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ESRC/ NCRM Training Seminar on Cross-National Research:
Research design – scientific and pragmatic rationales for choice of countries, case studies
and their contextualisation
An EU qualitative study on housing
Deborah Quilgars,
Centre for Housing Policy, University of York
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Why consider this issue?
• Growth in cross-national research• Yet, relatively small body of literature on
cross-national research, especially qualitative methods
• Challenge greatest for qualitative work? Interpretation across historical, cultural and socio-political contexts….
• There are both scientific and pragmatic choices – need to make these explicit
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The research study: aims
• Origins of Security and Insecurity (OSIS) -Citizens and Governance Programme (6th Fr)
• Housing as site of restructuring – interplay with jobs, household structures, finance, welfare etc
• Key aims:– Analyse factors & processes that have impacted on
households;
– Establish how households perceive patterns of security and insecurity & how affected personal strategies
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The research study: methods overview
• Two key stages:– Quantitative analyses at macro and micro level
– Qualitative work
• Qualitative studies– Institutional studies
– 30 household interviews in each country, exploring perceptions, attitudes and extent to which housing is a resource and repository of ‘wealth’
• Today mainly focussing on qualitative work
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The countries and researchers
• Belgium - University of Antwerp
• Finland - University of Turku
• France - ANIL, Paris
• Germany - University of Bremen
• Hungary – Metropolitan Research Institute, Budapest
• The Netherlands – OTB, Technical University of Delft
• Portugal - Centre for Studies for Social Intervention, Lisbon
• Sweden - Uppsala University
• UK - Universities of Birmingham & York
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Choice of countries
• Scientific rationale: – selected to enable comparison across different
welfare regime types (Esping-Andersen etc)– & different housing markets (renting/ home-
owning split etc)
• Pragmatic rationale:– Cooperation - previous partnerships – Compromise - availability and interest
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Identifying case studies I:Selecting geographical areas
• Pragmatism of one case study in each country:– impossibility of reflecting experiences across
localities (the compromise of selecting an ‘average’ area)
– location influenced by budget…. (comparing Budapest with York… a compromise)
– reality that household responses may have been different if rural areas selected…
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Identifying case studies II: Selecting the respondents
• How important is it to select the same ‘categories’ of respondents? – Losing the reflection of individual countries
but gaining the comparison e.g. ratio of home-owners: renters
• Finding the respondents– Same or different recruitment methods?
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Contextualisation I
• Analysis as the biggest challenge• Importance of agreed analytical framework
(and coding frame) • Locating analysis within institutional
understanding essential• Layers of analysis = layers of interpretation?...
Linguistic issues means analysis of country material not transparent….loss of cultural messages and understandings?
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Contextualisation II
• Problem of moving from country reports to overview report… Compromise of two countries combining the material…. Could we ask for funds for everyone to be involved?
• Risk of ethnocentric focus by leading country/ countries
• Cooperation as means of accentuating the advantages & minimising the dangers
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Cooperation is all
• Direction or over-direction?
• Past experience important?
• Knowing your fellow researchers
• Establishing open methods of communication
• Value of virtual meetings
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Conclusions
• Cross-national research is by its nature a challenge
• Cooperation essential and compromise inevitable
• … need to be pragmatic but scientific rationale and methods prevail overall, if work hard enough!