Why does comparative, mixed methods,

research matter?

Practicalities of Cohort and Longitudinal Research

International Symposium on Cohort and Longitudinal

Studies in Developing Countries

Florence 13-15 October 2014

Virginia Morrow

YOUNG LIVES LONGITUDINAL DESIGN

• 4 major household survey rounds completed so

far: in 2002; 2006/7; 2009; 2013 – final round

2016.

• Qualitative research – four rounds

• School study

• Comprehensive focus – nutrition, development,

cognitive and psycho-social, education, social

protection

• Partnership of government and independent

research institutes in each country

• Core funded by DFID

Qualitative research:

Longitudinal qualitative data are being collected from a nested

sample of both cohorts – 50 children in each country

3 rounds of data have been collected (2007, 2008, 2011) with a

further round ongoing 2014.

Methods include: child interviews, caregiver interviews, group

discussions, group activities, data gathered using creative

methods, teacher interviews, etc.

Focus on children’s daily lives – time-use, school, work,

transitions, aspirations, experiences, well-being.

QLR in Young Lives

- Embedded within a larger survey study (Young Lives did not

originally include qualitative design)

- Complements other data sources

- Children’s and caregiver’s evaluations of what has shaped

their trajectories

- Qualitative research enabled identification of broad unifying

research questions

- Iterative – survey and qualitative protocol design

- Adds depth to processes behind survey findings

- Adaptable to changing research contexts, age and

biographical circumstances of participants

-Policy and communications - individual cases in broader

context of changing communities

What kinds of childhood are imagined and

created through the research?

• A range of disciplines, so a range of understandings of

childhood?

• Economics: children as future human capital; childhood

separate from adulthood

• Social anthropology: children as (constrained) social

actors, lived realities of children, relational understanding

• Limitations: futurity, profitability, instrumental view of

children vs. Small scale of ethnographic work – numbers

matter.

Binary division between qual/quant

Quantitative

• Magnitude

• Distribution

• Prevalence

• Proportion

• Objective ‘facts’

• Conclusive

• Generalisable

• Outliers – ignore!

• Value-base – implicit

• Lack of conceptualisation

• Human capital - future

• Focus on individual

• Simple policy solutions –

• abolitionist approaches

Qualitative

• Socio-economic context

• Institutional/political processes

• Practices behind decision-making

• Quality

• Subjective experiences

• Exploratory

• Particular

• Outliers – interesting – follow up!

• Values - explicit

• Conceptualisation the starting point

• Daily life, here and now

• Focus on collective experiences

• Policy suggestions complex,

unintended consequences

Towards an integrated approach

• Enables political-economic analysis linking context to

magnitude of phenomena

• Reveals practices and process behind trends

• How and why households respond

• Enhanced understanding of factors behind statistics

• Balanced explanations of people’s actions –

interdependency of family members

• A more nuanced view

• Illustrative

• QLR – understanding biographical change over time in

depth

• Clarification of how questions are understood in context

• Grounded, realistic (?) policy suggestions.

Example: injuries among young people

• From qualitative research, extent and effects of

injuries

• Prevalence in survey of injuries

• Lack of evidence/data (epidemiological –

hospital admissions)

• Primary focus on sexual and reproductive health

• Explore patterns, socio-demographic risk

factors, and consequences of injuries

• Mixed methods paper

Approach: integration

• Iterative – initial analysis of both data sets

separately

• Key areas identified where young people

reported injury (work/doing chores, recreation

and sports, transport)

• 2-way process where survey and qualitative

analysis informed each other

• To acquire understanding of socio-demographic

risk factors and potential long-term health

consequences

Findings

• Survey: Work injuries: slightly more frequent in

Ethiopia and AP India than Peru and Vietnam

• Cuts, ‘falls’, animal-related, transport-related

• In Ethiopia and AP India, gender – boys higher

likelihood of work injuries than girls.

• Poverty/rurality – in Ethiopia, Peru and Vietnam

• Qualitative: consequences of injuries – social

and economic, for individual and entire family.

• Eg Ethiopia, Habtamu age 13 in 2009: cut his

leg with an axe, chopping wood.

Habtamu

• ‘First, my parents put chilli and alcohol on the

sore... I was treated in this way for one month.

However, I was seriously sick, and I was taken

to the modern health centre. I had one medicine

by injection and another medicine which was

take in the form of fluid.... Then I was able to

recover from the injury’.

• Habtamu’s brother took on his work,

• Habtamu’father paid for hospital treatment.

• Implications: financial burden, and his brother’s

time at school

Other examples & implications:

• Recreation and sports injuries – lack of safe

spaces, risky activities, playing football on roads,

kite flying on roofs.

• Transport injuries - motorbikes, bicycles –

overcrowding, poor road quality, fear of falling,

public transport.

• Explaining injuries: the importance of spiritual

forces

• (Limitations, and further research needed)

• Health care inaccessible, lay remedies

• Adapt injury prevention approaches to differing

environments/understandings

Conclusions….

• Combining methods and models of childhood

enables deeper understanding

• Binary division between qual and quant is

simplistic

• Copious examples of integrated approaches,

and of combining or mixing methods

• Need transparency about process of integration

• Barriers: paradigm wars, and publishing

conventions

• Workshops on combining qual/quant

• Impact agenda?

REFERENCES

Boyden J and M Bourdillon (eds) (2012) Childhood poverty, multidisciplinary approaches.

Palgrave/Macmillan, London.

Boyden, J and M Bourdillon (eds) (2014) Growing up in Poverty: Findings from Young Lives, Basingstoke:

Palgrave Macmillan.

Crivello, G., Morrow, V., Wilson, E. (2013) Young Lives Longitudinal Qualitative Research: a guide for

researchers. Young Lives Technical Note 26, Young Lives, Oxford. www.younglives.org.uk

Heissler K & Porter C. (2013) Know your place: Ethiopian children’s contributions to the household economy.

European Journal of Development Research, 25, 4, 600-620.

Morrow, V., Barnett, I, and Vujcich, D. (2014) Understanding the causes and consequences of injuries to

adolescents growing up in poverty in Ethiopia, Andhra Pradesh (India), Vietnam and Peru: a mixed method

study, Health Policy and Planning, 29, 1, 67-75.

Morrow, V., and Crivello, G. (in preparation, 2015) What is the value of qualitative longitudinal research with

children and young people for international development? For (eds) R. Thomson & J. MacLeod, ‘New

Frontiers in Qualitative Longitudinal Research’, Special issue of Int Jnl Social Research Methodology

Morrow, V. and Vennam, U. (2012) Children’s responses to risk in agricultural work in Andhra Pradesh, India.

Development in Practice 22 (4): 549-561.

Orkin, K. (2011) See first, think later, then test: How children’s perspectives can improve economic

research. European Journal of Development Research, 23, 5, 774-791.

FINDING OUT MORE…

www.younglives.org.uk

• methods and research papers

• datasets (UK data archive)

• publications

• child profiles and photos

• e-newsletter

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS & THANK YOU

• Young Lives children, parents/caregivers as well as

community leaders, teachers, health workers and

others in communities.

• Fieldworkers, data-managers, survey enumerators

and supervisors, principal investigators and country

directors in each country

• Oxford team

• Funders: DFID, DGIS, IrishAid, Oak Foundation,

Bernard Van Leer Foundation.