It might seem a little strange to be dedicating a special issue of Futures of Work to research methods. But all contributors to this issue are dealing with work, and most of them focus on vulnerable or precarious workers, such as those with experiences of modern slavery, those who require multiple jobs to survive or – more broadly speaking – women and menopausal workers. Yet they also discuss a range of new(-ish) approaches and innovations in research methods in the process.
The reason for this is that, as all the articles make clear, we have not yet got right what we are looking at, how we look at these issues and, as a result, what data and evidence we produce. The shortcomings of existing data and surveys are often based on definitional inaccuracies and concerns with measurement. As Darja puts it, we are often imprecise about how many, who and why. This means that, to use Jennifer’s word, there are significant blind spots (in knowing when women work, for example) and, to paraphrase Luis, much of the data available to us is retrospective rather than forward-looking and focused on prevention. This Futures of Work issue therefore argues, overall, for the development of methods and ways of looking at work and labour market issues that produce significant and new insights.
There are further similarities between the articles. Most of them raise ethical questions or draw attention to differences in values and perspectives. Chris makes this especially clear by looking at how to involve those with lived experience of modern slavery in research without re-exploiting or retraumatising them, and without survivors’ roles becoming tokenistic. For some sensitive subject matters, it might be easier to reveal perceptions, understandings and discourses on them by depersonalising the research, as is done in the story completion approach that Victoria, Kara, Gemma and Vanessa discuss. In drawing attention to the impact of employing different methods, our contributors also highlight the responsibilities of researchers to be fair, whether this is in their representation of research participants or contributors, or in terms of how research can or should be used to influence policy and stakeholders in the field.
This issue includes three contributions from a quantitative starting point and two that would be labelled as qualitative. Yet it is also clear in the call for more mixed methods research (e.g. by Darja and Luis) that broad perspectives and trends are as important as the individual worker perspective, with the former often addressing questions such as how many, who, when and where, while in-depth qualitative work is often required to explain why. In many ways, therefore, ‘old’ and established principles in research methods are still maintained. This may not always be the case as new research methods emerge and existing ones continue to be developed.
If this issue highlights one thing, it is that there is always a broad range of considerations and options in how we undertake research, and also always more to learn on how we improve and further develop the implementation of the methods we use. Research methods play a significant role in how the future of work may play out because methodological choices are foundational to the type of knowledge that is developed of the issues workers face and how they might be addressed. So much so, that methods may be an issue we need to return to in forthcoming issues of Futures of Work.
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