2. Bren Neale University of Leeds Presentation for the Doctoral Progamme in Family Studies, University of Jyvaskyla October 2013.

3. Overview Explores Qualitative Longitudinal Research as a compelling way of knowing and understanding the social world Draws on work conducted under the ESRC Timescapes Initiative. designed to scale up QL research through 7 projects that researched the dynamics of family life. The initiative also advanced QL methods, archiving and data sharing. A particular focus on Time : as both medium and topic of enquiry – - a journey through time Examples from the Timescapes projects, including a study of young fatherhood.

4. QL research is...... qualitative enquiry conducted through or in relation to time QL research as a methodological discipline or paradigm, draws on a range of qualitative methods and adds time into the mix to create new ways of knowing and understanding the social world.

5. Qualitative Enquiry… Generates rich, detailed, textured data about individuals and linked lives, using an array of interview, ethnographic and narrative methods Discerns social practices, subjective experience, identities, beliefs, emotions, values and so on Derives meanings from context and complexity Produces finely grained understandings Addresses how and why questions: significant explanatory power Authenticates personal lives and human agency

6. ... Conducted Through or in Relation to Time: Explores the temporal dimension of experience: change, continuity, endurance, transition, causality Sheds light on micro processes and the causes and consequences of change or continuity in the social world Growing need to understand the lived experience of change and continuity - the agency of individuals in shaping or accommodating to these processes. Temporal Agency – a key concept for QL research – exploring how change is created, lived and experienced.

7. Time in QL Research It is through time that we can begin to grasp the nature of social change... Indeed it is only through time that we can gain a better appreciation of how the personal and social, agency and structure, the micro and macro are interconnected and how they come to be transformed, for the relationship is essentially a dynamic one. (Neale and Flowerdew IJSRM 2003)

8. Research Design Prospective designs: tracking individuals or groups;‘walking alongside’ people as their lives unfold: extensive or intensive tracking through particular transitions or policy landscapes: How long is longitudinal? How many waves? Variable: we are exploring processes of change that can be shortitudinal Retrospective studies: revisiting the past through the lens of the present day Historical Revisiting studies of communities or organisations (Crow, Johnson, Charles). ‘Mixed’ methods and comparative designs: QL/QNL Flexibility, creativity and innovation: allow findings from one wave to inform the next (Corden and Millar, 2007)

9. Policy Relevance/ Potential Impact Understanding processes of change is important in policy contexts where individuals or organisations are required to change their behaviour or adapt to changing environments (SP & Society 2007); Or where policy interventions need to be evaluated and their impact better understood A tracking design can be combined effectively with a participatory research design, working closely with practitioners to co-produce knowledge QL as a navigational tool to guide and assess policy interventions - in all these ways impact occurs within the research process.

10. Conceptualising Time. ‘Longitudinal data …offers a movie rather than a snapshot’ (Berthoud 2000: Seven years in the Lives of British Families: 15)

11. The Quantitative Movie Large scale ‘thin’ data - panel and cohort studies Measures what changes, how much change occurs, where, when, for how long. Repeat cross sectional designs : same questions asked at regular intervals Time is linear, cumulative and invariably moving forward: time as chronology, sequence, duration and interval e.g. research that measures the spells of time that individuals spend in particular states (eg. unemployment or cohabitation (Leisering and Walker The Dynamics of Modern Society ( 1998) This movie chart broad social trends: generates the long shot, birds eye view, the broad vista: the epic movie. It can discern patterns and correlations but has a limited view of causality.

12. Qualitative movie- Kaleidascope

13. The Qualitative Movie Small scale, situated, ‘thick’ data –gathered through time. Examines the complex mechanisms through which lives unfold and how time is experienced and understood… Time is fluid, multi-dimensional, recursive, recurrent, non linear - the QL movie engages with complex flows of time – or Timescapes Time as a social construct that in itself may be redefined as lives unfold (Adam, Hareven) This movie is linked to the textures of real lives: generates a grounded view of individuals and groups, the twists and turns in the story lines – the intricacies and interior logic of human lives – the up close and personal movie

14. Intersecting dimensions of Time: ‘Slicing’ Time Past – Present – Future time: seen biographically or historically. Insights into the nature, quality, and meaning of biographical or historical processes. Structured –Unstructured time: the quality of time Intensive- Extensive time: pace and length of time Time and Space: the location of time Micr0-Meso-Macro time: time frames for understanding social processes, from individual to structural contexts.

15. Time: Quality, pace, location Structured – Unstructured time clock time/ family time, industrial time/ free time, Using and marking time in everyday life (work life balance, and time use studies – survey based) Cyclical time-creative ways to mark the passage of the seasons and the turning of the years, that link us collectively with a sense of historical time Intersections – temporal balances and fluid boundaries Intensive- Extensive time. The tenor, pace, velocity, acuteness or chronicity of change The Scales of Time: (Lemke) How we sustain things or bide our time; Short or longer time horizons (young fathers); How does time expand, contract or speed up? E.g. Bornat and Bythway combined life history interviews with diaries to capture different scales of time to good effect. Time and Space – (Bakhtin, May and Thrift) – the connection of temporal and spatial relations – the intersection of where and when as key mechanisms to grasp the significance and meaning of events.

16. Micro-Meso-Macro time frames Biography Individual life that flows through the life span from birth to death – life journeys (Chamberlyn) The life course: a key organising principle - the negotiation of a passage through an unpredictably changing environment (Harris 1987: 27-8). The life course does not simply unfold before and around us, rather we actively organise the flow, pattern and direction of experience (Holstein and Gubrium 2000 184). Trajectories, Transitions, Turning points: what triggers a change? The quant movie shows movements from A to B; the qual movie reveals why such journeys undertaken and the nature of the journey along the way.

17. Macro-Time: History How individuals locate themselves in different epochs and in relation to these external conditions and events, including shifting policy landscapes; The greater the longitudinal reach of a QL study, the greater its historical value. Historical moments: when individual lives become bound up with widespread changes - the recession in the Timescapes study. How has family time been defined and practiced in historical context, and what are the evolving intersections of family and work time seen in historical perspective?

18. Micro and Macro Time We cannot hope to understand society unless we have a prior understanding of the relationship between biography and history... [the task is to] continually work out and revise your views on the problems of history, the problems of biography and the problems of social structure in which biography and history intersect (C Wright Mills The Sociological Imagination 1959:225).

19. Meso-Time: linked lives Relational level of investigation moves us away from isolated individuals (Elder). Collective agency or social processes operating in families, community groups, organisations and networks that mediate between micro and macro Timescapes used Generational time: intergenerational relationships, and age cohorts (Mannhiem): the beat generation, the war generation (Judith Burnett) Eg: Brannen: four generation families; Shah and Priestley: disability across the life course, different generational cohorts to link micro with macro time.

20. Past - Present - Future hindsight, foresight, insight The past as a subjective resource, the power of memory, heritage – hindsight produces self understanding and plays an integral role in shaping moral life (Freeman) The past is not fixed: the overwriting and reconstruction of biographies from the vantage point of an ever changing present - Subjective understandings of causality (Laub and Sampson).

21. x … life … must be lived forwards. … But … it must be understood backwards. S ǿ ren Kierkegaard

22. “…when you look back, you see the path or paths that you've taken. The path would obviously not be so clear when you're groping up and finding it, would it. Whereas when you're high up you can look back and see and it sort of stands out much more clearly, things you didn't realize at the time.” (Molly Andrews Narrative research)

23. The Future The future as a key site for research (Barbara Adam) The future is under -researched and yet future aspirations and orientations enable us to understand the seeds of change. Captured through written accounts and time maps or timelines – tools to think with. We can revisit the future at each research encounter to perceive whether participants remain on the same life path, or what opportunities or constraints have led to a new or modified path.

24. EMILIA (YLT, age 15)

25. SOPHIE (YLT, age 15)

28. Challenges in QL research. Temporal ethics – time is an ethical challenge but also a resource. Not maintaining samples but sustaining research relationships often over years, balancing intrusion and neglect. ethos of reciprocity, in the field rather than remaining distanced from people’s lives. balance of confidentiality with authenticity – move to an ethos of shared authority in the representation of people’s lives (Neale 2013) QL Data and Analysis Generates huge, unwieldy, multi media datasets that need managing for longitudinal analysis and for archiving and sharing with others- Timescapes Archive - datasets become important outputs from a study- deserving care and recognition. Complex analysis: Cases by wave; theme by wave, case and theme by wave. Tools: Case histories. Framework.

29. CASE HISTORIES : Jay Wave 1. Accommodation. Jay would like to find a house in the near future, but he is unsure of how to do this. Jay hopes to find somewhere for the three of them to live together. “She’ll be living with her mum and like when the baby’s arrived. And then…after that we’re going to be saving up, saving up and…going to try get a house - just me, partner and our baby.” Until then, after the baby arrives, the couple will split their time between two households (maternal and paternal grandmother’s houses). “Yeah we’re buying like a cot for the baby and stuff at mine. And we’re buying one at her mum’s. … They’ll probably share a bedroom with me at mine. At her house there’s three bedrooms, at mine there’s two.”

30. Framework Grids: Housing ParticipantPre-interviewWave oneWave twoWave three JimmyLiving with his mum and brother Lived with partner at her mum’s house for a while, now returned to live at his mum’s house. Jimmy, his partner and their child are now living between his mum’s house and his partner’s mum’s house. Now lives with a friend from college after a fall out with his mum. TarrellLiving with his mum (father is deceased) Still living with mum Unable to contact participant Now living with partner and two of his four children at partner’s house JasonLiving alone after moving out of foster care Still living aloneIn prisonUnable to contact participant

31. The power of QL research A powerful tool for knowing and understanding the social world in a different way, understanding the interior logic of lives, discovering the unimaginable. Can address some of the grand challenges of social science in a world of rapid social change. – with great potential in leisure research Seeing things qualitatively through the lens of time ‘quite simply changes everything’ (Barbara Adam)

32. Timescapes@leeds.ac.uk Visit the Timescapes website for further information of QL methods, ethics, publications and resources. The Timescapes Methods Guides Series – available on the website.

33. References Neale, B (2013) Adding Time into the Mix: Stakeholder Ethics in QL research. Methodological Innovations Online (special issue). October. Neale, B. and Flowerdew, J. 2003) Time, Texture and Childhood: The Contours of Longitudinal Qualitative Research International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 6 (3): 189-199 Saldana, J. (2003) Longitudinal Qualitative Research: Analyzing Change Through Time Altamira Press Thomson, R., Plumridge, L. and Holland, J. (2003)(eds.) Longitudinal Qualitative Research: a Developing Methodology: International Journal of Social Research Methodology. 6 (3). Special Issue.