Fire Fighters, Neighbourhoods and Social Identity: the relationship between the fire service and residents in Bristol
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- Chapter Six: Focus Group Study
- Data gathering strategy
- Analytic strategy
SummaryWith regard to my research aim, to come to a better understanding of the relationship between residents and fire fighters, in this study I have observed the fire service and seen how they relate to the community. Although the following study then takes a community perspective, from the fire service’s perspective, there is a recognition of a degree of reciprocity in the relationship, whereby they are held in high regard for providing a universal service, but also resented for interfering with other people’s communities. Many fire fighters feel that they provide a unique service to the public, however, as will be discussed in the next chapter, many residents see them as one of a number of public service providers intent on telling them how to live their lives. This tension underlies much of the relationship, and leads to an understanding of the roots of hostility and resistance. Although fire fighters themselves tend not to be overtly hostile in neighbourhood settings, there is a degree of resentment at times towards the community, in particular for requiring community safety interventions, which are not popular ways for them to spend their time. Further, residents of some neighbourhoods are not referred to in the most complimentary of ways, and a degree of stereotyping runs through fire fighters’ portrayals of the different neighbourhoods in which they work. By positioning themselves as distinct from residents, there is a clear path, in social identity terms, to the potential for intergroup conflict, and the dynamics of this relationship are ongoing and shifting and experiences and encounters change or reinforce perceptions. Using social identity approaches emphasises the potential for social conflict, and provides ways of understanding this relationship as having its own momentum with conflict between groups of fire fighters and residents reinforcing their own group identities, especially where one identity is very positively valued by its group members. Further, there is a lot at stake for fire fighters in the maintenance of this group identity which is upheld both in distinction to residents and to fire and which also comes through the wider reputation of the fire service. For fire fighters, it is fire fighting work which enables them to most express this identity, and other, lower status work, such as community fire safety, has the potential to diminish both their status and their identity, suggesting that, whilst the delivery of current engagement mechanisms might be successful in the community, they can be less so for those fire fighters who deliver them. In this chapter, I have discussed a number of themes relating to the data I have gathered through ethnographic work with AFRS. I have attempted to relate this both to my research questions, and to the wider literature, although I will also address this in greater depth below. I have found that there is, as discussed variously, a strong social identity associated with the fire service, but that in contrast to a number of studies, that this has a number of positive operational aspects, and that despite seeming monolithic from the outside and homogenous from the inside, there are a number of differences between fire fighters. Fire fighters form a social contract with the communities that they serve, under which they offer certain conditions of service, and what they perceive to be high levels of professionalism. However, fire fighters feel negatively towards communities where this is frequently breached, such as through assaults or failing to consider community fire safety messages. This presents an ongoing and dynamic intergroup situation between residents and the fire service, which has evolved over a number of years, which is perpetuated through stereotypes within the fire service, and which is explored more from a community angle in the next chapter, in which I present the data from a number of residents’ focus groups. This fits well with social identity approaches and the ESIM described in the literature review, but, unlike Stott and Drury’s examples, this dynamic develops over time, not in day long events. Chapter Six: Focus Group StudyIn this chapter, I will present the analysis of the data I gathered using focus groups in a number of communities in Bristol. As with the previous chapter, it starts with a brief description of my data gathering and analytic strategies, which are covered more fully by the literature review and methodology chapters. It then restates the research questions and links them to the questions that I asked the participants, and which I considered in my fieldwork contact in these areas. These are then linked to the themes which emerged during the analysis, which are presented in this introduction. In the analysis section, as with the previous chapter, each theme is introduced in turn, with a short, descriptive preamble, and then a quote which serves as an exemplum from the data. In some cases, more than one quote is given, often in order to demonstrate competing or discordant claims within the theme. The data are then summarised, prior to a section which discusses the themes in more detail. Data gathering strategyIn total, eleven focus groups were conducted: three of these were pilots, conducted firstly with research colleagues from across Bristol, and then with local mums and school gate acquaintances in the Abbeyville part of the city. Focus groups were conducted with a range of different groups in Shiregreen, Upperfield and Hilton, some preexisting (such as a local history group) or with small numbers of a preexisting group (such as the Hilton Afternoon Club), and others formed for the express purpose of the study. This latter group were recruited through fire service records of recipients of HFSVs in the past three months, as described in the methodology chapter, and although some of the participants were known to each other, they had not met previously as a group. Analytic strategyHaving collated and transcribed data collected in the focus groups, Nvivo software was used to code and group themes. This process was conducted in a comparable manner to that described in the previous chapter, whereby coding structures were developed as the coding progressed so that the final structure was not reached until coding was completed. The process started with a thorough reading of the data. I then coded it, and then grouped the coded data into themes. This was followed with another reading through of the thematic data, and then coding was conducted within the themes. A first draft was written, which contained commentary on all the themes and coded data. This was then revised into a more discriminating account, which more selectively addressed the research questions, providing a ‘rich’ account of some of the neighbourhood issues (Braun, Clarke 2006) and a more nuanced description of issues more specifically relating to fire fighters. These themes will be discussed further below. As before, names of participants and names of neighbourhoods are anonymised. As groups were conducted with people who had specifically had a HFSV, these are labelled as such (although some participants in other groups had also had them). Groups are labelled by neighbourhood, and the HFSV groups are also named. Although the way in which questions were phrased differed from the pilot groups to the main body of the study, the format remained the same. As such, I have chosen to include this data. However, because of the potential ease of identifying some participants in these groups, I have ungrouped the data. Therefore, rather than labelling pilot groups 1-3, I have grouped them into a single ‘Pilot Group’. Also, in Shiregreen and Upperfield, I met with two separate non HFSV groups. Again, I have termed these together as just ‘Shiregreen’ or ‘Upperfield’ rather than numbering them. Some observations that were immediately apparent to me included a degree of shock and scepticism about fire fighters being treated badly in the community, coupled with outright hostility and suspicion (even in more ‘respectable’ seeming groups) towards the police and a number of complaints about overuse of sirens and the speed of fire service appliances. Alongside this, residents also spoke in different ways about their neighbourhoods, either being adamant that it was a wonderful place to live, and then outlining many less wonderful aspects, or that it was awful, but with a number of positive aspects. Many residents also spoke at their frustration of dealing with other agencies and public services and of incidents that they themselves had been involved in. Further, although the majority of residents felt that it was unacceptable to judge people because of the neighbourhood in which they lived, they freely admitted to world views in which these stereotypes formed a strong part – including of where they themselves lived. Needless to say, in many instances, although these stereotypes were cogent and coherent in their minds, they themselves did not fit in with them, forming exceptions rather than examples of the rule. Download 0.87 Mb. Share with your friends:
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