One more last working class hero

33
• conduct three focus groups in different brigades;
• undertake some observations of firefighters both at the FSC and away from it.
At this time the skills I had developed as a firefighter for ‘thinking on my feet’ were most useful. I balanced all I had
learnt from academia and the fire service alongside the data I was collecting in the field. This data was placed into
NUD*IST/NVIVO and collated and analysed using grounded theory (Glaser and Strauss 1967) and auto-critique. This
process led to me deciding that in the second phase of the research I should focus on collecting more data about fire
service culture. I carried out a cultural audit of:
• firefighter recruitment and training;
• firefighting in all its aspects;
• community fire safety;
• how the watch incorporate new members;
• watch behaviour;
• fire service humour;
• firefighters’ resistance to their officers.
The second phase of the research began by me accessing firefighters through networks at a mainly informal level to get
interviews and observe them.
2.6.3. Doing grounded theory
Research along grounded lines then started in earnest. I analysed research findings as they came in, breaking up the data
to classify each topic under a label: a code (see Glaser and Strauss 1967; Strauss, I987: 20-25; Strauss and Corbin 1990:
183). For example, I put all the data about firefighting into one code: ‘firefighting’ and this led to my realising that ‘all’
firefighters were using the same term ‘getting-in’, so I created a code for this type of data: ‘getting-in’. As the data within
that code built up, I compared the incoming data with that already collected and I was able to hypothesis that: ‘firefighters
were always keen to fight fires, because they were ‘humanitarians, intent on helping the public’: a possible answer to the
why part of my question on firefighting in the introductory chapter. My next hypothesis was to suggest that firefighters
had a professional ethos: ‘to provide an efficient service to help the public’. These two hypotheses appeared to be a
central finding to explain the code ‘getting-in’ and fitted very neatly with the public image of firefighters as an example of
selfless proletarian masculinity: a job which commonsense notions suggest could only be done by males. These
hypotheses were then tested against all the incoming data (constant comparative analysis; see Glaser and Strauss 1967;
Corbin 1986: 94; Strauss 1987: 23; Mc Neil 1990: 21) and eventually a stage arrived when incoming data reached
saturation i.e. did not challenge the hypotheses that explained the data coded under the label “getting-in.” All roads, as it
were, pointed to Rome and it would have been easy to write up and support a report along these lines. This would have
been something the fire service would have enjoyed, because it fits with its public image.
However, what the fire service might have preferred did not occur, because as a sociologist I was looking further
than the obvious. I continued the analyse, but some of the incoming data that I wanted to put in the code “getting-in”
could not be explained by the current two hypotheses: there appeared to be other possible reasons for why firefighters
were ‘getting-in’. I then revisited all the data in the code “getting-in” and subdivided it according to a number of reasons
that I could hypothesise that firefighters were getting-in. Constant comparative analysis continued to test and develop
what was now an increasingly large list of possibilities for why firefighters were getting-in. For me this system has
worked to great effect as my original two hypotheses were joined by new hypotheses that suggest there are a number of
reasons why firefighters are so keen to fight fires and the list of these appears in Chapter 3. Then I went on to make an
analysis of the complicated dynamics that support firefighters apparent keenness to always be getting-in at fires. This
analysis is a central finding of this report: a theory (see Corbin 1986: 98-99). I now argue that in parallel with the
‘obvious’ humanitarian motives that the public recognise when firefighters get-in at a fire, firefighters seek several petty
dividends (see Wright 1982 113 ; Chapters 3, 5 and 6). Whilst not wishing to reveal this early in the report too much about
these dividends, it is sufficient to say that one dividend involves an adrenaline rush and that should not be surprising; a
second, and more important finding is that getting-in involves firefighters seeking to ‘prove’ to themselves, their peers and
the public that they are good firefighters.
2.7. WATCHING THE WATCH
My data is mostly qualitative and takes a variety of forms from taped interviews, to the observations that I have recorded
in my field book. This data has been fully transcribed then coded into NUD*IST/NVIVO. It is this data as provided by
officers and firefighters that forms the basis of my report. However, I have used some quantitative data and this has taken
two forms: first a series of questionnaires; second, some official statistics, which I have put into SPSS. What now follows
is a summary of how I have collected my data.
113 Wright (1982) argues that apart from economic dividends that there are other (petty) dividends associated with the prestige of being in charge, the
power to control other workers and I will use this notion to look for non economic dividends which firefighters (and officers) might seek during the
course of their employment.