The Participants
Being funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)1, our research project is independent of the Ministry of Defence and we guarded this independence carefully as we wanted participants to know they were entering a participatory research space which did not replicate power dynamics that might underpin their prior interactions with the Ministry of Defence and where they were free to share their experiences and be listened to. Consequently, this impacted our decision-making around recruiting. Consequently, we decided not to pursue approval from the Ministry of Defence Research Ethics Committee (MODREC) in order to access serving military partners but subsequently these individuals were unable to take part in the research. Similarly, we felt that major military charities such as Help for Heroes, the British Legion and SSAFA, are, in the eyes of our participant community of military partners, aligned with the Ministry of Defence and we felt had become gatekeepers to the wider military community. So, we adopted a very personal and low-key approach to recruiting, reaching out amongst our own networks and smaller military charities with a local or specific remit.
Forming connections
A research team of two, Alice had prior connections with women veterans in Newcastle and Hannah was able to draw on her connections from her own military service. Being forced to take the recruiting online had the advantage that it opened up the geographical scope beyond the North East so that we could look nationwide (and indeed beyond as we recruited one participant who was stationed with her serving partner overseas). We embarked on two main routes to recruiting in tandem. We tried emailing smaller military charities but with little prior connection to these organisations we had a very limited response. We recruited the majority of our participants by reaching out through email and direct messaging on Twitter, Facebook and Linked In to former participants of Alice’s earlier project with women veterans and former colleagues of Hannah’s.
Demographics
We have recruited participants from across the United Kingdom (including one partner stationed overseas), interviewing 37 military partners and ex-partners, of whom 20 went on to take part in workshops. Our participant group included a cross section of ranks and services of their serving partners, genders, ethnicities and sexualities as well as including veterans, widows, ex-partners, girlfriends, those with disabilities or chronic health conditions and those from Foreign and Commonwealth families. Participants could not be currently serving in the regulars or reserves due to the Ministry of Defence not permitting us to speak with them without MODREC approval.