Background and aim

1. Aim: to find out what had triggered the English riots of August 2011, with a focus on the involvement of young people.
2. Focus: whether getting involved was driven by the individual's own disposition or by the situation around them.

Method

1. Design: the interview method, which produced rich qualitative data in the participants' own words.
2. Sample: 36 participants, split evenly between those below and those above the age of 18, with both genders and a range of ethnic groups represented and most still in education.
3. Procedure: participants were interviewed in the areas affected by the riots, on their own or in groups of two or four, depending on what they felt most comfortable with.
4. Ethics: the researchers gained full informed consent and reassured participants that their interviews would be kept confidential.
5. Extra data: focus groups, run as discussion groups, were held with people from areas the riots never reached.

Who was involved

1. The rioting first started during a peaceful protest about the fatal shooting of a local man by police.
2. The Tottenham riots were triggered more specifically by an alleged incident between a local girl and the police.
3. Those involved came from a mixture of ethnic groups and age groups, and included people in work, out of work and in education.
4. Watchers were present but observing, and they included bystanders and spies.
5. Rioters took part in the violence and vandalism, and they included protestors, retaliators and thrill-seekers.
6. Looters were the people who stole, and they included opportunists and sellers.
7. The non-involved stayed out of it, and they included stay-aways and wannabes.

Nudge and tug factors

1. Nudge factors encouraged young people to get involved, and tug factors discouraged them.
2. Dispositional factors
   1. Prospects nudged people in through poor job chances, low income and little hope for the future, and tugged back those in work who had a lot to lose.
   2. Attitudes towards authority nudged people in through cynicism about politicians and bad experience with the police, while having no negative experience of the police tugged others back.
   3. Previous criminal activity is the other dispositional factor, and it works in the same two-sided way.
3. Situational factors
   1. Group processes nudged people in through feeling anonymous and swept along by the crowd, while thinking about future goals rather than the here and now tugged others back.
   2. Peer pressure nudged people in when their friends were involved, and tugged them back when their friends stayed out of it.
   3. Information from television and messages, and the presence of an adult telling them not to get involved, are the other situational factors, and they work in the same two-sided way.
4. Other factors
   1. Family attitudes nudged people in when relatives did not disapprove, and tugged them back when relatives disapproved and said they were not brought up like that.
   2. Poverty and materialism nudged people towards looting when they wanted goods they had no means to pay for, and tugged back those with enough money to buy what they wanted.
   3. Community values and a sense of having a stake in society are the other factors in this group, and they work in the same two-sided way.

Conclusions

1. Decisions about whether to get involved were influenced by what young people thought was right or wrong, and by whether the benefits of joining in seemed to outweigh the risks.
2. The researchers concluded that anti-social behaviour is mainly determined by dispositional factors and collective behaviour.

Criticisms

1. Strength, rich qualitative data: real participants described a real event in their own words, which gives high validity.
2. Strength, sound ethics: there was full informed consent and confidentiality.
3. Strength, flexible formats: letting people choose to be interviewed alone, in pairs or in fours helped them speak freely.
4. Strength, a comparison group: the focus groups from unaffected areas give something to compare the interviews against.
5. Weakness, generalisability: 36 participants are a small proportion of those actually involved, and the sample was biased because the researchers struggled to recruit people willing to talk.
6. Weakness, retrospective self-report: talking about your own criminal involvement after the event invites social desirability and self-justification, and memory of a chaotic night also decays.
7. Weakness, subjectivity: sorting one person into retaliator and another into thrill-seeker rests on the researcher's interpretation, which lowers reliability.
8. Weakness, no cause and effect: nothing was manipulated, so no factor can be shown to have produced the behaviour.

Turning this into marks

1. When a nudge factor and a tug factor are both asked for, say which side of the factor each answer is giving.
2. Name the factor, such as prospects or attitudes towards authority, because a general reference to the person's background does not secure the knowledge mark.
3. Keep your detail to Tottenham, because that is the account this study rests on.
4. The mark most often lost is offering peer pressure as a dispositional factor when it is situational.