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Family Policy and the Organisation of Childcare pp 25–49Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Researching Families’ Childcare Decisions

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Abstract

This chapter expands on the empirical material that informs the volume. After a brief discussion of the choice of Romania, the chapter moves on to describe the qualitative study that the book draws on. The chapter details the research design, the selection criteria employed in the recruitment of participating families, the research sites chosen, recruitment efforts and the data collection phases and provides information about the study population. The strengths and limitations of the empirical study are also discussed. The chapter closes with a brief review of additional data sources used in the book.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Though ethnicity was not a relevant selection criterion, marginalised Roma parents living in severe poverty are a relevant group of Romanian parents more generally (Open Society Institute 2007; UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre 2012). Given their systematic exclusion from public preschool tuition, alternative recruitment strategies needed to be relied on.

  2. 2.

    The director of the County Social Benefits Office declined any possibility of my accessing county-level information on parental leave-takers as their data were allegedly not anonymised. She also expressed concerns about the handling of the data even if these had been anonymised despite my assurances of having to abide by strict ethical guidelines imposed by the University of Oxford.

  3. 3.

    This was discussed both by some parents as well as several grandmothers interviewed.

  4. 4.

    Single-earner families where fathers worked regularly, but informally are also included.

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  1. Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark

    Borbála Kovács

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Kovács, B. (2018). Researching Families’ Childcare Decisions. In: Family Policy and the Organisation of Childcare. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78661-2_2

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