In the article ‘Nobody’s better than you, nobody’s worse than you’, the moral community among prisoners convicted of sexual offences is explored through the use of interviews (Ievins & Crewe, 2015).
Before evaluating the use of interviews, it is important to review what exactly interviews are. An interview is a ‘professional conversation’ (Kyale, 1996) and according to Robert Burgess (1984), interviews are seen as a ‘conversation with a purpose’. What one gains from an interview and the value it has depends greatly on the interviewer’s communication and interaction skills. An interviewer should ‘make it easy for interviewees to respond’ (Clough & Nutbrown, 2007).
The study revolved around ‘sex offenders’ in a medium security English prison, known as Whatton, and the research sought to explore and explain the social experiences and relationships between imprisoned sex offenders and how a new moral community is formed. The Whatton prison population at the time of the study was 841, which was precisely its operational capacity. 22 interviews took place, with the first author leading 19 of them, and with the other 3 being lead by the second author. Most of the interviewees were sampled opportunistically from the classrooms within the prisons, where the researchers were introduced at the start of lessons, which ranged from art, business studies to literacy. The researchers tried to shape the sample so that it loosely reflected the age and ethnic balance of the population of the prison, and also tried to include both the loud and quieter prisoners. These prisoners then took part in a semi-structured interview, which was structured with initial themes and questions drawn from the sociology of prison life literature.
Interviews can be beneficial when there has been a lack of research done formerly, and therefore unexpected feelings and opinions are brought to light, which can then be further explored (Matthews and Ross, 2010). This is relevant to this case as the experiences of ‘sexual offenders’ have previously been overlooked by prison sociologists (O’Donnell, 2004), and ‘almost no research has been conducted into the societies they form within these separate institutions’ (Ievins and Crewe, 2015). Secondly, in general, individual interviews work well in the fact that they allow researchers to talk in depth, as well as being sensitive to potentially upsetting subjects. This is particularly relevant to this case, as it revolves around how these ‘sex offenders’ feel that they are defined by their conviction and now have a stigma attached to them that they cannot shake off. Noticeably, the use of interviews in this case has helped to uncover different individuals’ stories, internal feelings and attitudes towards their experiences.
There are also potential weaknesses with interviews. Some are ethically challenging issues and others are issues regarding reliability and validity. A main flaw in this research is that only 22 prisoners, 2.6% of the prison’s population, were interviewed. The lack of interviewees suggests that the findings aren’t necessarily very representative of the rest of the prisoners’ thoughts, and this could increase the uncertainty in the findings. On top of this, the same interviewer did not conduct all of the interviews. Martyn Denscombe (2010) discusses something known as the ‘interviewer effect’. He states “in particular, the sex, the age, and the ethnic origins of the interviewer have a bearing on the amount of information people are willing to divulge and their honesty about what they reveal”. One of the interviewers was female and the other male, and the interviewer effect suggests that the participants may have responded differently according to the gender of the interviewer. Therefore, despite both interviewers following the same structure of themes and questions, the results may not accurately depict the prisoners’ thoughts, as 19 of them may have been more or less willing to divulge than the other 3 of them who were interviewed by someone of a different sex.
Perhaps in this case, the use of another qualitative method such as focus groups may have been necessary. A major strength of focus groups is their ability to gain an understanding of participants’ experiences and feelings through group interaction (Morgan 1997), something lacking in individual interviews. Through group interaction, the researcher is able to examine how the participants react to each other’s claims, and due to the fact they are all in one room at one time, there would be no risk of the interviewer effect influencing the reliability, as they would all be going through the same experience. On top of this, participant observation may have been a good research method to employ. This would have allowed the researchers to physically observe the social interaction between the prisoners, which makes what the prisoners claim more reliable as it would be physically witnessed to be true.
The sampling technique could also have been improved and a purposive non-random sample could have been used instead, where the number of those interviewed is secondary to the reasons why the interviewees are selected (. If this were the case, it wouldn’t be as much of a problem that only 22 prisoners were interviewed, because it would be assumed that thought had been put into selecting the prisoners, and therefore it would strongly reflect the age and ethnic balance of the prison, rather than loosely.
When undertaking research such as this, it is important to address any potential ethical issues. Highlighted by Matthews and Ross (2010), researchers need to be aware that they don’t include any quotes or information that would make someone’s identity obvious, especially if the interviews were transcribed verbatim, as they were in this case. This ethical issue was both considered and addressed and the researchers named the participants with pseudonyms in the article to protect and conceal their identities, and therefore their privacy and right to anonymity was respected. On top of this, the study was taken with the informed consent of the participants, and they were provided with a relaxed and safe environment within the prison for the interviews.
Based on this analysis, the results of the study appear to be valid, as there seemed to be a general consensus of moral exclusion among the prisoners, who are both labellers and labelled. However, there is always a potential problem with the validity of interviews because there is no way of knowing whether what is said is a fair reflection of what the speaker really thinks, and whether or not the interviewee is telling the true. Often participants may say what they think the interviewer wants to hear rather than their actual opinions. If the interviewer was to assure that he/she does not use leading questions and was to also make sure that any predetermined ideas were to not influence the questions or responses to the interviewee, then this threat to validity can be overcome.
Reliability can be defined as ‘…the extent to which results are consistent over time and an accurate representation of the total population under study’ (Joppe 2000). In this research, the results appeared to be consistent, however, on the one hand, those interviewed may not have been an accurate representation of the total population due to very low numbers taking part in the interviews. On the other hand, those who took part were chosen so that the age and ethnic balance of the population was loosely reflected and they were selected from a wide range of lessons, meaning that there was no reason to state that the sample ‘was any more or less educated than the prison’s overall population’ (Ievins & Crewe, 2015). Therefore, it could be argued that the sample was in fact an accurate representation of the population, and under the definition given by Joppe, the results were reliable. If this research was repeated with different prisoners at the same prison, or conducted at another prison and the same results were obtained, they would be even more reliable and perhaps if other methods were combined, such as participant observation and focus groups being used as well as interviews, it would lead to more valid and reliable results.
Overall, the strengths of the use of interviews in this case outweigh the weaknesses, ethical issues were taken into consideration, and seemingly valid and reliable results were produced through this methodology. Despite there needing to be potential improvements, based on the analysis, the theoretical implications of this study do apply beyond this specific context, as people outside of this prison look at and label a ‘sex offender’ as a ‘sex offender’ without knowing any of the details. Some of the interviewees were disowned by family members due to their offending, and others were not visited by their families ‘cos of the type of jail it is’ (Ievins & Crewe, 2015). Even when released, the offenders will still have that label, which people immediately judge, and it just so happens that in the prison, everyone has the same label, and so a new moral community is formed.