relationship between history and biography. In previous research literature, the life story interview has been forwarded as an ideal instrument for relating lives and social change (Thompson, 1981; Bertaux, 1981).
Finally, this study can be termed a case-study. Each interviewee has been analysed as a “case”. Cases were selected purposively based on a number of spe-cific criteria. These criteria set the boundaries for what the interviewees are treated as ‘cases of’ men skilled in male-dominated manual occupations in
3 The standard terms “age effect” “cohort effect” and “period effect” are technical in nature, designed for research that makes use of large scale datasets. In a project like this one, it is more appropriate to point out when “age is relevant”, “period seems relevant” and so on.
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Norway, during specified periods. The study is thereby in keeping with approaches which have emphasised that cases must be cases of something (Gomm et al., 2000; Ragin and Becker, 1992). This type of sampling can be termed both systematic (Gomm et al., 2000) or alternatively, theoretical (Corbin and Strauss, 1990: 9), and is the first feature of the research process to be explained more closely below.