Saul Becker

Quality Criteria for Quantitative, Qualitative and Mixed Methods Research: A View from Social Policy

This article reports some findings from an investigation of social policy researchers in the UK. The findings relate to the quality criteria that social policy researchers deem to be appropriate to quantitative research, qualitative research and mixed methods research. The data derive from an e‐survey of researchers which was followed up by semi‐structured interviews with a purposively selected sample from among those e‐survey respondents who agreed to be interviewed. The article emphasises the findings that relate to quality criteria for mixed methods research, since this is an area that has not attracted a great deal of attention. Greater agreement was found regarding the criteria that should be employed for assessing quantitative than qualitative research. The findings relating to mixed methods research point to a preference for using a combination of quantitative and qualitative research criteria and for employing different criteria for the quantitative and the qualitative components.

Global Perspectives on Children’s Unpaid Caregiving in the Family Research and Policy on ‘Young Carers’ in the UK, Australia, the USA and Sub-Saharan Africa

This article provides the first cross-national review and synthesis of available statistical and research evidence from three developed countries, the UK, Australia and the USA, and from sub-Saharan Africa, on children who provide substantial, regular or significant unpaid care to other family members (‘young carers/caregivers’). It uses the issue of young carers as a window on the formulation and delivery of social policy in a global context. The article examines the extent of children’s informal caregiving in each country; how young carers differ from other children; and how children’s caring has been explained in research from both developed and developing countries. The article includes a review of the research, social policy and service developments for young carers in each country. National levels of awareness and policy response are characterized as ‘advanced’, ‘intermediate’, ‘preliminary’ or ‘emerging’. Explanations are provided for variations in national policy and practice drawing on themes from the globalization literature. Global opportunities and constraints to progress, particularly in Africa, are identified. The article suggests that children’s informal caring roles in both developed and developing nations can be located along a ‘caregiving continuum’ and that young carers, globally, have much in common irrespective of where they live or how developed are their national welfare systems. There is a need in all countries for young carers to be recognized, identified, analysed and supported as a distinct group of ‘vulnerable children’.

Children caring for parents with mental illness: Perspectives of young carers, parents and professionals

Contents: Introduction Parental mental illness and young caring: research and prevalence The effects of mental illness on parents and relationships with their children Childrens experiences of caring for parents with severe and enduring mental illness The role and responsibilities of professionals: services and support for young carers and parents with mental illness Towards a systemic approach: ways forward and conclusions.

Assessment of caring and its effects in young people: development of the Multidimensional Assessment of Caring Activities Checklist (MACA-YC18) and the Positive and Negative Outcomes of Caring Questionnaire (PANOC-YC20) for young carers.

BACKGROUND Many children, adolescents and young people are involved in caring for parents, siblings, or other relatives who have an illness, disability, mental health problem or other need for care or supervision. The aim was to develop two new instruments for use in research with young carers to assess caring activities and their psychological effects. METHOD Two studies are reported. In study 1, 410 young carers were recruited via The Princess Royal Trust for Carers database of UK projects and asked to complete an initial item pool of 42 and 75 questionnaire items to assess caring activities and caring outcomes respectively. In study 2 a further 124 young carers were recruited. RESULTS Following exploratory principal components analysis in study 1, 18 items were chosen to compose the Multidimensional Assessment of Caring Activities Checklist (MACA-YC18), and 20 items chosen to compose the Positive and Negative Outcomes of Caring Scales (PANOC-YC20). In study 2, normative and convergent validity data on the two instruments are reported. CONCLUSION The MACA-YC18 is an 18-item self-report measure that can be used to provide an index of the total amount of caring activity undertaken by the young person, as well as six sub-scale scores for domestic tasks, household management, personal care, emotional care, sibling care and financial/practical care. The PANOC-YC20 is a 20-item self-report measure that can be used to provide an index of positive and negative outcomes of caring.

A cross-national and comparative classification of in-country awareness and policy responses to ‘young carers’

ABSTRACT The reality for many families where there is chronic illness, mental health problems, disability, alcohol or substance misuse is that children under the age of 18 are involved in caring. Many of these children – known as ‘young carers’ – will be providing regular and significant care, either episodically or over many years, often ‘hidden’ to health, social care and other welfare professionals and services. These children have most often been invisible in social policy and professional practice. What are the reasons why some countries recognize young carers as a priority for social policy while others (most) do not? What are the key factors that influence a country’s awareness and responses to these children? This article provides an original classification and analysis of country-level responses to young carers, drawing on published research, grey literature, policy documents and the authors’ extensive engagement in policy and practice networks for young carers and their families in a wide range of countries. The analysis identifies two of the key factors that influence the extent and nature of these policy responses, focusing on the importance of a reliable in-country research base and the contribution of influential national NGOs and their networks.

Advocates, Agnostics and Adversaries: Researchers’ Perceptions of Service User Involvement in Social Policy Research

The involvement of service users in the research process is becomingly increasingly required by many funders of research and is being seen as an indicator of quality in its own right. This paper provides original data from a study of social policy researchers’ views of service user involvement in research. It shows a diversity of stances which have been categorised here as belonging to Advocates, Agnostics and Adversaries of user involvement. The views of Agnostics and Adversaries pose serious challenges that need to be addressed if service user involvement is to be more widely accepted and valued by some researchers and academics in social policy.

Protecting young carers: Legislative tensions and opportunities in Britain

Recent research suggests that there are a large number of children providing care in the community. These children have been ignored in the policy-making process and no specific legislation has been enacted to protect them. This paper traces the emergence of young caring onto the social policy agenda and suggests ways in which current legislation can be interpreted and adapted to protect them, both as children and as carers. The existence of legislative tensions and contradictions is also discussed, as mechanisms through which many young carers may continue to be neglected. In the absence of specec legislation and codes of practice, those working with young carers must seize the available opportunities to ensure the recognition and protection of young carers in Britain.

The Matrix of Care and Control

It is not that individuals fail to appreciate and perceive subtleties, nor to recognise interconnections; it is that in some areas of life we frequently prefer strong and clear messages. We form partial images of many types of activity, which seem to operate at times as a kind of social shorthand. These allow us to distil quickly what we perceive to be the essence of those activities. As far as the police are concerned, and with the image of the Dixon of Dock Green kind of bobby now fast receding from the public’s direct experience and consciousness, there is perhaps an understandable tendency to view the activities of the police as primarily a controlling set of functions.

Introduction: Force is Part of the Service

This book takes us to the centre of the debate about care and control in the police service. The police face new and renewed challenges to their traditional modes of operation, posed amongst other things by a heightened public and media concern with lawlessness and wrongdoing, by the escalation in reported crime, and by an uncharacteristic assault on the police body politic from a government concerned to improve performance, quality and value for money in all publicly funded utilities (see, for example, Sinclair and Miller, 1984; Audit Commission, 1990; Home Office, 1993; Sheehy, 1993). A rehabilitation of the care/control debate is urgent-it is at the heart of the matter about the future direction of British policing. The ways in which policy makers, chief constables and rank and file officers address the critical balance between care and control, and engage with the policy and procedural issues, will have major implications for the shape, goals and legitimacy of the police service up to, and beyond, the millennium.

Study protocol: young carers and young adult carers in Switzerland

BackgroundIn Switzerland, the issue of young carers and young adult carers - young people under the age of 18 and 24 respectively, who take on significant or substantial caring tasks and levels of responsibility that would usually be associated with an adult - has not been researched before. The number of these younger carers is unknown, as is the extent and kind of their caring activities and the outcomes for their health, well-being, psycho-social development, education, transitions to adulthood, future employability and economic participation.MethodsThe project is comprised of three stages:1.A national Swiss-wide online survey to examine awareness of the issue of younger carers amongst professional populations in the education, health and social services sectors;2.An online survey of 4800 Swiss pupils in schools using standardised instruments to identify the proportion and characteristics of pupils who are carers; and3.Semi-structured interviews with 20 families comprising family members with care needs and younger carers, to consolidate and validate the other stages of the study; and to hear directly from care-dependent family members and younger carers about their experiences of the issues identified in the surveys and in previous published research.DiscussionThe needs of younger carers and their ill and disabled family members in Switzerland have not been systematically investigated. This will be the first study in the country to investigate these issues and to develop evidence-based recommendations for policy and practice, drawing also on international research.The present study therefore fills an important national and international research gap. It will collect important data on the awareness, extent, kind and impact of caring amongst children and young people in Switzerland, and cross-link these findings with robust evidence from other countries. The study will reveal (a) the extent of awareness of the issue of young carers amongst medical, social, health, educational, and other groups in Switzerland; (b) the proportion and number of young carers amongst a normative child population, and what these young carers ‘do’ in terms of their caring roles; and (c) direct accounts by families of their care-giving and receiving experiences.