Richard Lampard

Practical social investigation : qualitative and quantitative methods in social research

1. Introducing social investigation: what is research and why do we do it? 2. Planning and designing research: finding a framework 3. Suitable samples: selecting, obtaining and profiting from them 4. Observation: looking to learn 5. Survey research: practicalities and potential 6. Interviewing: listening and talking 7. Documents, official statistics and secondary analysis: mining existing data sources 8. Making it count: approaches to qualitative data analysis 9. Quantitative data analysis: knowledge from numbers 10. Approaches to writing: the craft of communication 11. Projects and dissertations - methods and methodology in a practical context Appendix A: Ethical codes Appendix B: Critical values for test statistics, statistical notation

Availability of marriage partners in England and Wales: a comparison of three measures

Measures of partner availability introduced by Goldman, Westoff & Hammerslough (1984) and by Veevers (1988) are described and a new measure of partner availability, the Iterated Availability Ratio, is introduced. The three measures are applied to 1981 Census data for England and Wales and their abilities to predict regional variations in age-specific marriage rates are compared.

The methodological impact of feminism: A troubling issue for sociology?

As British sociology seeks to overcome a historical distaste for quantitative research methods, one of the discipline’s most dynamic sub-fields may prove troublesome. Feminist research thrives both within and outside sociology. As such it provides new insights and enriches the discipline, something recognized by the 2010 Benchmarking Review of Sociology. Yet feminist research has long been associated with an antipathy towards quantitative methods. This article explores the extent to which this persists. Methodological patterns in articles from 19 journals in the interdisciplinary field of ‘women’s studies’ are analysed. Perhaps surprisingly, a large proportion of articles employed quantitative methods. Those engaged with feminist literature or epistemologies were, however, unlikely to be quantitative. This article also highlights the importance of national contexts, suggesting perhaps we should not ask why UK research is so qualitative, but why US research is so quantitative.

Is Social Mobility an Echo of Educational Mobility? Parents' Educations and Occupations and Their Children's Occupational Attainment

Quantitative studies of occupational attainment and intergenerational social mobility have often devoted little attention to the roles of parental education and educational inheritance. Informed by the ideas of authors who see class reproduction as reflecting more than occupations and economic resources (including Devine, Savage and Crompton), this paper assesses the importance of parents’ educations, and considers the relevance of education to class analysis and class reproduction processes. Logistic regressions using British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) data establish the relative importance of parents’ educations and parents’ occupational classes as determinants of childrens attainment of service class occupations. These multivariate analyses reiterate the salience of mothers class, but also show that mothers education has an independent impact. However, this is more limited if both parents can be assigned to classes. The only difference between daughters and sons that is found in the impact of parental characteristics is a weaker impact of fathers class on daughters occupational attainment than on sons occupational attainment. For both daughters and sons, mothers education and mothers class have an impact. The relationship between parents’ and childrens educations accounts for relatively little of the relationship between parents’ and childrens occupational classes. Hence intergenerational class mobility patterns do not simply echo intergenerational educational mobility patterns. However, an examination of the direct and indirect effects of parents’ educations and classes on childrens occupational attainment shows parental education to play a substantial role in the intergenerational transmission of advantage, and indicates that part (but not all) of the relationship between class origin and occupational attainment can be explained in terms of the intergenerational transmission of cultural capital. In contrast, a substantial part of the indirect effect of parental class via childrens qualifications does not reflect parental education. Hence the conversion of parental economic resources into childrens educational credentials also appears important.

Parental characteristics, family structure and occupational attainment in Britain

This article uses multivariate logistic regression analyses of the 2005 General Household Survey to assess the impact of parents’ occupational and educational characteristics on occupational attainment in Britain, focusing specifically on the salariat. Differences in outcomes according to family structure are then examined, controlling for such parental characteristics. The results indicate that both parents’ characteristics are relevant, and that their effects interact. A smaller chance of a salariat occupation is evident for those who lived in a lone-mother family, lone-father family, or biological-mother stepfamily as a young teenager, reflecting different features of these family types, but consistently reflecting lower educational attainment. Both number of co-resident siblings and parental worklessness affect the odds of having a salariat occupation, this being relevant to family-type comparisons.

Living together in a sexually exclusive relationship : an enduring, pervasive ideal?

Recent demographic trends constitute movement away from forms of relationship behaviour central to hegemonic heterosexuality. The perceived legitimacy of cohabitation, relationship dissolution and same-sex partnerships has also increased. Has a further shift occurred, among people not living with partners, away from conventional coupledom as an ideal? Using data from the second National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles (NATSAL II), this article examines trends and patterns in the incidence of sexually exclusive co-residence as an ideal future lifestyle. While subscription to this ‘traditional’ ideal varies substantially with age and other salient factors, it nevertheless remains prevalent virtually throughout the ‘single’ population. Furthermore, there was no marked change across the 1990s in this ideal’s popular appeal, highlighting its continuing influence as a ‘meaning-constitutive tradition’ (Gross, 2005). Relationship practices and ideals thus appear to have diverged, with the former changing more. However, as lifecourses unfold, people sometimes relinquish the traditional ideal, not infrequently favouring ‘living apart together’ instead.

Theorizing Contemporary Intimate Couple Relationships and Relationship Histories

To provide a framework for our analyses, in this chapter we examine changes in and theories about contemporary intimate relationships. Thus, as a setting for some of the later chapters that outline our empirical results, here we discuss the theoretical literature on the changing nature of intimate couple relationships (e.g. the effects of increased choice that are said to accompany increased individualization), the changing patterns of such relationships (e.g. shifts between relationship formations based on marriage and cohabitation) and changes in the course that such relationships take (e.g. how relationships move through phases that can lead to relationship dissolution and the search for a new relationship). Thus change is a focus of this chapter and is central to discussion about intimate couple relationships in Western societies. Change is a key feature of existing theoretical material (drawn from both sociology and related disciplines) that is of relevance to an understanding of the past lives, present situations and future plans of formerly partnered people.

Methods and Methodology

This chapter starts with a brief overview of the research project that led to this book, then moves on to a discussion of its use of quantitative and qualitative methods. The rest of the chapter focuses on issues relating to the processes of data collection and data analysis, with a particular emphasis on key aspects of the qualitative component of the research, specifically the selection and composition of the sample, the interviews and issues relating to the analysis of the interview data.

Past, Present and Future — Orientations towards Repartnering

This chapter looks at our interviewees’ orientations towards repartnering. It examines whether they want new couple relationships, when they want them (assuming that they do) and whether they are currently looking for a new partner.1 It also discusses the kinds of relationships and partners for which they express a preference, and those they intend to avoid. In addition, it brings into consideration remarks made by the interviewees that are of relevance to the repartnering process. Some of these relate to their repartnering behaviour, if any, during their time as a formerly married person or former cohabitee. Others relate to aspects of their lives and situations that they perceive as having, or anticipate as being likely to have, an impact on their likelihood of repartnering or on the repartnering process more generally.

Identity and Intimacy in the Lives of Formerly Partnered Men and Women

In this chapter we use our interview data to examine the ways in which formerly partnered men and women view themselves and their lives. The focus is on identity. Our aim is not to debate the concept of identity, which itself has been subject to a ‘searching critique’ (Hall 1996: 1), but rather to explore the concept of identity in relation to perceptions of changing identity, and changes in lifestyle, through couple relationship transitions. Transitions are integral to the life course and with these transitions, such as changes associated with relationship dissolution, come modifications of, and receptions of changes to, identity and lifestyle. Though some of the issues raised are not peculiar to identity and intimate couple relationship dissolution, since issues such as gender, ageing, sexuality and intimacy, beauty, parenthood and singledom are raised, these issues and the interaction between them seem to coalesce at what Giddens (1992) calls such ‘fateful moments’. Thus the following discussion is eclectic in essence, drawing out many, but by no means all, of the important points that unite in concepts of identity. Consequently, this discussion is not complete and is not intended to be. Rather, we are interested in how the men and women we interviewed discuss their identities and lifestyles in relation to the changes that have occurred in their lives and how their everyday lives had changed in consequence.