Exploring ‘Other’ childhoods through quantitative secondary analyses of large scale surveys: Opportunities and challenges for children's geographers

Abstract

This paper considers the potential contribution of secondary quantitative analyses of large scale surveys to the investigation of ‘other’ childhoods. Exploring other childhoods involves investigating the experience of young people who are unequally positioned in relation to multiple, embodied, identity locations, such as (dis)ability, ‘class’, gender, sexuality, ethnicity and race. Despite some possible advantages of utilising extensive databases, the paper outlines a number of methodological problems with existing surveys which tend to reinforce adultist and broader hierarchical social relations. It is contended that scholars of children's geographies could overcome some of these problematic aspects of secondary data sources by endeavouring to transform the research relations of large scale surveys. Such endeavours would present new theoretical, ethical and methodological complexities, which are briefly considered.

Keywords:

• Empowering research
• participatory methods
• children
• methodology
• quantitative analyses
• secondary datasets

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank anonymous reviewers for comments on an earlier draft of this paper.

Notes

1. The use of the term post-positivist is not intended to imply a historically sequential and progressive accumulation of knowledge. Rather, the term bands together a variety of post- positions which have critiqued positivism and objectivist ontologies.

2. Bennett (2005) provides a valuable account which emphasises the plurality of positivisms and illuminates the critical theoretical stance of logical positivism. Retrieving the radical political stance of the Vienna Circle is a useful reminder that positivists are not atheoretical. Bennett's argument is to be welcomed for critiquing caricatures of strands of academic thought and practice, and, inadvertently, illustrating the progressive view of history that terminology such as post-positivism implies, by highlighting the historical continuity between past and current debates. His subsequent caricature of post-positivist epistemologies, however, diminishes his argument to a degree.

3. Critiques of the limits of ‘giving voice’ have emerged from a variety of perspectives.

4. Many authors have espoused the benefits of mixed methods research (Graham, 1999; McKendrick, 1999) and/or the benefits of collaboration between qualitative and quantitative researchers (McLafferty, 1995). Although mixing methods can be useful, I am weary of a new ‘orthodoxy’ being introduced (see also McKendrick, 1999, p. 47). Further, there is an inherent danger of assuming that qualitative research can provide in-depth explanations of extensive quantitative relationships, which are transferable and generally applicable. This is evidently not appropriate, given the particularity of qualitative research.

5. This model of participatory empowering research is problematic in many respects. For instance presenting power as something which can be consciously conferred or transferred suggests a limited view of power (cf. Rose, 1997; Holt, 2004a). Subsuming empowerment within participation, does not necessarily transform unequal power relations (Oliver, 1996). There is not scope in this paper to fully consider the limitations of empowering, participatory research. In this paper, it is equivocally accepted that empowering research generally involves broader levels of participation by the researched than is generally the case within more traditional models of research practice, providing more scope to engage with the knowledges of the researched, rather than framing their experiences entirely within pre-existing and often disempowering frameworks. I will not discuss the extent to which such framing occurs through analyses and writing here.