My dear diaries: Following,valuing and reflecting on moments with research materials

October 2017: Choosing diaries

‘I’m in a high street store on the stationery aisle. I look at the selection of notebooks. Some lined, some colourful, and some have interesting graphics. I think through what is appropriate for the research, who will take part and who will complete them. I opt for a brown recycled paper notebook with off-white lined paper inside. Blank and ‘neutral’, I think. Participants can make it their own and customise as they wish.’

From the outset, participants were at the forefront of my mind. It is perhaps only since having the distance of reflexivity that such moments became revelatory of the deeper processes that such research materials reveal. Research materials were in many ways, a portal into the personal lives of the research participants. Taken from my own fieldnotes, the account above demonstrates the thought processes experienced as a researcher in the stationery shop and how choosing notebooks meant imagining (James, 2014) the kind of research, the data desired and ultimately, who would be writing in them. Of course, these questions of research design and development of materials are part of any research project. However, it is important to draw attention to the materiality of such and its relationship to imagining and thinking of future participants. Bates (2011: 87) details a similar process, as she states how her chosen diaries had a brightly coloured hard cover, A5 in size to allow for mobility, with squared graph pages, again chosen as a free format that moved away from linear journals and medicalised diary keeping. My reflection of choosing diaries revealed that first, the material constitution of them was important, and second, that the format of the diaries was selected with imaginations of what participants could ‘do’ with them – the capacities of notebooks as research and relational objects (Woodward, 2020). Peterson, 2020 talks of choosing materials that are ‘ordinary enough’ and not too specific for research purposes. An empty recycled brown paper notebook with inner lined sheets was a ‘blank slate’, but most importantly, it was a deliberate, material choice with the expression of participants in mind. I now turn to another imaginary – the completed and returned diary.

April 2018: Opening up

Breaking the seals of envelopes and opening up diaries brought imaginaries of participants to the fore. This emotive reading of participant narratives is well acknowledged (see Dickson-Swift et al. (2007: 336–337) on reading data and its emotional effect). Mason (2002) talks of the immersion of reading as a way to discover and learn about participants. Steedman (2001) recalls the process of rewriting written historical accounts, and how putting her own pen to paper and the process of retelling helps to come to know and be intimate with the original writer themselves. The same can be said for transcription, as the act of transcribing written diaries further became a way for me to listen, learn and reflect upon participant narratives. This further worked as an analytical process in becoming familiar with participants narratives and biographies in time for their follow up interviews (Zimmerman and Weider, 1977).

However, there is an important distinction in that the materiality of the diary offers an ‘evocative capacity’ (Hockey, 2014: 95) – the opening up (both in a physical and metaphorical sense) and the reading of the diary with emotions laid bare on the desk captured this. There is the ‘sensory intangibility’ in the elicitation process of reading and feeling the intimacy of intimate written personal lives, woven together with the handling a tangible diary with its ink marked page and written thoughts (Mason and Davies, 2009). Ellis (2007: 23) notes that she tells her students that situations in research will arise in the field ‘that will make their heads spin and their hearts ache’. For me, it was the arrival, opening up and reading of a diary. But this moment also opened up questions. It prompted me to think about what questions to ask when speaking with Joyce and how the intimate narrative found within, and experienced from, the diary would be felt and experienced within the interview. Spowart and Nairn (2014) talk about the reperformance of emotions from diaries within interviews, and the role in connecting emotional data. Yet, what happened was the tone of the interview was in complete contrast to the diary – while the diary was intimate and personal, the interview carried an air or light heartedness and ease. This perhaps suggests something about processes of data collection as different affective and material encounters. There is also something to be said here about tools versus data – a paper diary and a telephone call with different proximities may evoke alternative ways of storytelling and of researcher reciprocities (Stanley and Wise, 1993). Thus, multiple methods provoke a question of shifting intimacies and methods of communications as well as researcher relations.

October 2017: Preparing diaries and gift formation

Building on the point made earlier around choosing paper notebooks, putting together the ‘packs’ of materials also felt like a careful act of preparing and coming to know (or wanting to make a good impression on), future participants. Thus, these material interactions were part of developing relationships and attempting to build networks of care (Stanley and Wise, 1993). Ellis (2007: 5) notes that whilst institutional ethics provide helpful guidelines, they rest on the assumption that participants are strangers with no future relationship. Yet, developing these packs were, for me, the process of establishing the ‘first impression’ of a hopefully much longer research relationship. These material packs were in many ways, part of the communicative network of establishing contact and introducing participants to the project, and to me as a researcher. As demonstrated through my fieldnotes, developing these envelopes of research materials was the start of the collection of materials becoming part of mediating social relations (Woodward, 2020: 20; Miller, 2010). The preparation of research packs was the first research or ‘gift’ exchange (Mauss, 2001 [1925]). As Oakley (1981: 49) notes, one cannot gain intimacy without reciprocity. This reciprocal relationship emerged in numerous ways which include my willingness to talk about my own health experiences as part of initial contact or later interviews (only if prompted by participants) but was further found in the production of materials. I approached the creation of research materials with the same intimacy that I was hoping from the participants. This reciprocal nature was further found in the ‘gifts’ that were returned.

April 2018: ‘Gifts’

The completed diaries often travelled alongside, and were delivered with, intimate notes and letters. There is a special feeling to getting post, and receiving a completed diary certainly echoed this. As previously noted, the opening up of envelopes and completed diaries were a time for emotional engagement, analytical reflection and another piece of the jigsaw in coming to know participants. Yet, what further made these moments emotionally charged and connective was not only the diaries but the materials that came alongside – a greetings card, a follow-up letter and a booklet found at a museum that they thought may be of interest. Edwards et al. (2017) note that ‘paradata’ – the research ‘by-products’ of letters, correspondence, notes and so on – come to be valuable data. This ‘paradata’ often involves scribbles, signatures or notes written by the side of the page. But these cards and letters were ‘paradata’ in they felt like an intimate exchange, ‘gift’ like (Mauss, 2001 [1925]) and of sign of mediated relationality. Bates (2019: 2) similarly compares her written diaries, drawings, photographs and videos given by participants as ‘gifts’ that share ‘intimate moments’ of participants’ lives. Posting out and being a recipient of materials felt like an important part of the research relationship and the role of reciprocities. Captured above, Katie’s greeting card further demonstrates the negotiation of social relations through objects (Miller, 2010) and pushed me to reflect upon how she chose and decided to send the card that she did. Oakley (2016: 208) reflects upon the gift of social research, stating that such gifts come out when researchers ask participants about their lives, particularly when participants can choose how to respond and can ‘donate research material’ in the form of their own personal narratives. Oakley (2016) and Limerick et al. (1996) focus, however, on the gifts of narratives offered in interviews, but not physical artefacts. Thus, such gifts involve the intertwinement of materials together with intimate prose and ‘sensory intangibilities’ (Mason and Davies, 2009). As part of these material relationalities, I also became aware of my desire for continued communication, connectedness and care beyond data collection. This is reflected as I began to consider disseminating research findings and what to do as an ethics of ‘giving back’.

October 2020: Disseminating research

Both the greetings card and my thoughts on creating booklets for research dissemination work at illuminating the gifts of research and their desired relational nature. I posit that research materials are not only holders of data but mediate and respond to desired connections and relationalities. Too, our research materialities can be a tool in which we attempt to perform an ethics of care (Ellis, 2007).

December 2017: Encounters at the post office

The encounters of packaging up parcels and organising appropriate stamps at the post office illuminated how research materials should be handled with care. Tuning into this process meant that I became aware of the vulnerability and durability of research materials, as well as my own emotional engagement in ensuring the ethical mobility of the materials in reaching participants, and them safely arriving back to me. I became familiar with the necessity of padded envelopes, strong parcel tape and the rules of postage – none of which came up for me in textbooks and training. Perhaps, this is because it is ‘common-sense’, but I was learning the field through the trials and tribulations of trips to the post office. Fraser and Puwar’s (2008: 2) have touched upon this as they illuminate the sensibilities of doing the research as it is carried into libraries and lecture halls. Similarly, Steedman (2008) points to the connections and intimacies within research beyond what we might see at the traditional research site, with physical and emotional weights of our research carried from the home to journeys on the train. The encounters of parcels being questioned before posting evoked a nervousness in ‘protecting’ the intimacy of the insides. In many ways, problems at the post office became a time when I felt an ethical ‘tug of responsibility’ (Bochner and Ellis, 2016: 111) of imagining participants and the intimacy of the research topic. The privacy of diaries has been addressed within literature, often in part due to the detailing of everyday intimacies within (Harvey, 2011), and for those who are keeping them (Bartlett and Milligan 2015: 84; Minnis and Padiman, 2001). Yet the intimacy and privacy of material diaries in transit, and as something navigated by the researcher, became increasingly apparent.

Capturing the careful mobility of diaries became even more noticeable in times of disruption. A smooth journey of the diaries being signed, sealed and delivered was one of the key fieldwork navigations in using paper diaries. Bartlett and Milligan (2015: 40) state that when planning to use diary methods, it is important not to forget about the practical matters of getting diaries back. The majority of the diaries were returned safely and came with companions. However, despite my efforts and conscientiousness, these paper trails were not always smooth sailing.

December 2017: Broken seals

Despite the focus thus far being on the collection of stored diaries at the end of the research project, it is vital to acknowledge that not all diaries followed the same journey. While most diaries were returned and some were started and then stopped, others were left unknown and lay dormant (Woodward, 2015b) in potential participants’ home, perhaps repurposed as a notebook for another purpose, thrown in a cupboard amongst a pile of papers or even in the bin. Thus, diaries abandoned, and emails with no reply, work as a further reminder of the ethics of declining or leaving research. Further to this, questions about the whereabouts of the diaries when out of my own hands also came up in another unfortunate and regretful encounter:

May 2018: Lost diaries

I had not anticipated that a diary could in fact get lost in the post. Despite these practices of careful packaging, instructions and pre-paid postage, one completed diary slipped out of an envelope whilst in transit from a participant. The ‘procedural’ ethics (Guillemin and Gillam, 2004) came into action as I contacted the postal service, sought out institutional advice and contacted the participant. What happened was that the participant appeared not to mind at all, stating that they had not had much time for the research anyway and our conversation ended there. I have since reflected upon this experience in a multitude of ways. First, in that I will never know how the participant felt and how it could have been a very different and emotional encounter had it been another diary and another participant. Second, is that the careful handling of research materials, even in the most ordinary of ways, is important. They are affective and part of a collective of research communication (Woodward, 2020). The materiality and care mattered, highlighting the fractured and messy nature of communication and care with participants with and through materials. Third and most importantly, the most fruitful reflection was the materiality and emotional attachment and ‘possession’ of the ‘data’ in this instance meant more to me as a researcher than it did to the participant. Doing my PhD was a time of establishing myself as a ‘competent’ researcher and completing a research project that mattered. However, it is a lesson to remember that the value and weight of research participation is not to be expected or imagined on both sides.

Linked to this imaginary of the efforts of participatory and relational research is that I set out with a commitment to the diaries being open and in line with participatory ethics (Bartlett and Milligan, 2015). I began the research imagining participants would have their diaries back at the end of the ‘data collection’ process. I reflected upon this after my very first follow up interview.

November 2017: Returning the diary

I stood firm by the idea that these completed diaries while ‘co-produced’ were theirs, not mine. I wanted to do right by the participants as part of a commitment to principles of feminist ethics of care. This desire was met in some cases as two participants did in fact say that they would like their diaries back, having learnt from the process of reflection or that they wanted to keep writing. This was demonstrated by the participant described above who detailed the intimacy of learning from keeping the diary as we reflected upon it in the interview. However, the remaining twelve diarists were happy to let go and think no more of it. Yet, the diaries gifted felt far more complicated than the diaries given back. This remains an ongoing question of how to materially handle these with care, where to store them and how long for. There is a logistical point here about the temporary nature of my work locations as an early career researcher, ‘moving on’ to projects and universities anew, and thus where to move or carry the material diary data ‘to’ (Fraser and Puwar, 2008: 13). Too, ‘data’ are discussed in this manner, as we as researchers are required to outline the time lapse of destroying or archiving research data on an institutional and procedural level (Guillemin and Gillam, 2004). However, the material matter and ‘paradata’ (Edwards et al., 2017) from the project felt more than this. Keeping the diaries and the personal artefacts that are in their company evokes broader questions when seeing these through the lens of care and relational ethics (Ellis, 2007). My own attachment and feelings of responsibility, as well as the embodiment of personal lives through the materials, unsettles questions of destroying data. These cannot always be anticipated when designing research or undergoing ethical processes for institutional approval. Perhaps it is the case that research materials in all shapes and sizes lie dormant in academic offices long after anticipated procedural ethics because of their ‘sensory intangibilities’ (Mason and Davies, 2009). Though research projects may end and researchers move on, research materials carry both practical considerations of what we do with them, but also emotional weights in the connections, relations and lessons learned from doing social research.