A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of - Etheses - Queen Margaret ...

experiences and life situations. Developing a critical analysis, on the other hand, would have
proved more difficult.
I gave a brief outline of what would be asked of participants, stating that they would be
asked to take part in interviews in a series of different situations reflecting different parts of
their lives. Interviews, I stated, would be fairly informal, organised loosely around the
themes „Who am I?‟ and „How do I fit in to the world?‟ (Giddens, 2003). I indicated that the
social model of disability would be the underlying principle on which the research would be
based and that interviews would take place between October 2007 and October 2008. I gave
assurance of full confidentiality and confirmed that this project had ethical approval from
Queen Margaret University.
I invited anyone interested in finding out more about this research, either because they
wanted to become involved or because they would like to pass on information to someone
else, to contact me.
On the morning of the day of publication of my letter I received my first enquiries. These
proceeded to arrive very rapidly over the coming days. Some people responded directly as a
result of having read my letter on the Inclusion Scotland website, but what also surprised me
was that the letter appeared to have been picked up and copied into their own newsletters by
people working in other organisations. I had originally developed a list of some thirty
organisations I planned to target with this letter but it quickly became apparent that this
would be unnecessary. While I had initially hoped to receive a handful of responses from
disabled people around Scotland who had seen my notice through the Inclusion Scotland
website, I received enquiries from people from throughout Scotland, England and Wales.
The furthest I received an enquiry from was from a professor at the Georgia Institute in
Atlanta, Georgia, who offered to invite the 900 disabled members of their Research Center‟s
Community Advisory Network to participate in my research. (I had to email her back,
thanking her for the interest, but stating that regrettably my research budget would not
stretch to intercontinental travel.)
I had anticipated a possible difficulty identifying participants who felt negatively about the
disability experience. I foresaw that perhaps it might be relatively easy to attract people with
positive identities, but that those who found nothing good in living with impairment might be
reluctant to talk about their situations. In preparation for this I had developed knowledge
about snowball research strategies for accessing hidden and „hard-to-reach‟ (or marginalised)
63