Session: Qualitative Inquiry in Low-Income Communities: Recent Findings From the Front-Lines (Society for Social Work and Research 15th Annual Conference: Emerging Horizons for Social Work Research)

Symposium Description: The theme of this symposium is recent qualitative findings in the investigation of poverty-related issues relevant to Social Work policy and practice. Each of the four papers investigates areas where our understanding from a qualitative perspective is limited, contributes to our knowledge and understanding of policy and practice in low-income communities, and highlights the contribution qualitative research tools can make in this work. This symposium brings together four papers that draw on diverse qualitative methods to explore poverty from a macro, mezzo, and micro perspective while contributing to knowledge in areas that are under explored.

The first paper address the difficulty researchers experience using traditional sampling techniques in recruiting marginalized populations to participate in qualitative research. They draws on a recent investigation of the role of forgiveness of child support obligations during incarceration for non-custodial fathers and the impact on post-incarceration child support payments. The paper discusses the recalibration of a sampling-strategy mid-study to in order to gain trust among respondents and improve recruitment. Overall, they find that recruitment and participation is hindered by prior negative experiences in the formal system.

The second paper draws on 15 months of ethnographic fieldwork observations of chronically homeless men in Atlantic City to understand the lack of social service utilization among the homeless. He finds that the mutual exchange of favors among the homeless may enhance daily survival but might also impede social service utilization. His research sheds light on reasons for the underutilization of services among the homeless and the potential for related improvements to social service delivery systems.

The third paper employs 110 semi-structured interviews with caseworkers in a welfare-to-work training program to investigate the impact of professional identities on policy implementation choices with clients. More specifically, they investigate differences in policy-implementation relative to whether caseworkers identify as an “efficiency engineer” or “social worker” (Watkins-Hayes, 2009) and find that worker identity influences caseworker choices about policy and possibly the subsequent program experiences of clients. This paper makes an important contribution to our understanding of the role of worker identification in assessing and implementing policy.

Past research on welfare reform highlights dismal earnings and high poverty rates for those who have left the rolls. We know relatively little, however, about those who are able to secure and sustain improved economic well-being over time. The final paper explores factors associated with “economic success” drawing from 15 in-depth interviews with a random sample of 2006 welfare leavers from Wisconsin who had a substantial increase in earnings from 2006 to 2007. They find that economic well-being is fluid even among those with the most resources suggesting sustained ‘self-sufficiency' is elusive even among the “most-able” welfare leavers.