Chapter 3 Research Methods
3.4 Data Collection
completed the questionnaire. Hence, together with the restrictions on the time and research budgets, focus group interviews took place at five chosen universities only (University of Auckland, Victoria University of Wellington, Lincoln University, University of Canterbury, and University of Otago). These institutions were selected for reasons of geographic spread, significant international student population, ease of access with an international port of entry, a variety of provided qualifications, student populations, and the received amount of interest from potential participants via the online survey.
3.4.1 The online survey
The structured online survey was open from 27th February to 30th April 2017. All international PhD students currently enrolled at a university in New Zealand were invited to take the survey through various means. First, the link to access the survey was sent to the students via email by representatives at the universities. Students who were approached by this method were also sent a friendly reminder to do the survey one week before it was closed. Second, with the universities that did not permit the first approach, a short research advertisement containing a link to the survey was published on public media such as postgraduate newsletters, forums, Facebook pages and blogs. Where possible, the advert was published more than once on the same channels to increase exposure. Third, all doctoral students whose email addresses were available publicly on university websites were also invited to take part in the online survey directly via email by the researcher. One issue with the third approach was that these doctoral students could be either international or domestic, and there was no way to check beforehand. Thus, in the invitation email sent to them, the researcher clearly stated that the survey was designed for international PhD students, and apologised for any inconvenience caused to the domestic doctoral students. The three approaches were taken progressively as the researcher made amendments to her original method of recruiting respondents due to lower initial response rates than required.
By the end of the process, a total of 449 responses were received. Given the historical statistics on the numbers of international PhD students in New Zealand between 2012 and 2016, it could be argued that the collected sample represented approximately 10%
of the population. During the data entry process, any responses that did not fit the selection criteria and had substantially low level of completion were discarded. This resulted in 419 completed questionnaires that were usable for analysis. Data were entered into SPSS version 24 by the researcher. SPSS was chosen because it is a common software system for quantitative data analysis, and because the researcher is familiar with it to a greater extent than other software packages. It is also capable of performing all the planned analyses.
Out of 419 questionnaires used for analysis, 307 were completed by respondents who had engaged in VFR tourism since their arrivals in New Zealand, while 105 were completed by respondents who had not had any VFR experience. These latter
respondents were directed to the end of the survey. Seven questionnaires had missing responses for the filtering question and the rest of the questionnaires. As a result, the researcher decided to include these seven responses in the group of respondents who had not had any VFR experience. Accordingly, 112 responses were recorded for this group in total.
3.4.2 The focus groups
As mentioned previously in the recruitment of focus group participants, they were recruited through the online survey. Based on their response to the invitation at the end of the survey, the researcher contacted them to provide the information sheet (see Appendix A.5) and consent form (see Appendix A.6) for the second phase of the study. This gave the potential participants further information for consideration before refusing or reconfirming their interest in participating in the focus groups. A ‘doodle poll’ address (an online scheduling website) was then sent to each group so that the students could indicate their availability. Based on the result of each doodle poll, the date and time that suited most students were selected. An email was then sent out to inform the students about the chosen date and time, as well as to ask them to reconfirm their participation. Finally, Microsoft Outlook invitations were sent to the students so that they could have the event in their email calendars, and the researcher could have a record of who had accepted the invitation.
A total of six focus groups were carried out between 09th and 25th May 2017 at five universities: Lincoln University, University of Otago, Victoria University of Wellington, University of Auckland, and University of Canterbury (respectively, in sequence). A few international PhD students at other universities (Auckland University of Technology, University of Waikato, and Massey University) also expressed their interest in participating in the focus groups. Their interest was acknowledged and followed up with more information by the researcher. However, since there were very few of them at each of these universities, the researcher decided not to carry out the focus group discussions at these places. At the end, the researcher sent an email to thank them for their interest.
The focus groups were conducted soon after the online survey to maximise the chances that their level of interest and their experience with the online survey were still prominent by the time they attended the focus groups. This approach was
undertaken to increase the salience of participants’ VFR experiences, and so, encouraged them to contribute to the focus group discussions more enthusiastically.
Each focus group lasted approximately 60 minutes, with the number of participants ranging from two to six members. All focus groups were originally formed with at least six students who confirmed their interest and participation. However, on the day of the focus group discussions, some students did not show up. That is why some focus groups only had two participants. All focus groups were digitally recorded and then manually transcribed by the researcher. The next section explains how the collected data were analysed.