Having set out the context of rural homelessness in Chapter One, we now want to discuss some key methodological issues bound up with researching homelessness in rural areas. This chapter is divided into three sections. In the first, we provide a critical review of the methodologies associated with recent academic studies of homelessness, drawing on research conducted both in Britain and in the US. The second focuses more specifically on rural homelessness and considers the ways in which the small number of studies undertaken have approached the subject. We also set out here the approach taken by the authors in their recently completed study of homelessness in rural England, and provide details of the main objectives, methodologies and products of this research. In the final section, we present a reflexive account of a range of ethical issues associated with researching rural homelessness, based on diary notes and research summaries provided by each member of the research team.

Researching homelessness

Any review of the large number of academic books and journal articles written on homelessness will reveal that the subject does not lend itself to easy research. In many ways, the complexities of definition discussed in Chapter One carry through into the process of researching homelessness. For example, a narrow definition of homelessness as rooflessness will tend to be associated with a research methodology that is different from one that would be utilised if a broader definition – encompassing a range of different housing situations – were to be adopted. Similarly, a normative definition of homelessness based on official statistical categorisations may necessitate a different methodological approach to one that relies on a definition of homelessness produced by homeless people themselves.

In this section we want to review the ways in which the subject of homelessness has been researched in Britain and the US over recent years. In doing this, we consider that it is useful to point to two main approaches that have been taken within homelessness research. The first is heavily quantitative in nature, and bound up with the collection and analysis of primary and secondary data sets on the extent and nature of homelessness.

By contrast, the second approach has utilised qualitative techniques, involving ethnographic research, in-depth interviewing, and discourse analysis. In reviewing the methodological underpinnings of recent homelessness research we are struck by two observations: that the vast majority of studies have taken either a predominantly quantitative or qualitative approach, rather than adopting multi-method techniques and that, as with other research subjects in the social sciences, the study of homelessness has been dominated by quantitative methods of enquiry.