(Re)negotiating access

Anne Foley and Jessica Paddock presented to the Postgrad Cafe on Wednesday 31st of October 2007. The theme of this is cafe was the negotiation and renegotiation of access to the field. Anne Foley's talk entitled 'Jumping on the Gypsy Wagon: Getting and Sustaining Access with ‘Hard-To-Reach-Groups’ gave a brief overview of the issues of access that Anne has encountered during her research on Gypsies and Travellers. Anne discussed how she found access to be a constant process of negotiation and renegotiation and also told us about some of the strategies she adopted in trying to gain and maintain quality access! Jess Paddock talk ('It's Not as Easy as it Seems: Accessing Reliable Data Over the Internet') gave an overview of the project Jess conducted for her masters dissertation, which involved undertaking a newspaper content and discourse analysis over the period of three months across the spectrum of broadsheet and tabloids. Jess then discussed some of the issues involved in conducting secondary research as potential time saver, as gaining access to reliable data across the board ironically took far more time and far more trees than originally anticipated.