Recycling the evidence: different approaches to the reanalysis of gerontological data

In 1991 Professor Margot JEFFERYS and two colleagues interviewed "pioneers of geriatric medicine" of whom 60 were geriatricians. These data are now on disk and can be searched digitally. The interviews were long and focussed on the careers of the doctors in terms of their personal successes and their ability to make the undervalued field of elder care into a respectable discipline in academic and practical medicine. The reanalysis of data for different purposes is an increasingly important methodological issue. This paper considers ethical and methodological issues raised by analysing data generated at another time and by another researcher. Two different approaches, reconstructive oral history and digitised analysis, are discussed with a view to understanding the contribution of overseas trained doctors to the development of the geriatric specialty, mid C20 geriatricians' career choice and experiences of cultural difference

Biographical methods

The chapter reviews three different approaches to biographical methods, the biographical interpretive method, oral history and narrative analysis. Each is outlined in turn, looking at distinguishing characteristics. Each makes use of the interview to generate data and while each has unique strengths, the chapter concludes with a commitment to an oral history approach with its focus on the dynamics of the interview

Biography as empowerment or appropriation: Research and practice issues

Biographical methods are increasingly recognised as making a positive contribution to research and practice in health and social care, in particular claims for empowerment are frequently made. The authors evaluate this contribution and these claims, using a matrix with axes 'bottom up' to 'top down' and 'research' to 'practice', to position and reflect on examples of their own use of biographical methods in research

Recycling the evidence: Different approaches to the reanalysis of elite life histories

The chapter considers the re-analysis of a specific data set, the life histories of a select group of pioneers of geriatric medicine collected by Professor Margot Jefferys' in 1991. It considers what these interviews demonstrate about changing attitudes to family and community amongst one particular group of professionals. The chapter concludes that to some extent the interviewees' professional identity and ability to develop geriatrics as a specialty in its own right depended on their recognition of family and community. However, in relation to policy, community and family are terms which have much changed in their meanings over the last twenty years and the interviews require reading with these changing contexts in mind

Remembering and reworking emotions: the reanalysis of emotion in an interview

Oral historians commonly interview older people, yet tend to neglect what is known about the psychology of old age and the significance of an interview in the life of an older person. Researchers likewise come to the interview with agendas, biographies and life stage issues. In the interview situation, these various components, contributed by both sides in the partnership, emerge in ways which can be difficult to deal with at the time, provoking unpredictable emotional responses. Looking back at data generated from such encounters can be revelatory, not only in relation to research goals but in terms of insights into the interviewer's own self-awareness and understanding of the process of interviewing. This article explores these issues by drawing on an interview carried out almost thirty years previously during which a woman in her eighties recalled, with much emotion, an experience from her childhood

Reminiscence and oral history: parallel universes or shared endeavour?

There is a common methodology to reminscence and life review with older people and oral history, and yet very little common literature. The distinguishing characteristics of these approaches are described and three areas of work are featured: interrogation, partnership and ownership. The discussion draws on a case study drawn from research on family break-up and reconstitution, and the performance of a play devised and performed by a group of older actors to an international conference. I conclude by identifying ways in which both approaches might benefit from a closer collaboration

"Without racism there would be no geriatrics": South Asian overseas-trained doctors and the development of Geriatric Medicine in the United Kingdom', 1950-2000

The long history of medical migration to the united Kingdom is relatively well known. however, until recently the story of the contribu-tion of South Asian doctors to specific fields has been less discussed. in this chapter we address this gap by focusing on the contributions of migrant doctors to the geriatric specialty. We begin with a history of geriatrics in the united Kingdom and go on to outline our methodology before describing the process by which South asian doctors came to be working in geriatric medicine, what barriers they encountered, and how networks worked both for and against them, before conclud- ing with a consideration of how certain regional centres of excellence played a part in their professional development and careers as consult- ants in the specialty

”Without racism there would be no geriatrics’, in South Asian overseas-trained doctors and the development of geriatric medicine in the United Kingdom, 1950-2000”’

There has been a long history of migration of doctors from the colonies to the United Kingdom. Records of medical migration show that the practice of moving in order to study in the United Kingdom began at least in the 1840s and kept pace throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and South Asians accounted for a significant part of this migration. Those who taught medicine in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka had often trained in the United Kingdom for some time. As a result, many doctors in South Asia felt that they were part of a community of medical practitioners for whom some markers of participation in the U.K. labour market were central to career progression. They had often been advised by their teachers to get training in the United Kingdom. Upgrading and validating skills through training at one of the U.K. royal colleges was therefore seen as crucial to being recognized as a good doctor and was embedded in South Asian doctors’ professional cultures. Organizations like the royal colleges implicitly shaped migration (and indeed directly benefit financially from it) through their ability to award internationally accredited professional qualifications that were prestigious across the Commonwealth. As a result, many doctors in South Asia were already in some way part of a professional community where migration to the United Kingdom was seen as part of career progression. The South Asian doctors were not alone, of course. The history of colonialism and postcolonialism meant that doctors from other parts of the British Empire and Commonwealth were similarly leaving home to gain qualifications in the United Kingdom’s medical system, though with different experiences and outcomes, as Armstrong’s research shows

Difference and distinction? Non-migrant and migrant networks

In recent years the role of social networks, and of social capital, in shaping migrants' lived experiences and particularly, their employment opportunity has increasingly come to be recognised. However, very little of this research has adopted a relational understanding of the migrant experience, taking the influence of non-migrants' own networks on migrants as an important factor in influencing their labour market outcomes. This paper critiques the alterity and marginality automatically ascribed to migrants that is implicit in existing ways of thinking about migrant networks. The paper draws on oral history interviews with geriatricians who played an important role in the establishment of the discipline during the second half of the twentieth century to explore the importance and power of non-migrant networks in influencing migrant labour market opportunities in the UK medical labour market