6 Exploring life trajectories: what mattered to them
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Mariela Neagu
Abstract
The previous chapters provided insights into the participants’ care experiences during childhood, teenage years and early childhood. This chapter provides an insight into how the research data was analysed and takes a holistic approach to examine those elements of the care experiences that had an impact on young people’s well-being in adult life drawing on identity literature and using dignity as core concept borrowed from moral philosophy and employed in human rights and capabilities.
Altogether, the life histories the research participants have shared cover just over 1000 years of life. Making sense of such a large amount of qualitative data is not an easy task. The purpose of the study was not only to transfer this knowledge to the academic world but also to contribute to a better understanding of the subtleties of care so that policy makers and practitioners who meet children in care can make more sense of what they might like to say but often choose to remain silent. All interviews have been transcribed verbatim into English after running a back-translation with a proficient user, anonymising them at the same time. After reading and annotating 20 interviews by hand (four in each cluster) to get a feel for the emerging themes (Miles and Huberman, 1994), I uploaded all of them in Nvivo.
Abstract
The previous chapters provided insights into the participants’ care experiences during childhood, teenage years and early childhood. This chapter provides an insight into how the research data was analysed and takes a holistic approach to examine those elements of the care experiences that had an impact on young people’s well-being in adult life drawing on identity literature and using dignity as core concept borrowed from moral philosophy and employed in human rights and capabilities.
Altogether, the life histories the research participants have shared cover just over 1000 years of life. Making sense of such a large amount of qualitative data is not an easy task. The purpose of the study was not only to transfer this knowledge to the academic world but also to contribute to a better understanding of the subtleties of care so that policy makers and practitioners who meet children in care can make more sense of what they might like to say but often choose to remain silent. All interviews have been transcribed verbatim into English after running a back-translation with a proficient user, anonymising them at the same time. After reading and annotating 20 interviews by hand (four in each cluster) to get a feel for the emerging themes (Miles and Huberman, 1994), I uploaded all of them in Nvivo.
Chapters in this book
- Front Matter i
- Contents v
- Acknowledgements vi
- Introduction 1
- Romania: what underlay the orphan crisis 9
- Where do children go when they can’t stay with their families? 27
- Childhoods in care 51
- Teen years in care and their ways out 125
- Exploring life trajectories: what mattered to them 159
- The benefit of hindsight: learning for policy and practice 187
- Epilogue 207
- Notes 209
- References 211
- Index 229
Chapters in this book
- Front Matter i
- Contents v
- Acknowledgements vi
- Introduction 1
- Romania: what underlay the orphan crisis 9
- Where do children go when they can’t stay with their families? 27
- Childhoods in care 51
- Teen years in care and their ways out 125
- Exploring life trajectories: what mattered to them 159
- The benefit of hindsight: learning for policy and practice 187
- Epilogue 207
- Notes 209
- References 211
- Index 229
