Humanizing the Survey: Making Sense of Prison Life Beyond Numbers

• In Event: Prisons Research beyond the Conventional

Abstract

Proponents of quantification of observational data in criminological studies argue that direct observation is essential to furthering knowledge and understanding. This paper shows how building on qualitative, and particularly, appreciative research methods grounds and strengthens measurement.
The Measuring the Quality of Prison Life (MQPL) and Staff Quality of Life (SQL) surveys represents an attempt to conceptualise and evaluate prison environments in ways that reflect and build on human experience, and particular, identify relational, moral and other qualities of those environments. This analysis will present the findings from a recent longitudinal study of a high security prison in England, which has established statistical relationships between aspects of the social and moral environment (staff orientation and practices) and outcomes for prisoners (e.g. suicide) and prisons (e.g. disorder). A major and catastrophic event on one wing made theoretical and empirical sense in the light of survey data gathered in this way: a methodology we refer to as ethnography-led measurement.

Authors

• Katherine Auty, Cambridge University

• Alison Liebling, Cambridge University