“Another long and involved story”: narrative themes in the marginalia of the Poverty in the UK survey

Phoenix, Boddy, Edwards and Elliott use historical material to explore the importance of marginalia drawing on Townsend’s renowned Poverty in the UK Study 1967/8 (PinUK). Rather than focusing on the extensive data collected by Townsend’s team in the original survey research Phoenix et al. explore the detailed handwritten notes on the paper questionnaires. The authors use 69 annotated questionnaires from the original study to develop a typology of marginalia. This consists of seven different categories that enabled them to analyse the comments made by the interviewers as amplifications, justifications and explanations of codes and evaluations of responses made by participants. They then use narrative analysis to reveals much about the research process and the ways in which the field interviewers positioned themselves in relation to their interviewees in the marginalia and as a way of making sense of research encounters.