Phase Two:  Data Collection and Analysis

All research instruments were designed by the project’s main research team in Halifax, in consultation with the Local Reference Groups, in an iterative manner—that is, each instrument drew from the findings of earlier work.  All instruments were translated into French and passed by the Saint Mary's University Research Ethics Board.

Local co-ordinators were instrumental in recruiting participants.  We aimed at having an equal proportion of male and female participants at each stage but found that we had to over sample women for the final stage of qualitative interviews because women were simply not as well represented as men in the earlier stages.

The most obvious limitation of our research lies in our inability to generalize from our research participants to the population of immigrant/ethnic groups in Atlantic Canada.  This was not, however, one of our aims.  Rather, we intended to get at the full complexity, diversity and richness of people's experiences.  To this end we took special care to include people from as diverse backgrounds as we could access, in terms of ethno-cultural and national origins, education, income, religion, age, and migration status in Canada (e.g. permanent residents, citizens, refugees, newcomers and immigrants who have been to Canada for a long time).  Our inability to generalize is assuaged by the richness and depths of the stories that we can tell. 

Another strength of this research, and the design of the research instruments, lies in our adoption of a gender-based analysis.  As an approach to policy research, gender-based analysis "assess the differential impact of  . . . policies, programs and legislation on women and men . . . with an appreciation of gender differences, of the nature of relationship between women and men and of their different social realties, life expectations and economic circumstances.  It is a tool for understanding social processes and for responding with informed and equitable options. . . . Gender-based analysis challenges the assumption that everyone is affected by policies, programs and legislation in the same way" (Status of Women Canada, 1998).

This approach has guided the very nature of our research questions and of how we have chosen to address them through our research instruments. 

Town halls

Public town hall meetings took place in the six local sites, drawing between 20 and 35 people in each location.  Participants commented from their perspectives and experiences on a description of the research project, its objectives, and summaries of the ATA and IRPA.  The town halls provided another means of gauging how the new security agenda has affected people’s lives and communities and thus assisted the academic research team in honing in on the focus group guide and subsequent research instruments. In addition, the town halls supplied an opportunity and a forum for participants to network with others who shared their concerns or experiences. 

Focus Groups

Focus groups took place in each city in March 2004.  Participants included staff of immigrant service organizations, community and advocacy groups, service recipients and ethnic community members. Local Coordinators recruited participants through their professional networks. 

The focus groups opened with general questions about national security policies and their differential effects on men and women.  The questions then honed in on the central concepts: security, terrorism, freedom, equality, and citizenship.  Participants defined these terms and described how they have changed since 9-11.  Participants also commented on how changes in security policies have differentially affected ethnic minorities and religious groups.  

Surveys

Based on the data from the focus groups and town halls, we conducted self-administered, mail-back questionnaires of people working in immigrant service organizations and leaders of community and advocacy groups.  Local Coordinators in each of the cities identified sixty potential respondents through their professional networks, developing a convenience sample.  Fifty-seven people responded.

The questionnaire included five parts. Part I explored national security polices, focusing particularly on those identified in the focus groups and town halls.  This section addressed gender by asking respondents to identify which policies were affecting women more than men. Participants were also asked to compare experiences of Canadian born people, immigrants, and visible/non-visible minorities.  These questions also measured the respondents' views on how the national security agenda has affected their perceptions of security, equality, citizenship, freedom, and terrorism. Finally, Part I asked respondents to rate the job being done by government in terms of guaranteeing security for various groups.

In Part II respondents compared how freedom, equality and citizenship are differentially experienced by immigrants, ethnic minorities, refugees, Canadians, and men and women.  The questions also inquired about what types were most important, (for example, political or religious freedom), what government can do to enhance them, and whether they are gender-neutral concepts.

Part III asked about issues relating specifically to the Atlantic region, including the level of tolerance and diversity in the region and whether these have changed since 9-11.

Part IV focused on respondents’ general understanding of what constitutes terrorism and how their perception of it has changed since 9-11.  We also assessed how much respondents know about legal definitions of terrorism and asked their opinions about specific aspects of the ATA.
 

Qualitative Interviews

This part of the research is based on 58 in-depth interviews, which were completed across the six cities. The interview guide was designed by the main research team in Halifax on the basis of findings from previously conducted focus groups, town halls, and a survey and in a consultation process with the six “local reference groups” (LRGs) of this study who provided input and feedback in each of the six sites. The interview guide and important interview documents were translated into French for use in the French interviews. As in the previous stages of this study, this part of the research met the standards and obtained ethics approval from the Saint Mary’s University Research Ethics Board (REB) before interview candidates were contacted.

Interviewers were local community-based researchers and individuals who were trained and instructed by the project’s research team in Halifax on how to use the interview guide provided.  The Local Coordinators in the six cities were instructed to assist the interviewers in forming a selection list of interview candidates out of which ten interviewees would be picked by the interviewer, ideally six or seven women and three or four men in each city. The intent of the unequal gender distribution was to balance previous research instruments that did not result in sufficient data about gender differences and women’s experiences for the project. It was intended that participants should include clients of immigrant service agencies, immigrant, refugee and ethnic community men and women. Interview participants should have arrived in Canada before 9/11 so that they could make at least some of the comparisons they were asked in the interview. It was expected that the Local Coordinators and interviewers would have known the interview candidates personally prior to the interview, either through their work in service delivery or through their own involvement in the local communities.

With a few exceptions requested by the interviewees, the interviews were audiotaped and transcribed. Wherever not audiotaped, notes in writing were taken by the interviewer during the interview. For the Moncton interviews, seven of which were in French, a bilingual transcriber was used who was able to successfully translate and transcribe them at the same time. Data were coded and analyzed with the assistance of a qualitative analysis program (NU*DIST). SPSS was used for processing the background information provided on a form at the end of each interview.

Data obtained through this research instrument are not generalizable to the immigrant and ethnic community population of Atlantic Canada. The snowball technique used in the selection of the sample, as well as the nature of the questions aimed at deriving as much as possible the full complexity, diversity and rich detail of the immigrant and ethnic community men’s and women’s experiences in Atlantic Canadian cities. Special care was taken in the selection of our interviewees to include people from a diversity of backgrounds who were generally assessed to be “good informants” either because they were known to have some experiences with the new laws or because they were eager to reflect on and discuss the changes in their communities and in their lives. Furthermore, even generalizations about this sample are formulated in a very tentative way as most participants’ responses were not simple yes/no answers but in need of contextual interpretation. For purposes of protecting the anonymity of our few participants in relatively smaller towns, minimal information about them is used in this report when introducing their voices in excerpts. For the same reason, we are referring to Atlantic Canada in general, rather than specific city-based data in most cases.

Questions were semi-structured and included probes designed to help guide the interviewers. The interview schedule had three parts. The first part of the interview asked about the participants' community and experiences of women.  The next part addressed the participants' experiences with, and opinions about, national security policies.  In the third part, questions asked in the interviews were structured along the five key dimensions of this project, i.e. equality, freedom, citizenship, security and terrorism.

Case Law Analysis

We undertook an analysis of Canadian case law as another source of primary data to provide insight into how the courts are coming to define the concepts central to this research.  We had hoped that this would provide us with a contrast to the views expressed in the community and enhance our insight into how the laws, in particular the definition of terrorism, were affecting those coming before the courts.  We were especially interested in whether any gendered discourse is being invoked in Judicial Decisions.   

Our research, using the Quick Law database, uncovered eleven cases of relevance. All of the cases documented appeals of orders affecting admissibility to Canada (e.g., deportation orders, security certificates).  Essentially, they were all upper court decisions dealing with procedural concerns.  Given the paucity of published cases, and their focus on procedural concerns, they did not lend themselves to answering our central research questions and certainly shed no light on the gendered dimensions of human security.  For these reasons, we have made only general and occasional reference to the case law.