Qualitative Research in Practice : Stories From the Field - Blogs Unpad

From practice to research
parent—over the course of a year. Wendy and Tim were interviewed
together for this book. We talk with them again later about their
approach to interviewing people with learning difficulties and about
how they wrote up the study. Wendy is talking here about how they
came to be interested in this area.
Wendy:
I came into it about the mid-eighties, when we were
looking at the closure of the long stay hospitals ...as
a researcher I was looking at how it affected families,
this change of policy; but in and amongst getting to
know parents whose sons and daughters were in
hospital, I also got to know some of the sons and
daughters. As they came out, they moved into their
home towns, and whilst I was doing that research . . .
I came across a mother with learning difficulties, and
at that point, neither Tim nor I had ever considered
that people with learning difficulties had children.
She was being helped in a special care unit after the
birth of her second child . . . and that’s what really got
us interested. I knew some of the professionals in the
area who might be able to help us and give us an idea
of how many parents might be around, and talking
with them, they knew seven mothers, and that’s when
we put in for a grant.
Anne Coleman—Five star motels
For her PhD research, Anne Coleman (2001) was interested in
exploring the connection between homeless people and the public
spaces they use. She situated the study in Fortitude Valley, an inner
city suburb of an Australian city. The study was conducted over a
period of some years at a time of urban redevelopment and conflict
in the area about homeless people. It was a multi-method study,
involving observation, in-depth interviews, informal interviews and
document analysis. We talk with Anne again later in the book about
negotiating entry to the community, using observation as a data
collection method, analysing data, the readings of her work which
she held for homeless people who had been involved in the study
and the impact of the study. Here, Anne talks about how she
became interested in doing research with homeless people.
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