PHENOMENOLOGISTS BEHIND BARS:
how to do QUALITATIVE research
INTERVIEWS WITH
incarcerated YOUTHs
PHENOMENOLOGISTS BEHIND BARS:
how to do QUALITATIVE research
INTERVIEWS WITH
incarcerated YOUTHs
This tutorial is a first "crash course" in conducting qualitative research interviews with youths in jail.
It is not and exhaustive or complete guide, but a good start. For further information and additional tips, please contact cb53@cornell.edu
Whether you are a student, a researcher, a writer, or a member of the juvenile justice system, if you have it in your heart to try to understand incarcerated kids, you have come to the right webpage.
If the idea of interviewing kids in jail repels or horrifies you, you are not alone, and you are also on the wrong webpage...
If you are still reading, let's begin:
The information you are about to explore stems from a project called "Making sense of senseless youth violence". It was conducted in New York State, by researchers at Cornell University, in Ithaca, NY. An important part of this project consisted of trying to make sense of youth violence by going directly to violent youths, to ask them to tell us about youth violence in their own words, from their life perspectives. After all, if we want to know about something, what better way than to start by going to the source?
because you have silenced him"
(anonymous)
Our project turns to the direct experience of incarcerated youth and asks: How do children become teenagers involved in committing the serious violent offenses society is becoming increasingly familiar with, such as murder, attempted-murder, manslaughter and assault with weapons?
But wait...Before running to the jail, let's stop and think. What is it I'm about to do at the jail? And, why?
I wanted to start by confessing that I have very strong feelings about the need for directly involving violent kids in research on youth violence, and I have strong feelings about the kids locked behind jail walls.
For one, I LIKE these kids, no matter what they have done. I respect them because of the journey they have walked. I know that some people have little or no respect for these kids at all, mostly because of what the kids have done, and for what they represent. But contrary to those people, I have a lot of respect for these kids. I don't like what they did -- Many have committed horrible acts unto other human beings. But as a qualitative researcher and as a person, I look at these kids as being more than the crimes they have done. There are life stories behind what has led them to violence. There are human stories of evolution towards crime.
An important goal of social research is to make this world a better place. In youth violence research, that motivate translates into the question: "Are we going to stop at blaming, or are we going to take it a step further and try to understand, in order to possibly identify ways to prevent other youths from evolving towards crime?" That is the framework, the philosophy behind this kind of research. The practice is the next logical step: I want to make sure that I do my best to hear what it is about this kid's life that landed him in here-- I want to make sure that I get his own account of how he got here, in his own words, from his own perspective. The method to help this practice bear fruit is a branch of qualitative research called phenomenology.
Phenomenology focuses on the question:"What is the structure and essence of experience of this phenomenon for these people?" (Patton, M.Q., 1990). The phenomenon here is acts of violence committed by youths. Acts serious enough to land them in jail. Hussert (1962) explained it as "the study of how people describe things and experience them through their senses." The idea being that we can only really know what we experience first-hand. So, how youths understand the problem of youth violence, and its solutions (don't forget we're trying to make the world better!), seen from their lenses: that is phenomenological research.
Now that you are clearer on how to explain to the jail staff what your role is as a phenomenological researcher, proceed through the following steps:
Sales Pitch:
"I don't want to read his story from a file, written by an understandably overworked social worker who maybe spent a brief amount of time gathering a case history. I don't want to read the police reports, or the judge's reports, or even the previous facility's reports. I don't believe you can really get to know kids from a file, anymore than you would really get to know me if you read my school files, my personnel files, or even my psychologist's notes. My basic rule is: If I don't think it's going to work with me, why do I think it's going to work for someone else? We all know that there is no better way to get to know someone than to sit face to face and talk..."
When all the points above have been checked (X) on your to-do list, you can go on to organize and begin your interviews. The interviews will provide all the phenomenological date you will need to begin piecing your research together. This data can then be complemented by a good review of the literature on youth violence, and if you have a lot of time and resources, it can even eventually be complemented by field trips to the areas your interviewees grew up in, to meet their families, teachers, and so on. By then you will love this so much, that you will want to devote long chunks of time to immerse yourself in the youth's pre-jail environment to conduct on-site research! At that time, you will move from phenomenology to ethnography. As a great practical guide to making that jump, I highly recommend reading The Professional Stranger, by Michael Agar. Academic Press.
Ready? Get Set, Go!
CAN WE TALK?
INTERVIEWING INCARCERATED YOUTH AS HUMAN BEINGS
-From Halcom's Evaluation Laws
Time to prepare for your interviews:
What are we going
to talk about???
Your interview format will be semi-structured, more an "agenda of topics" than a schedule of questions, and it will build upon the information offered by the youth during the interview process.
Be prepared to spread your interviews over several weeks:
Some of the key issues to be explored are these:
a. memories and family stories about birth and early childhood;
b. relationships and life events focusing on family (parents, siblings, extended family, divorce/separation, incarceration of family members) and residential moves (schools, neighborhoods);
c. experience with violence arriving at the point of killing, to document "violence history" (earliest memories of being hurt, first memories of hurting someone else, critical events);
d. exposure to "environmental poisons" (violent television and movies, gang exposure and involvement);
e. involvement in the child welfare and juvenile justice systems
f. moments, decisions, or missed opportunities that could have become "turning points";
g. religious and spiritual orientation, experiences, and activities, past, present, and projected future;
h. hopes for the future and experiences of meaningfulness in day-to-day life.
Suggested Themes to Cover during the interview, based on the Cornell youth violence project:
You can of course come up with your own themes, based on your personal research interests!
Eight themes:
1. Exposure to physical violence: Based upon the well- documented role of exposure to physical violence, including physical abuse and exposure to violence in the media, as a threat to development (Terr, 1994) and as a linked factor in the development of juvenile delinquency. The range is from -2 (severe exposure to physical violence) to +2 (minimal exposure to physical violence).
2. Experience of psychological maltreatment: Based upon repeated findings that psychological maltreatment in the form of rejection, isolation, terrorizing, ignoring, and corrupting is a the core issue in child maltreatment (Garbarino, Guttman, and Seeley, 1986). The range will be from -2 (experience of multiple forms of severe psychological maltreatment) to +2 (absence of any form of psychological maltreatment).
3. Existential crisis of shame and the threat of self annihilation: Based upon J. Gilligan's (1996) analysis of shame as the origin of violence and violence as the only perceived means of avoiding the destruction of one's self by another person. Our range will be from -2 (extreme shame and perceived threat of self annihilation) to +2 (.positive identity based upon affirmed identity).
4. Narrative coherence: Based upon Cohler's (1991) finding that narrative coherence (i.e. one's ability to tell his or her own life story as a way to make sense of how one's life unfolds) itself mediates the impact of life events on subsequent development and coping. The range is from -2 (primitive and incoherent narrative account) to +2 (coherent and positive account).
5. Meaningfulness: Based upon van der Kolk's (1994) finding that trauma leading to unresolved crises of meaning (i.e. meaning of one's life, meaning of one's purpose in life) is associated with impaired functioning and reduced resilience.
6. Planful Competence: Based upon Rutter's (1989) finding that the presence of planfulness (in the sense of making conscious, future-oriented decisions about life events) differentiates between youth who show resilience in the face of difficult life circumstances and youth who succumb to the negative potential of these life circumstance.
7. Spiritual Orientation: Based upon research relating spiritual oientation (i.e. a focus on one's inner life and a belief in a higher power) to coping with adversity and trauma (Garbarino and Bedard, 1996).
8. Optimism: Based upon Bettelheim and Rosenfeld's (1994) analysis of the key role played by optimism as an orientation to life events that supports resilience.
Time to meet your first kid!
Are we going to click? Are they going to talk?
Now that you know what information you want to gather, you have your agreement with the jail, the parental forms have come back signed, and you have your tape recorder, tapes, batteries, note pad and pens, you are now ready to meet your first kid!
Very Important "DO's & DON'Ts" for Building Rapport
with Incarcerated Youths :
DO:
DON'T:
Always Remember:
I- CONNECT AS A HUMAN BEING
II- TALK AS A HUMAN BEING
III- ASK QUESTIONS AS A HUMAN BEING
III- LISTEN LIKE A HUMAN BEING
IV- RESPOND LIKE A HUMAN BEING
Repeat all of the above steps over several months and dozens of incarcerated kids, and you will be on your way to creating your very own website to teach others how to improve on this methodology!
If you have made it all the way down this page, congratulations! You have the patience and energy to give this type of research your best try.
For further information, comments, and insight, please feel free to contact us!
Last updated: May 16th, 2000