Alistair Geddes

Ethics, Methods and Moving Standards in Research on Migrant Workers and Forced Labour

Universities, funders and professional bodies now have well-developed ethics policies and procedures in place to ensure research participants are fully informed and safeguarded and institutional reputational damage is prevented. These codes have coalesced around increasingly standardised core criteria, with the expectation that they will be adhered to by all employed and funded researchers. This chapter argues however that the dominance of standardised ethics frameworks is also problematic. Both qualitative and quantitative investigations inevitably involve researchers making ethics judgements which are relative and context specific as well. These judgements may be complex, and the outcomes they produce do not always align with standardised ethics frameworks. Drawing on six examples selected from our own research on labour migration and workplace exploitation, in particular on forced labour among migrant workers, we discuss the need to identify and reappraise the distinction between achieving ethical research ‘on paper’ (conformance with institutional ethics codes) and actually defining and ensuring ethical research in practice (i.e. allowing space for exercising individual ethics judgments).

Stochastic model-based methods for handling uncertainty in areal interpolation

Handling of uncertainty in the estimation of values from source areas to target areas poses a challenge in areal interpolation research. Stochastic model-based methods offer a basis for incorporating such uncertainty, but to date they have not been widely adopted by the GIS community. In this article, we propose one use of such methods based in the problem of interpolating count data from a source set of zones (parishes) to a more widely used target zone geography (postcode sectors). The model developed also uses ancillary statistical count data for a third set of areas nested within both source and target zones. The interpolation procedure was implemented within a Bayesian statistical framework using Markov chain Monte Carlo methods, enabling us to take account of all sources of uncertainty included in the model. Distributions of estimated values at the target zone level are presented using both summary statistics and as individual realisations selected to illustrate the degree of uncertainty in the interpolation results. We aim to describe the use of such stochastic approaches in an accessible way and to highlight the need for quantifying estimation uncertainty arising in areal interpolation, especially given the implications arising when interpolated values are used in subsequent analyses of relationships.

When the snowball fails to roll and the use of ‘horizontal’ networking in qualitative social research

Abstract Snowball sampling is frequently advocated and employed by qualitative social researchers. Under certain circumstances, however, it is prone to faltering and even failure. Drawing on two research projects where the snowball failed to roll, the paper identifies reasons for this stasis. It goes on to argue that there are alternative forms of networking that can be developed by the qualitative social researcher in lieu of snowballing. Specifically, when research momentum fails to build, rather than drilling down ‘vertically’ through social networks, we argue that the researcher can move ‘horizontally’ across social networks and cast the sampling and recruitment net wide and shallow rather than deep. This change in emphasis can, we argue, make the difference between a project failing and a project succeeding, and points to the importance of a variegated understanding of the social networks on which our social research depends.

Assessment of changes in ecosystem service delivery – a historical perspective on catchment landscapes

ABSTRACT Although the relationships between habitats and ecosystem services (ESs) have been acknowledged, investigating spatio-temporal change in these has received far less attention. This study assesses the influence of habitat changes on ES delivery across space and time, based on two time points some 60 years apart, 1946 and 2009. A 1946 aerial photo coverage of two catchments in Scotland was used to construct digital photo mosaics which were then visually interpreted and digitised to derive historic habitat maps. Using the Spatial Evidence for Natural Capital Evaluation (SENCE) mapping approach, the derived habitat maps were translated into ES maps. These were then compared with contemporary ES maps of the two catchments, using the same mapping methodology. Increases in provisioning ESs were associated with increases in intensively managed habitats, with reductions in supply capacity of other regulating and supporting ESs associated with loss of semi-natural habitats. ES delivery was affected not only by gross area changes in habitats over time, but also by changes in configuration and spatial distribution of constituent habitats, including fragmentation and connectivity. It is argued that understanding historic changes in ESs adds an important strand in providing baselines to inform options for current and future management of catchments.

British Students in the United States

Twelve years ago, the British educational press, and indeed the mainstream media, were consumed by the story of Laura Spence—a super-bright pupil from a Newcastle comprehensive school who, despite having five straight As at “A” level (the final secondary school exams in Britain), had been refused a place to study medicine at Oxford after an interview there. General outrage at Oxford’s snobbishness ensued, with the criticism that Oxford favored applicants from the United Kingdom’s fee-paying independent schools (which include the elite but perversely named “public schools”), thereby excluding excellent applicants from state schools like Laura, especially if they come from deprived parts of the country with strong local accents. Laura instead went to the United States to Harvard on a funded scholarship, completed her biochemistry degree there, and returned to do postgraduate medical training at Cambridge—the other UK university that constitutes the top duo known collectively as “Oxbridge.”