Researching Up? Interviews, Emotionality and Policy-Making Elites

Bibliographic Data

ID2115115
AuthorsSarah Neal (0000-0003-1812-7221, The Open University), Eugene Mclaughlin (0000-0003-4003-3272, Northampton Community College)
Year2009
Volume38
Issue4
Pages689-707
Publication date2009-10-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Social Policy (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0047-2794 • E-ISSN: 1469-7823
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0047279409990018
OpenAlexW2160947010
LanguageEN
Citations received28
References cited48

This article recounts the methodological story of a qualitative research project that investigated the work of the Commission on the Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain and the news media's deconstruction of the Commission's report - theParekh Report- which was published on 11 October 2000. Our project used a multi-method fieldwork approach, combining textual analysis of news media coverage and the extensive documentary archives of the Commission, along with semi-structured interviews with Commissioners and other figures involved in the publication of the Report. The article attempts to offer a reflexive account of the experiences of interviewing a particular public policy-making eliteandexamines how a particular 'public trauma' - that is, the damaging political fall-out of extremely negative news media coverage of theParekh Report- inflected our research encounters. We argue that the openness with which many of the participants spoke about this traumatic experience suggests that the production of policy documents can constitute highly emotional labour for participants. We extend this argument by examining how this openness also reveals the instabilities and uncertainties of power within the research interviewee/interviewer relationship. In this way the article seeks to contribute to debates about the problems of defining the category 'elites' in both public policy and social research worlds

Argument (complex analysis) · Commission · Deconstruction (building) · Elite · Interview · Openness to experience · Political science · Politics · Power (physics) · Public relations · Reflexivity · Social science · Sociology · Gender, Security, and Conflict · Law · Migration, Refugees, and Integration · Psychology · Qualitative Research Methods and Ethics · Social Psychology