Living Wage

November 4, 2005

I have been thinking that a limitation to my study was the fact that TRIO measures the poverty level differently than the national poverty threshold and so I can’t compare my findings to other research on low-income families. Yesterday I was doing a little more investigating and learning more about the poverty threshold and learned some really interesting information. First TRIO uses the next tier which is 150% instead of 100% of the poverty threshold, meaning $28,000 as the income cutoff. Some programs (like Medacaid in Maine) uses 200% as a cut off in order to serve more people. My sample are the working poor of western Maine, meaning that one or both of the parents is working and they are still poor.

Further reading led me to the Living Wage estimates which are much more accurate in determining just how much it actually costs to get your basic needs met in any area. The poverty threshold is calculated my multiplying the cost of a minimum food budget by three (because in the 60’s food was one third of one’s expenses). The living wage is individualized by city, even county and calculates food, housing, utilities, child care, and taxes. These figures show that one would need to make more than twice the amount of income at the federal poverty level to meet the basic needs. In terms of living wage, in Maine it is $37,759 for a family of four compared to the federal poverty level which is $18,392 for a family of four. This just astounds me. Translated to minimum wage, a person living in Maine would need to make $14.84 an hour, while minimum wage is only $6.25 in Maine. I just find this fascinating and maddening. The per capita income in Maine right now is about $18,734, that is $400 above the poverty level.

November 3, 2005

After reading the methodology section of Lisa’s book, I am more invigorated and already thinking beyond this project. She just writes such touching and sensitive statements. She refers to the act of doing social research which transcends class borders as “crossing over.” There are some specific principles associated with this kind of research. 1)Being neutral is a kind of silence. She acknowledges that one can not be neutral or unbiased to do this kind of research- that in itself would be unethical. 2) Spending considerable time with people. She says that one must understand them in their lives and develop trust.
I completely agree with these principles and it relieves me to know that I am not wrong for feeling this way. I feel like I have fulfilled both of these principles for this research. I am in no way neutral and I have spent a great deal of time with these kids. Six years of observations and interviews that will never be put into a formal research document, all of which gave me incredible insight into what I would like to look at further. The final principle Lisa Dodson discusses is 3) “authoritative participation of members of whatever community or population is investigated.” This means involving them at different stages of the research, having them be involved in interpretation, and compensation. I love how she says it is “fundamental to gaining the reflective and critical analysis of those historically left out and to building with them another kind of discourse.” So, if I am able to take this data I have collected and go further with it to bring it back to them and have them interpret it that would be great. Lisa designed the methodology of interpretive focus groups and I think it could be utilized in my next steps with this project.

November 1, 2005

I finished Lisa Dodson’s book, Don’t Call Us Out of Name. It was amazing. That is what I want to write. That is what I want my dissertation to be. She had the kids design the survey, analyze the data, and then conduct focus groups to look at the data in a more in depth manor. It was incredible. It really renewed my energy for doing participatory research. I see that there is a balance one can find and it doesn’t have to fit into the little box that is PAR. I am planning to meet with Lisa soon to talk with her about possibilities for my dissertation and to get a sense of what is within my grasp for a dissertation. I think I might be able to take this data and share it with another group of rural adolescents and have them analyze it for other themes and go more in depth about what to do next. I also think creating an exhibit of their photography would be really amazing. It might go on tour to local and school libraries. It could be very powerful.

Coding

October 19, 2005

In the HyperRESEARCH workshop this week we talked more about coding. I am finally learning how to code and how to analyze my data. I think my approach is going to be to do initial line by line coding. That will mean that I will make a code basically for each line or idea presented in the interview. Then, I will look for ways to collapse those codes into metacodes which incorporate more of the smaller codes. I think this is the best way to be thorough and not miss anything. It will also prevent my own bias from coming into play. I not only know these data, but I know these participants and I wouldn’t want to invent things that aren’t there. I want to see what the data say. This is going to be time consuming. I am doing okay with the transcribing, but I really need to get more done. I have to be able to present some preliminary findings in December.

"The Way Life Should Be?"

September 30, 2005
I have finished transcribing eight interviews. I feel like the data are amazing. I did two boys today. I have only done girls so far. They were different. The boys take a little more prompting. They are sometimes satisfied to leave it at “this is my house” and I have to ask them to talk more about why they took the picture and why it is important. Jim was interesting because he really talked about class differences in his town and how his mother was treated at school open house because she doesn’t have as much money. He is very reflective. He also loves his mother and what she does for the family. I think the mother/child relationship is getting discussed a lot in these interviews. They are very loyal to their parents. I also became interested in Bob’s stuttering. I was looking for patterns in his speech; when he did it and when he didn’t. Sometimes he articulated exactly what he wanted to say and other times he repeated not only consonants, but entire phrases several times when trying to express his thoughts. I am still working on titles and I am wondering if I can do something with the saying “Maine, the way life should be.” Bob mentioned it in his interview and it makes me think about a lot of different aspects of Maine and who came up with this saying and was it a tourist or a native? Where did he or she live? Should Maine be different in any ways?

Who's driving?

September 25, 2005

I find it so interesting to listen carefully to the tapes and to see where the interviews go. On Friday I transcribed my conversation with June. She was quite emotional in the interview and we even stopped. What it interesting is that I didn‘t lead her to that place. We were on another topic and she brought us back to her mother. She needed to tell me. It is amazing. An image that resonated with me from this interview is that she took a picture of a license plate to represent her identity. It had four numbers on it and she said that she is one of just a few in her state and school. Very interesting.

While I am transcribing I am also constantly wishing I had gone a little further, wishing I had asked just one more question to go a little deeper. Interestingly, the interview will often go back to those deeper questions later on. It is like a spiral—we revisit a similar theme or idea but go in deeper and talk about it more completely, round out the picture a little better.

“What do you think it is that makes these kids resilient?”

September 19, 2005

Today I was asked: “What do you think it is that makes these kids resilient?” I know it seems illogical when they grow up in an environment and what they see is all they know. Christina’s mom is doing drugs at her house, she is sending her away to her grandmother’s house so she can party with her friends. Christina wants nothing to do with drugs, she doesn’t want to screw up her life like her mom did. And yet you’d think that she would be more inclined to be doing drugs after the exposure and access to them. What is it that makes her not? I hear anger and frustration in her voice. In her egocentric, adolescent mind, her mother’s choices are impacting her quality of life and in her eyes this is wrong. Is it the anger and bitterness that keeps them from making it part of their lives? Where do their aspirations come from? Maybe this question will get answered.

This is my world

September 17, 2005

I am feeling incredibly attached to my data, possessive, territorial. Maybe this is common when it is your first research project, and yet maybe this is just my passionate side coming through. I have the potential to get someone to help with the transcribing. I am hesitant to bring another person on board; to give some one else access to my data. I feel obligated to uphold my promise to the participants to not share their information with anyone else. I am committed to the trust they had in me and the work they did. My data are rich and I want to get into them, to see them from all angles. I know that to get to that place I have a lot of work to do and I know that it won’t take away from my project to allow someone else to help me. I also find that I want to hear their voices again. I want to spend time with them while I am transcribing their interviews. My personal attachment to the participants is standing in my way when it comes to giving up some of the work. But there aren’t enough hours in the day. There isn’t enough time to get everything done and this help would be an asset.

Let's start at the very beginning

August 11, 2005
The interviews are complete. That was a whirlwind six weeks of data collection. It was exciting. I can’t wait to start examining it, looking at it closely. I want to understand what I have gathered. I want to listen to their stories again. Technically, I feel like the interviews were good. I think I got a lot of information. The kids were very open with me about their lives and about their experiences. I learned so much. I don’t know if my interviewing skills are as refined as some. I know I tend to be a counselor first and struggle with being unbiased in my language. I tend to affirm everything they say and focus on emotions, what they were feeling. I often comment on their words and feel compelled to make interjections. I found it very helpful to tell the kids right up front that I may ask them questions that I already know the answers to (personal information they told me outside of the interview) but that I will ask again because I can only use what they tell me during the interview. This way I can just ask questions without feeling the need to bring things up in a conversational manner. They were so good with me, in helping me learn how to do research, in helping me complete my project.

The thing they were really concerned about was compensation. Most of them asked if I would be paying them out of my pocket. If I was, they did not want the money. I found this to be so touching that they would not want the $20 if it came from me personally. They assured me that they would do it for me anyway. In the end they all took the money. They also took the photography very seriously. They took some interesting pictures to represent their lives. Limited by the fact that they couldn’t take picture of people, they were forced to be creative and to think more abstractly. I was impressed with the symbolism they generated and the way they thought about their lives. So impressed.

A question I come out of the summer thinking a lot about is about houses. I spent some time driving around taking pictures of my own. How is that I knew which houses were obviously those belonging to the rural poor? There are similar characteristics. There are abandoned cars parked in the driveway, on the lawn, in the edge of the woods. There are other appliances and trash littering the front lawn and yard. Why? Why are there “things” everywhere? Does it show what you have? Is it too expensive to have them removed from the property? Is there not enough time in the day when you are working several jobs. Is there a feeling that no one sees it because you are isolated?