The Coventry sample

The principal aim of the sampling design was to obtain a cross-section of the local population which maximised its diversity. Financial constraints meant there was no question of designing a sample large enough to be able to extrapolate from it to the English population. Instead, the sample was intended to provide a framework from which to select subjects for in-depth interviewing. Thus, from the beginning, this study was conceived of as a contribution to qualitative research, which would remain exploratory in nature. Nevertheless, unlike its predecessor, Structure, Agency and the Internal Conversation, which used a tiny group of twenty people, selected on an ad hoc basis, the objective this time was to ensure that the major demographic categories were adequately covered. Given the uncharted nature of research on reflexivity, it was impossible to specify in advance any other attributes that should be incorporated into the resulting sample. Beyond age, gender and occupational status, the preliminary interviewers were simply instructed to maximise diversity by, for example, including members of ethnic minorities and avoiding the duplication of people doing the same jobs, working for the same enterprise or living in the same street.

The previous study had tentatively identified four modes of reflexivity – ‘communicative’, ‘autonomous’, ‘meta-reflexive’ and ‘fractured’. The aim was not to gain some idea of their proportional distributions – desirable as that would have been – but rather to establish whether or not such modes were measurable, varied in intensity, were exhaustive of the sampled group or left many unclassifiable.