My Research Methods
The research methods I have chosen to use are semi-structured interviews using a quota sample of twelve people, which I’ll obtain by attending a school annual open evening. From this, I’ll be able to interview my respondents in a nearby classroom, while simultaneously providing information about the work in sociology done at school.
I’m not using complete structured interviews, because as well as following a well-defined and fairly rigid plan; I want to and can have the choice to allow respondents to explore a question in more than one way. Also, because I’m able to use both quantifiable and qualitative data, (where the advantages of that are written in my Research Objectives).
Using an interviewing method, I have the ability to clarify any misunderstandings over meanings, as well as being in control of the pace of the questioning. I’m able to pick useful background data from observing respondents reactions to the questions, as well as obtaining quantitative data, which can be analysed statistically, where conclusions can be later made as a whole. My respondents also have the freedom to talk, where they find a certain area interesting, if remaining faithful to my aims. With interviews, they can also be designed to follow up interesting lines of enquiry that a respondent answer may suggest.
The problems that I may face as a whole, is that interviewing is very time consuming. Contacting a representative sample may mean waiting for respondents to turn up, while also trying to get them to co-operate. Respondents could sidetrack the questioning process, perhaps by commenting on a previous question, instead on answering the one just added. They may even give no response at all.
A source distortion that can sometimes never be eliminated between a respondent and interviewer is the actual validity. For example, the respondent may be looking for clues that indicate what sort of answers the researcher wants i.e. if they have negative perceptions of the interviewer, respondents may give deliberately provocative answers, or if they wish to impress, they may give answers to project a positive image of themselves; either way effecting the validity of the results.
I will put the research into practice by making solutions to these limitations. I will plan and pre-book rooms where I’m able to schedule the interviews of both in easy reach of the respondents and myself. I will attempt to build a secure, trustworthy and relaxing environment for the interviewee, by building up a good rapport in the short space of time I have with them, e.g. by providing tea, coffee and using polite and friendly manners. To try and prevent any bias answering by respondents about themselves, I will also take upon on a neutral approach, in which the respondent doesn’t know my attitudes taken upon their answers. As my interviews will be conducted at a school open evening, there are more than enough people needed in my sample and so if there is no co-operation by a few, the problem can be eliminated, by just asking more. Also, a school itself is a relaxing environment which ‘exudes’ education, which helps gain the parents trust to want to freely co-operate, where they are generally interested in what goes on in the subjects.
Often interviews branch into different areas, depending on the responses given to a certain question, so I will put questions belonging to a particular branch together. This way I can quickly flip to them and return to the main run of question when I have finished.
As this is only a pilot study there will be problems with my research methods. Firstly, as I am the only researcher, it may affect the reliability. Reason being, as I am a female, male respondents may not feel as content into talking about their perceptions, and vice versa if it was a male interviewer with a female. I also acknowledge that due to the size of the sample, problems that may arise may not be of that on a larger scale (problems listed in my findings).
As my research involves looking and talking about ethical issues, I will firstly ask if they would like to participate, explaining a little about it, giving them the choice to continue with the interview.
My Findings
Through my study of twelve semi structured interviews, I obtained a great deal of qualitative data concerning personal views and perceptions, about how they would like to bring up their children in order to continue with their Turkish identity? It raised questions such as, whether it’s important to be bilingual? How they learnt to talk English? Whether their households were predominantly Turkish speaking? etc (See questionnaire in appendix).
I found many of my respondents shared comparable experiences and adopted similar attitudes. This I felt resulted from similar backgrounds. For example those who were born in Turkey/Cyprus had far stronger values on their children to learn Turkish, practice traditions, etc, than those who were born here. Many of their reasons for this were also analogous; they want their children to have the advantage of being bilingual, to be able to communicate with elder members of the family and most importantly to ‘remember their mother tongue and recognise their roots’ (Fatma Jemal).
Those who were born in England I found, tended to adopt a ‘lighter’ approach to the ‘importance’ of continuing or wanting their children to continue with the Turkish identity e.g speaking Turkish. However, the limitation to this may just show the coincidental majority of views, resulting from an unrepresentative sample. For example, my sample may be full of the ‘least religious’ Turkish people, who in fact may be ‘very English’ i.e. speaking English at all times and not knowing any Turkish. However, this certainly does not mean all Turkish people who were born or live in London, act upon this way. I may have needed translators in a larger scale sample, for those who could speak very little English. The generalisation of Turkish people from London, having a greater sense of being ‘English than Turkish’, therefore may not all be true. In fact I did come across one lady who was born in London, however appeared as having an even stronger identity than those who weren’t. One reason being, ‘ I feel I have to try even harder in maintaining my identity. Speaking Turkish is a way for me to do this.’ (Yasemine Menevilli).
I found from my research that men whether born in England or in Turkey/ Cyprus, supported the same responses on wanting their children and grandchildren to continue with the Turkish identity and to value and respect their roots. Again this may be an unrepresentative sample. Women majorily feel that way too. However, they tended to give the strongest of opinions i.e. ‘I was brought up this way, so my children will be’ (Ertan Mehmet) and admitting to ‘coming down hard’ on their children to do so. This brings to surface some gender differences, whereby Turkish women (from my sample) seemed to be more excepting than the men; who adopted an aggressive patriarchal view and speaking Turkish at home or publicly was a way to show this.
In retrospect, it is clear that my original choice of topic (Has the Turkish community loss or continued with their identity?) although sociologically relevant, was far too broad to investigate successfully, so deciding to break it down and focus on one aspect; language, was appropriate.
There seemed to be a sense of a heterogeneous Turkish community, where a diversity of answers was given. Some were homogenous in the view it was important to continue with the Turkish identity, while some were less concerned. A class issue aroused from this. Those who came from middle class backgrounds tended to be anglicised, portraying more of an ‘English identity’ than their own. This was achieved by having an English partner for example, speaking English at home etc. Those belonging to the working class community however adopted a stronger patriarchal view and succeeded more in maintaining their identity. They were the group who tended to put their children into Turkish schooling, expressing Turkish rituals and festivals etc. This evidently proves the working class community have a greater value towards family and keeping the solidarity of their community than that from the middleclass. This however, may be effected by location factors. The working class tend to live close by in the same communities, yet those belonging to the middle-upper working classes are polarised and more geographically mobile, making that cohesion difficult.
The family are great influences that help maintain identity. Children who lived occasionally with grandparents and had a better affiliation than those who didn’t, tended to speak Turkish fluently and value the Turkish Identity stronger. This was mainly because those older family members, who were unable to talk English, communicated to their grandchildren by talking Turkish, where children had to and soon learnt. The passing of their strong attitude and values also affected this.
Similarly to a research completed on Indians, some Turkish children also had a strong Turkish identity, however illustrated it adaptively. When going to school or when surrounded by English peers, they tended to wear a ‘white mask’, in which their Turkish identity was disguised. However, when getting home, fluent Turkish is spoken, Turkish food eaten, Turkish music listened to etc
The Turkish community is changing. A sufficient number of Turkish people aren’t learning Turkish, through formal teaching or from families, many are in interracial relationships and seem to lack the determination to want to continue with their identity. This notably correlated with the increasing number of Turkish people born in England; those born in England are polarised from their original ethnic roots and so slowly loose strong ethnic ties. Most of their families have moved to England and a lot aren’t marrying Turkish people. The lack of marriages of both Turkish partners definitely has had some effect on the Turkish identity, where children normally adopt one or the other. And so the continuation of the Turkish community and identity is questioned.
Limitations
Generally, the problems that I encountered were ones that I did fortunately anticipate. I expected some lack of cooperation from respondents and some answers to be directed when getting too broadened and generalised. A problem that I did encounter, which infact I was quite glad to have come across, was the refusal of co-operation from one lady, once I asked whether she would like to participate in my coursework. This may I suspect have been down to suspicion. I am aware newly arrived immigrants may feel cautious to why I was asking such questions about their identity and may refuse to co-operate on this matter. This have may been the case with the lady I came across. Thus, if I did practice this research on a larger scale sample, I would be ready to resolve the problem by showing a form of id. Conversely, what I did in the rest of the duration in my sample was to try and avoid further circumstances like this, by simply explaining what I’m researching for.
I overcame practicalities such as transport, time and venue, by attending my schools annual open evening, whereby a quiet comfortable classroom with a working and educational atmosphere was used and tea/ coffee offered to help improve the rapport in the short time we had together. I also felt being Turkish myself, as well as adding some of my experiences benefited the interview, as a sense of recognition and understanding was shown.
I felt I chose the appropriate method, semi structured interviews for qualitative data, as I was able to deal with feelings and emotions to gain a valid response. However, I feel my sample was not large enough, for me to give a representable piece of data, which I could comfortably generalise about the Turkish community. Twelve candidates were not enough to validate my coursework and the fact that many respondents were given similar answers may have not been becasue of similar experiences, but maybe the generalisations of my questions, or even the coincidental similar views from people in my sample.
Although limited, I feel my project has produced some valid and moderately reliable and representative data, but more importantly factors which I would need to be aware of and able to overcome in advance to improve the quality of it. However, overall I did feel I gained an answer to my question, but not that of an apparent one. There is some evidence that the Turkish identity has and proudly continued on living in England, but that the correlation of this view were largely from those that were born here, i.e. The respondents who weren’t born here often said they wanted to emigrate back to Turkey/Cyprus when reaching retirement. However, if a larger study was produced I may even be proven wrong and by chance could have picked individuals who had this view who were coincidently born in London. I feel this may be the case, as again using myself as an example, my mother who was born here shares the same values and like to consider herself and us as still remaining faithful to our identity, as my dad, who was born in Turkey.
I wouldn’t do much to improve my study, as most of the problems I came across were inevitable through my size sample and ones that I anticipated. I would however, have got one other Turkish boy, to conduct the study with me, interviewing the male respondents and vice versa.
After conducting my research I did feel I might have over interpreted too much and felt I would need to have taken a more neutral approach when interviewing. I felt my questions overall were relevant and helped me understand and drive towards my aims of what I wanted to find. I felt by me using a conversational approach, relaxed the respondents and made it seem less of an interrogation on their perceptions. Through this I felt I got a lot more out of it, than using a simple question and answer adjacency pair technique. I used a very comfortable venue (my school classroom) and most participants were interested in the coursework I was doing.
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Diary
December 4th Looked for appropriate secondary data on the Internet, library etc. Found and read ‘Cypriots in Haringey’ from the library.
December 9th Planned interview for the coming open evening e.g. what were suitable questions to ask ? etc. Roughly planned my introduction, my aims and objectives.
December 13th Open Evening- Interviews were to be taken place at school 1830-2100.
Venue- sociology classroom. Teas and coffees to also be provided. Gathered information from respondents and went home.
December 15th Studied data received from respondents. Highlighted points made from them, similar answers etc. Roughly planned my findings.
January 5th Continued working on and writing out my findings.
January 14th Wrote out a first draft to my coursework. Read and checked what I had written-improved and added to it.
January 15th Typed up my coursework, adding important points that were left from my draft.
January 16th Carried on typing up coursework.
January 17th Handed in to my English teacher to check any spelling/ grammatical errors.
January 20th Corrected any mistakes highlighted. Finished coursework.
