Abstract
ABSTRACTThe study of marginalia has not been widely discussed in social sciences research and occupies a marginal space in terms of methodological legitimacy. We highlight the value of paying attention to the ways in which participants speak back to the researcher. This paper draws on marginalia found in surveys written or drawn by young people in classrooms across South Wales, demonstrating how various notes and marks made spontaneously by participants can tell us something important and worthwhile about how young people engage with research. We position marginalia as a manifestation of complex power dynamics in the research process that illuminate participants’ negotiation of complex and multiple subjectivities in the literal margins and between the lines of the survey pages. Whilst the sensitive and rigorous analysis of marginalia is fraught with ethical and methodological challenges, we argue that paying closer attention to marginalia presents an opportunity for deeper engagement with participants when undertaking survey research.
Highlights
Marginalia, a variant of ‘paradata’, consists of spontaneous notes or comments offered by participants that are not directly sought by the research or that sit outside the boundaries of the designed data collection methods (McClelland, 2016)
This paper discusses the history of marginalia, explores current debates surrounding its use in social research and describes how the authors are approaching marginalia generated by children aged 13–14 participating in paper-based surveys
We argue that while marginalia can certainly be employed in the redesign of data collection, it is meaningful in its own right, rather than indicating deviation from an ‘ideal’ or ‘silencing’ survey design that does not prompt spontaneous comment
Summary
Marginalia, a variant of ‘paradata’, consists of spontaneous notes or comments offered by participants that are not directly sought by the research or that sit outside the boundaries of the designed data collection methods (McClelland, 2016). Smith argues that participants invoke an ‘imagined researcher’ when completing a survey, and that their marginalia is an attempt to communicate to the researcher, indicating, for example, ‘you won’t know [the answer] by asking like this’, ‘I can’t make my experience fit here’, or ‘this is what you need to know’
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