Search Results
In this chapter we – Emma Lazenby, a filmmaker, and Karen Gray, a researcher – introduce the analogue journey method. The term ‘analogue’ has dual meanings, and both are relevant. An ‘analogue’ is a thing that is similar to, or that is used to represent, something else through the process of comparison or analogy. The analogue journey method is a novel creative analysis tool that can be used with almost any kind of qualitative or mixed-methods research data, making sense of such data by visualising them in the shape of a journey, with the end goal of communicating this sense to others. The word ‘analogue’ is also now commonly used to denote things whose means of representation is through the quantities and qualities of the physical world. This contrasts to the ‘digital’ world, in which physical quantities are processed through and represented by electrical signals. For example, analogue time is told through the movement of the minute and second hands of a clock, rather than through changing numbers on a computer screen. The analogue journey method requires analogue tools, such as paper, pens, scissors. However, its results are intended to be translated into either words or images using any media to support wider and creative dissemination of research findings. The word ‘journey’ in the name indicates that it involves information being organised and presented in a form that, while linear, is mobile and mutable – open to change. The analogue journey method demands thoughtful connection and reconnection with the data. Its activities encourage cross-disciplinary collaboration, opening up different perspectives or helping to form different constellations of information.
Background:
Despite calls for greater use of research and an appetite to do so within adult social care, a gap persists between research and practice.
Aims and objectives:
To explore views of adult social care staff about research and its application to everyday practice. To understand how these might impact upon research use capacity-building initiatives within adult social care organisations.
Methods:
Thematic analysis of semi-structured qualitative interviews with 25 staff members working within the adult social care departments of three English local authorities.
Findings:
Participants characterised research as feeling separate from practice. They reflected on their use of it in relation to pressures affecting adult social care and identified a lack of relevant research. Research benefiting service users, supporting individual practice or informing organisational decision-making was considered useful. However, research could also be viewed as a luxury where its findings were felt to represent an ‘ideal’ rather than real world of practice or did not accord with practice knowledge or local experience.
Discussion and conclusions:
While participants feel positively towards research, there remains a gap between these perceptions and its use in practice. There remains a need to improve research relevance and accessibility and to clarify its role in decision-making in social care, including where there is no evidence, where evidence challenges existing practice, or where the evidence base is growing. Collaborative partnerships between adult social care organisations, researchers and service users could help to narrow the research–practice gap and support the routine translation of research to practice.
Reducing poverty is important for those affected, for society and the economy. Poverty remains entrenched in the UK, despite considerable research efforts to understand its causes and possible solutions. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation, with the Centre for Science and Policy at the University of Cambridge, ran a democratic, transparent, consensual exercise involving 45 participants from government, non-governmental organisations, academia and research to identify 100 important research questions that, if answered, would help to reduce or prevent poverty. The list includes questions across a number of important themes, including attitudes, education, family, employment, heath, wellbeing, inclusion, markets, housing, taxes, inequality and power.
