Under Construction @ Keele 2016 Volume 2 Issue 1 | Page 33

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contemporary penal institutions and via the qualitative approach, the research
avoided methodological pigeonholing.40
Ultimately, this research design allowed me to analyse data cross-sectionally
and longitudinally between 1809 and 1967, making it possible to chart trends over
time and relate these to wider social, economic and political changes within
Liverpool.41 It has enabled an understanding of the changing definitions and
discourses of femininity throughout modern history specific to Liverpool which Crone
states has resulted in ‘differing reactions to offending women’.42 It has also facilitated
an exploration of the overarching aim of identifying, exploring and critically unpicking
various modes and loci of governance directed towards ‘deviant’ women in the form
of semi-penal institutions. This was achieved by systematically scanning the
qualitative archival data for examples of particular themes in a way that was both
theoretical and analytic.43 Triangulation was then used which reduced the chances of
reaching false conclusions.
Contrary to quantitative or scientific research, qualitative research provides an
understanding of people’s experiences and perspectives. The materials utilised from
the archives include Annual Reports, minutes of meetings, committee meeting
reports, punishment records and more informal material including letters and
correspondence. However, the majority of the material utilised within this
Foucauldian feminist historiography was hand-written and much of it (being between
100-200 years old) barely legible. Nevertheless, because most of the reports and
documents were dated, ‘this facilitated the production of a chronological history’ of
the identified semi-penal institutions.44 This qualitative approach has other benefits,
as Angela Barton notes:
More importantly, the wealth of information about individual residents and
the, often frank and emotional, language used to describe and discuss

40

Roger Gomm, Social Research Methodology: A Critical Introduction (Basingstoke: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2004).
41
Michael R. Hill, Archival Strategies and Techniques (London: Sage, 1993).
42
Rosalind Crone, “Reappraising Victorian Literacy through Prison Records”, Journal of Victorian
Culture 156.1 (2010): 14.
43
John Cresswell, Research Design, (London: Sage, 2003).
44
Barton, 2005, 162.