A Changing Society - Coursework Example

?A Changing Society There has been a huge change following the presentation of the William Beverage Report. After the report’s release, the Family Allowance Act was passed in the year 1945. In 1946, the National Insurance Act and the National Health Act were passed and the National Assistance Act was passed in 1948. All of these legislations include the changes enacted by the post-war Labour Government (Spicker, 2011). However, there were several deviations in these Acts from the Beveridge’s original proposals. This paper explores how the society has been changing in the past fifty years and the comparison of the different state of the people’s welfare. In the Family Allowances Act the departure was the rejection of Beveridge’s recommended level of 8 shillings (whereby 1 shilling = 5 pence) for each child and adopted a weekly rate of five shillings. In social insurance, among the main departures in the National Insurance Act were: first, there was only a limited period of 12 months to unemployment benefit and not paid indefinitely. Secondly, the 20 year phasing was left out after the immediate introduction of the full-fat rate old-age pensions and the assessed benefit level was 131%. This is the same as that of Rowntree’s 1938 which was higher than the 125% from Beveridge’s recommendation. In social assistance, there was deviation in National Assistance Act that the support included the definite cost of housing that made the assistance higher than that of Beveridge’s report which included an average rent of ten shillings. This deviation ensured that a large number of beneficiaries could qualify for assistance (Spicker, 2011: 40-42). The critical nature of these departures from the Beveridge’s integrated planning report was for a fact distorted so that he could not be held responsible for most failures but could be critiqued for being politically unrealistic. Further changes came later like the Graduated Pension Act that came into operation in 1961 and later again in 1971 changed to Strategy for Pension under the Tory Government (Spicker, 2011:42-45). This paper will actively consider the changes in society during this period in terms of sociological and psychological developments that have taken place while utilising the qualitative data from semi-structured interviews with older participants. There exist several approaches in qualitative research that are operational and most of them have: interest in meanings, understandings, perspectives and have a focus on the natural settings. They also have an emphasis on the process and are concerned with grounded theory and inductive analysis. Methods used in qualitative studies were developed to enable scholars to study cultural and social phenomena in social sciences domain (Woods, 2006). Qualitative research is inspired by the power of observation that identifies ability to talk as a distinguishable feature of humans from the natural world. Hence, the design in these methods is to help scholars understand people and their social and cultural environment (Myers 2009). Qualitative researchers have an interest in data from the world as it is in real circumstances (Kaplan and Maxwell 1994). According to woods (2006), talking with people provides the best quality material for qualitative research through both formal interviews and casual conversations. Interviews enable a researcher to get the meanings and understandings of the respondents but also the researcher can gain the participant’s confidence through unobtrusive and empathetic encounter thus avoiding imposing their influence to the respondent. According to Allmark (2009), there is no predefined structure or theoretical framework that was anticipated, and therefore, there was no hypothesis that was formulated prior to the interview. The questions about the social reality under investigation were also not framed prior to the interview. This is because the interview was to be in a form of a narration and only then was the questions asked in response to the narration to fulfil the unstructured method of interviewing. As a result, there were instances of unanticipated directions that the interview took which resulted to different structures and patterns of the data collected. To deal with this, the data was collected through recording the conversation that was helpful at the time of compilation and analysis. Because of the anticipated narration the interview was set to happen in an open and relaxed area that helped to develop a rapport with the interviewee. The questions asked in response to the narration were kept in mind during the whole process so as to reach the study’s purpose and the general scope of issues that the interviewee would feel comfortable to discuss. In addition, regarding the questions asked, they were open-ended and flexible. This enabled the respondent to respond by giving their own perspective of the changes they experienced (Allmark, 2009). The participant was 76 year old Edward Spring. He is a retired police officer, lives in Brandon and has a socialising nature that distinguishes him from others. Spring likes meeting people for social and political reasons, and this is what makes him who he is. Owing to his nature it was not quite difficult to bring across the discussion intended for the interview. He was at ease and conversant with the objective of the interview though unaware of the scope. Unstructured interviewing is adventurous and involves learning about the experience and thoughts regarding other people’s worlds (Rubin and Rubin 1995). Though I am a good conversationalist, I just needed to be more of a listener because I had found a good narrator who understood the objective of the interview. This conformed to Kvale’s (1996) suggestion that qualitative study interview targets to discuss and describe the means of central themes in the participant’s life and the main task being to completely understand what that person has to say about the topic. I am convinced that the interview was a good method to get the information behind his experience. This conforms to McNamara (1999), when he argues that the researcher is able to trail in-depth information around the topic. Before the National Service Act, some of the people believed that health care access was a component of the civilised social structure. Some municipalities like the London County Council wanted to run hospitals and other utilities. During this time socialists such as Webbs fought for an insurance principle or state system. In 1939 an emergency medical service was created with response to the Second World War as the country underwent control and command. When the Act was enacted in 1948 in a weary but disciplined society by war, there remained resilience, sense of fun and humour. People who happened to be comfortable were so with simple things. Now, it is difficult for people to imagine how life was like back then without ‘free’ health care and the difference made by NHS to people’s lives (Great Britain Dept. of Health, 2004). In conclusion, it is critical for the interviewee to have an informed consent of what is happening and to be ensured of their privacy. This was considered during the interview and the respondent was well informed and felt obligated to help in the research. Through his willingness he expressed the difference between 50 years back and now. National Health Service is nowadays taken for granted, but is only sixty years ago when only a few could afford health care as it was a luxury. References Allmark, P.J., Boote, J., Chambers, E., Clarke, A., Mcdonnell, A.,Thompson, A. & Tod, A. (2009) ‘Ethical issues in the use of in-depth interviews: literature review and discussion’ Research Ethics Review, vol. 5, no. 2, pp. 48-54. Great Britain. Dept. of Health (2004) The NHS improvement plan: putting people at the heart of public services The Stationery Office. Kaplan, B. & Maxwell, J.A. (1994) Qualitative research methods for evaluating computer information systems, in evaluating health care information systems: methods and applications, Sage. Klein, R. (2010) The new politics of the NHS: from creation to reinvention, Radcliffe Publishing. Myers, M.D. (2009). Qualitative research in business & management, Sage Publications, London. Rubin, H.J. & Rubin, I.S. (1995). Qualitative interviewing: the art of hearing data, Sage. Spicker, P. (2011) How social security works: an introduction to benefits in Britain, The Policy Press. Steinar, K. (1996) Interviews an introduction to qualitative research interviewing, Sage Publications. Wood, S.N. (2006) Generalised additive models: an introduction, Chapman & Hall/CRC. Read More