Accessing Socially Excluded People — Trust and the Gatekeeper in the Researcher-Participant Relationship

This paper describes methodological findings from research to recruit and research hard-to-reach socially excluded people. We review the ways in which researchers have used particular strategies to access hard-to-reach individuals and groups and note that little attention has been given to understanding the implications of the nature of the trust relationship between researcher and participant. Gatekeepers invariably play a role in accessing socially excluded people in research, yet discussion to date invariably focuses on the instrumental role gatekeepers play in facilitating researchers\' access. In this paper we explore the possibilities for analysing relationships in terms of trust and distrust between gatekeeper and socially excluded participant. Our analysis considers the different kinds of relationships that exist between gatekeepers and socially excluded people and, in particular, the relationships of power between gatekeepers and socially excluded people. Insights into the nature of trust among socially excluded people will also be considered. Finally, we discuss how size and use of social networks among socially excluded groups and perceptions of risk in interactions with gatekeepers are important to understanding the possibilities for trustful relationships, and for meaningful and successful access for researchers to socially excluded individuals and groups.Social Exclusion, Access, Research, Gatekeepers, Trust, Distrust, Risk

Participatory Mapping: An innovative sociological method

This toolkit is an introduction to using participatory maps in your research. It explains some of the benefits of this approach, which can be used with individuals and groups, often together with more traditional interview techniques. It gives practical tips on how to approach this kind of research, taken from experiences in the Connected Lives project

Participatory walking interviews: More than walking and talking?

Presentation based on experiences of using walking interviews in the Connected Lives project, part of Real Life Methods

'We walk the walk, but can we talk the talk' (with deference to John Lee Hooker): walkabouts to understand the lived environment of community

Presentation based on experience of using walking interviews in the Connected Lives

Using Walking Interviews

This toolkit discusses our experiences using walking interviews in outdoor urban environments, focusing on the practicalities of conducting these interviews and on ways of thinking about the data produced in the method, which we used as part of the Connected Lives project

Healthy Communities

Presentation at an event to launch the Leeds Student Health Needs Assessment organised by the Leeds Primary Care Trust. Based on the research of the Connected Lives project

"Who Will Marry a Diseased Girl?" Marriage, Gender, and Tuberculosis Stigma in Asia

In a qualitative study on the stigma associated with tuberculosis (TB), involving 73 interviews and eight focus groups conducted in five sites across three countries (Bangladesh, Nepal, and Pakistan), participants spoke of TB’s negative impact on the marriage prospects of women in particular. Combining the approach to discovering grounded theory with a conceptualization of causality based on a realist ontology, we developed a theory to explain the relationships between TB, gender, and marriage. The mechanism at the heart of the theory is TB’s disruptiveness to the gendered roles of wife (or daughter-in-law) and mother. It is this disruptiveness that gives legitimacy to the rejection of marriage to a woman with TB. Whether or not this mechanism results in a negative impact of TB on marriage prospects depends on a range of contextual factors, providing opportunities for interventions and policies