SAGE Research Methods Cases Sociology Submission for Consideration

This SAGE case study details the way in which I developed my research for my journal article entitled Policing Women’s Bodies in an Illiberal Society: the case of Ireland. In this SAGE case study, I explain how I carried out the research for this project and how I structured and presented the research in the journal article. The key issue with this research project was the enormous scope of the study. The policing of women’s bodies is a very broad topic and this, coupled with the long timeframe of the study, made this project a very big research project. In order to cope with the scope of the research project, I developed a specific research methodology for the study. This research methodology allowed me: 1. to conduct the study I wanted to conduct, and; 2. to communicate that study concisely and effectively within the limits of a journal article. The research methodology that I developed for the study a case study methodology using historical timelines. In this SAGE case study, I explain:  the issues that I had to deal with in developing the research that drove the search for this methodology;  the simplicity and the utility of the research methodology developed;  the way that this research methodology fit with the research project  the appropriateness of the research methodology for the research project. Learning Outcomes By the end of this case students should be able to:  Outline the process of selecting a research methodology for a research project;  Explain what a case study is, and how a case study research methodology is used in social science research;  Demonstrate an understanding of the value and utility of historical timelines in social science research;  Explain what patterns and trends are in data, and why and how patterns and trends in data are used in data analysis;  Understand the process and value of publishing research as journal articles;  Demonstrate how a simple structure in the written account of a research project, can facilitate the communication of the complex layered written narrative of the research. Case Study Introduction This SAGE case study details the approach I took to developing and writing my research on the policing of women’s bodies in Ireland. The biggest issue was the large scope of the project. I wanted to examine the policing of women’s bodies over a very long time period: more than two hundred years. I was writing for the journal Women & Criminal Justice. For a journal article, the wordcount is generally 6,000 to 9,000 words. I was carrying out quite a big research project, and hoping to fit that research into a journal article that would be accepted for publication. I became interested in this topic when a call for papers was issued for a special edition of the journal Women & Criminal Justice focused on the topic of policing women’s bodies, to be edited by Professor Meda Chesney Lind. I was immediately very very keen to conduct research on the topic. Meda Chesney Lind is Professor of Women’s Studies at the University of Hawaii. In 2015, we were both scheduled to attend the American Society of Criminology Annual Conference in Washington DC, in November of that year. I introduced myself to Meda Chesney Lind via email. She responded very kindly to my email, and we arranged to meet at the conference. When we did meet, we talked about our work, and she talked about this special edition of the journal. I decided to write a journal article on the topic in relation to the experiences of women in the Republic of Ireland. I submitted the journal article for review, and following peer review, the article was published in the special issue of the journal (Quinlan, 2017). Examining the policing of women’s bodies over two hundred years posed a number of problems, mainly, how to fit two hundred years of women’s experiences into a journal article of no more than 9,000 words. I wanted more than anything to do justice to the women’s experiences. I knew that there was an important story to be told, and I wanted to tell it. It is all too easy to misrepresent individuals, their stories and their experiences in research. When you are writing historical accounts, misrepresentation is arguably even easier, because many of the experiences you are writing about are historical, and so there may be no one left alive to challenge your account of those experiences. In terms of research ethics, researchers draw on their own ethical code of practice for guidance. A researcher's ethical code is developed through reflection, reflection on the research and on the possible ethical issues in the research, through study of research ethics, and through their knowledge and understanding of various professional codes of ethics that guide them in their work. The British Society of Criminology has a 'Statement of Ethics' which provides guidance for research (http://www.britsoccrim.org/ethics/). The British Sociological Association publishes 'Guidelines on Ethical Research', (https://www.britsoc.co.uk/ethics). A key advantage to publishing a journal article lies in the fact that a journal article is published faster than a book, and a journal article, when published, is immediately available online to all those who have access to the journal. This means that scholars of criminology, of women’s studies, of sociology, and of the social sciences will have immediate access to this publication. There is generally a relatively short turnaround for journal articles, and this journal article was no different. I decided to write the journal article in November 2015, and it was finally published in January 2017. That’s a short timeframe for a peer reviewed academic publication. Peer review is the critical process to which published academic work is subject.Through the peer review process, a proposed publication, in this case my journal article, is sent for anonymous review to usually two or three reviewers. Peer reviewers are academics working in the field of the subject matter of the proposed publication. These peer reviewers read the proposed publication, critically engage with it, and send back a report with comments to the editor. The editor then allows the author of the publication an opportunity to revise the proposed publication in light of the critique and comments of the reviewers. When the author has completed this work, and re-submitted the proposed publication, the publication is again sent for review, and if the reviewers are happy with the amendments made, the work is published. The process is designed to ensure that the highest standards are maintained in academic publication. Due to their comparatively short length, journal articles can easily be read and used to teach students. Each journal article provides a good example of a relatively short account of a research project. Students can study journal articles to learn how to conceptualise research projects, how to develop aims and objectives for research projects, how to construct and write literature reviews, how to present research methodologies, how to present data analysis and how to write research conclusions and recommendations. Every aspect of each journal article can be studied as a pedagogical tool in research methods. Finding a Methodology When I started to think about my idea for this research project, a number of different research methodologies immediately came to mind. At heart, I am an ethnographer, and my PhD research, which was published by Irish Academic Press (Quinlan, 2011), was an ethnographic study. Ethnography is the in-depth study of a culture, and I could see how this methodology might fit with the research, in terms of examining the culture in Ireland of policing women’s bodies. However, I wasn’t really interested for this particular research project in examining the culture of policing women’s bodies. I was more interested in examining the experiences of women of having their bodies policed, and doing this over a time period of 200 years. In data gathering, ethnographers often use in-depth one-to-one, usually face-to-face interviews as the key data gathering method. Clearly, I wasn’t going to be able to interview women who had lived their lives through all of the decades of the past 200 years! So I decided that ethnography was not a good fit in terms of the research methodology for this project. Then I thought about historical analysis. This research methodology certainly worked in terms of my interest in examining two hundred years of women’s experiences. However, there was an issue with fitting an historical analysis of two hundred years of women’s experiences into a 9,000 word journal article. This problem made me think that historical analysis, although a good fit in many respects in terms of research methodology, was not quite the right research methodology for this research project. I began to think about breaking this large topic down into sections or categories. I wanted to do this in order to make the topic more manageable as a research project. I reflected for some time on this, and eventually decided that the key areas of concern could be conceptualised essentially under three headings; sexuality, reproduction and abortion. I have written a great deal about women's experiences of justice and women's experiences of criminal justice in Ireland (Quinlan, 2011, 2013, 2015). For this publication, with its focus on the policing of women's bodies, I felt that there was an opportunity to develop a strong, concise yet comprehensive, critical account of women's experiences of having their bodies policed in relation to their experiences of sexuality, reproduction and abortion. Such experiences are, and they have long been, difficult for women in many countries around the world (see McCormack, 2009, Hayes, Lorenz and Bell, 2013, and Chesney Lind, 2006). In Ireland, for many women, these experiences have been, and they continue to be, shocking,, and these experiences allowed me to frame an academic research project,