Studies of Welfare Populations Data Collection and Research Issues (2002) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
11 The Right (Soft) Stuff: Qualitative Methods and the Study of Welfare Reform
11 The Right (Soft) Stuff: Qualitative Methods and the Study of Welfare Reform
Pages 353-384
The Chapter Skim interface presents what we've algorithmically identified as the most significant single chunk of text within every page in the chapter.
Select key terms on the right to highlight them within pages of the chapter.
From page 353... ...
Part III Qualitative Data
|
From page 354... ...
As simple as an experimental design may seem, analyses of experimental impacts are complicated by needs to quantify the key outcomes and isolate program impacts within important sample subgroups. Qualitative data are very helpful in both of these tasks.
|
From page 355... ...
recipients from public assistance into the labor market and, perhaps, back again. Survey researchers with panel studies will be equally in demand as federal, state, and local officials charged with the responsibility of administering what is left of the welfare system come to grips with the dynamics of their caseloads.
|
From page 356... ...
Trawling along the bottom of the wage structure, we are likely to learn a thing or two about recidivism as the burdens of raising children collide with the limitations of the low-wage labor market for addressing the needs of poor families. If administrative records and panel studies cannot tell us everything we might want to know about the impact of welfare reform, what are the complementary sources of information we might use?
|
From page 357... ...
In this section, I discuss some of the best known approaches and sketch out both what can be learned from each and where the limitations typically lie. I consider sequentially potential or actual studies of welfare reform utilizing: · open-ended questions embedded in survey instruments · in-depth interviews with subsamples, of survey respondents · focus groups · qualitative, longitudinal studies · participant observation fieldwork
|
From page 358... ...
At least two purposes can be served here. A key advantage to embedding qualitative research inside a survey design is that one benefits from the representativeness and sample size, while preserving the insights afforded by qualitative data.
|
From page 359... ...
Subsample and In-Depth Interviews When one wants to collect more open-ended data from each subject, it may be appropriate to draw a smaller random subsample of a survey population for longer interviews designed to elicit information on a wide range of topics. A simple random sample or a stratified random sample may be used (assuming the appropriate demographic categories can be identified for example, groups defined by race, age, family status, or those with children of particular ages)
|
From page 360... ...
As simple as an experimental design may seem, analyses of experimental impacts are complicated by needs to quantify the key outcomes and isolate program impacts within important sample subgroups. Qualitative data are very helpful in both of these tasks.
|
From page 361... ...
Program impacts on the labor supply of families with a small number of barriers were large, and larger in the second than the first year. This key set of findings simply would not have been discovered were it not for the qualitative work (ibid.)
|
From page 362... ...
Focus groups are therefore probably best used to gather data on community experience with and opinions toward public assistance programs rather than to gather systematic data on individual perspectives. For example, the problems associated with enrollment in children's health insurance systems probably could be well understood by convening focus groups.
|
From page 363... ...
Indeed, one need only look at how the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, the National Longitudinal Study of Youth, or the Survey of Income and Program Participation have altered and enhanced our understanding of income over the lifespan or movements in and out of poverty over time to recognize the value of panel studies of this kind. These longitudinal studies contain very little qualitative data.
|
From page 364... ...
Qualitative panel studies can be developed with an original sampling strategy that picks up a representative population based on neighborhood residence or participants and matched controls who participate in a social service program. However, they are probably most valuable when they are embedded in panel 3John L
|
From page 365... ...
Although one could, in theory, recruit participants in a qualitative study who are similar to those in the survey population, it is always possible that these "add ons" differ enough from the participants to raise doubt. Hence, in my view, it is a safer bet to draw the qualitative sample from the original research universe and risk the chances that their involvement may adversely alter their responses to a longitudinal study.
|
From page 366... ...
For the past 7 months, we have been tagging along beside police officers, sitting in classrooms, visiting with congressmen and church leaders, talking with local employers, and devoting a lot of attention to 12 families drawn from our interview sample who live in these three communities. Participant observation has been a valuable addition to what we know from the interview data.
|
From page 367... ...
For example, one family we have come to know quite well has a teenage son who is faring poorly in his middle school. When his mother was receiving public assistance, she was able to visit the school during the day to confer with his guidance counselors at length and to learn directly from them (as opposed to the filtered news from the son)
|
From page 368... ...
Service providers, particularly those in the child care and medical care fields, are concerned that they cannot respond adequately to the additional needs that have surfaced since time limits were imposed on federal cash assistance. Medical care personnel in poor neighborhoods continue to report that they have not been able to enroll enough children in Child Health Plus and that they are seeing a steady, and often overwhelming, demand in emergency rooms for treatment of conditions that should have been seen long before they reach this critical point.
|
From page 369... ...
Rather than let weeks or years go by between short-term contacts, fieldwork permits ongoing contact and the capacity to check what informants say about their state of mind, their survival strategies, their relations with others, and their neighborhood or institutional conditions against what fieldworkers can observe for themselves and/or learn from "experts" situated in the community. SAMPLING ISSUES IN QUALITATIVE RESEARCH The data derived from interview and participant observation projects can be used in at least three ways: (1)
|
From page 370... ...
A similar approach has been pursued by the Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation's "Urban Change" project, a study of the impact of devolution and the time limits of the TANF system on poor families in four cities: Philadelphia, Cleveland, Miami, and Los Angeles. A multidisciplinary team of social scientists are drawing on "administrative records; cross-sectional surveys of food stamp recipients; census tract-level neighborhood indicators; repeated interviews with Executive Directors of community-based social service organizations; repeated ethnographic interviews with welfare-reliant women in selected neighborhoods; and repeated interviews with and observations of welfare officials and line staff..." (Edin and Lein, 1999:6~.5 The qualitative interview part of the Urban Change project has been following 80 families from high- and medium-poverty neighborhoods in Cleveland and Philadelphia.
|
From page 371... ...
The neighborhood strategy employed by the Urban Change project ensures that the qualitative study includes white, black, and Latino families who are particularly disadvantaged.
|
From page 372... ...
Nonetheless, it will provide a very rich database, spanning the before and after of the imposition of time limits, that will tell us an enormous amount about the challenges women and their families have faced in transitioning from public assistance to the world of work. The size and ethnic diversity of the sample (including poor whites, often overlooked in studies of the poor)
|
From page 373... ...
, a representative sample of workers in fast food restaurants formed the core of the research, but a selected subsample was central to a final phase of intensive participant observation that focused on the survival strategies of 10 households and the social networks attached to them. The ten key informants were selected to represent the racial and gender diversity of the universe of workers.
|
From page 374... ...
Because this rate is higher than one usually expects, there may be less independence among the cases than would be ideal under random sample conditions, but this approach is far preferable to one that is more random but with very low response rates. Sample retention is important for all panel studies, perhaps even more so for qualitative studies that begin with modest numbers.
|
From page 375... ...
Coding Issues Qualitative research of any kind open-ended questions embedded in surveys, ethnographic interviews, long-term fieldwork with families or "neighborhood experts" generates large volumes of text. Text files may derive from recorded interviews, which then must be transcribed verbatim (a costly and timeconsuming proposition)
|
From page 376... ...
We develop codings that reflect these routine responses in order to be able to draw conclusions such as "50 percent believe that crime has declined precipitously in their neighborhood" or "20 percent object to police harassment of their teenage children." However, we also want to preserve the nuances of their comments in the form of text blocks that are "dumped" into subject files that might be labeled "attitudes toward the police" or "comments on neighborhood safety." Researchers then can open these subject files and explore the patterned variety of perspectives on law enforcement or the ways in which increasing community safety have affected the patterns of movement out of the home or the hours that mothers feel comfortable commuting to work. When qualitative researchers report results, we typically draw on these blocks of text to illustrate the patterns we have discovered in the data, both to explore the nuances and to give the reader a greater feeling for the meaning of these changes for the informants.
|
From page 377... ...
Practical Realities Qualitative research is essential if we are to understand the real consequences of welfare reform. It is, however, a complex undertaking, one not responsive to the most pressing information needs of local TANF officials for whom documenting the dynamics of caseloads or the operation of programs in order to improve service is so critical.
|
From page 378... ...
As is true for many public officials, Lieberman's task is one part politics and one part policy science: political in that he has to communicate the value of the work this program accomplishes in the midst of competing priorities, and scientific in that the outcomes that show accountability are largely "bottom line," quantitative measures. Yet, as he explains below, this is a complex task that cannot always be addressed simply by turning to survey or administrative records data: One of the major responsibilities I have is to demonstrate to the Congress and the American people that an investment of $3 billion (the size of the welfare to work grants program)
|
From page 379... ...
For this reason, at least some federal officials have found qualitative data useful in the context of program design and "tinkering" to get the guidelines right. Focus groups and case studies help policy makers understand what has gone wrong, what might make a difference, and how to both conceptualize and then "pitch" a new idea after listening to participants explain the difficulties they have encountered.
|
From page 380... ...
Finally, she notes that focus groups and participant observation research is a useful source of data for management and program design purposes: I can also see us using qualitative research to better understand internal operations within the Department. For example, how well is a particular policy/ program understood at the local level?
|
From page 381... ...
A more comprehensive opinion poll of federal and state officials on the program and on the research evaluation side would no doubt generate other perspectives. Suffice to say for the moment, there is potential for qualitative data to take their place in the arsenal of research approaches needed in order to understand what welfare reform has really meant over the long haul.
|
From page 382... ...
Whether research partnerships or in-house teams are chosen, the greatest success undoubtedly will be achieved when qualitative research is embedded inside quantitative studies that are either cross-sectional or longitudinal panel studies. The fusion of the two approaches provides greater confidence in the representative nature of qualitative samples, and the capacity to move back and forth between statistical analyses and patterns in life histories renders either approach the richer for its partner.
|
From page 383... ...
1999 Getting closer to understanding the lives of economically poor families: Ethnographic and survey studies of the New Hope experiment. Poverty Research News.
|
From page 384... ...
1033-1 Montana Montana's Welfare Reform Project: Families Achieving Independence in Montana New Mexico Survey of the New Mexico Case Closed AFDC Recipients New York-1 Leaving Welfare: Findings from a Survey of Former New York City Welfare Recipients New York-2* After Welfare: A Study of Work and Benefit in New York State After Case Closing North Carolina-1 Evaluation of the North Carolina Work First Program: Initial Analysis of Administrative Data
|
Key Terms
This material may be derived from roughly machine-read images, and so is provided only to facilitate research.
More
information on Chapter Skim is available.