Chapter 4: Methodology and Methods
4.5 Ethics, Participant Recruitment and Sampling
This section presents the ethics approval for the study and describes the sampling strategy and steps taken to recruit suitable participants.
4.5.1 Ethics
This study was approved by the University of Adelaide Human Research Ethics Committee (HREC) (H-2020-005) (see Appendix B) on 8 January 2020 and deemed to be low risk, in accordance with the conditions in the university’s HREC requirements as it applies an appreciative inquiry methodology without any intent to elicit sensitive and confidential data.
Although the data was collected in Singapore from Singaporean citizens, there was no requirement to acquire ethics approval from the government of Singapore. As such, the University of Adelaide’s ethical protocols were strictly followed. This study conforms to all ethical guidelines of the University of Adelaide and the National Statement on Ethical
Conduct in Human Research (2018) (National Health and Medical Research Council &
Australian Research Council, 2018).
Due care was exercised to ensure participants were clear about the purposes and benefits of the research project and that their participation was voluntary. The participants were given time to read through the information before signing the consent form and had the right to withdraw from the project at any point. Participants were informed that they were audio recorded but de-identified in the interview transcripts and data analyses. This research was undertaken solely in Singapore and did not require ethical clearance from any local institution before data collection. Apart from their time to be interviewed, there were minimal potential risks or burdens to the study participants. Collected data were kept confidential and used only for the purposes of this study in a password-protected hard drive accessible only to the researcher and supervisors. The participants were provided with the option of seeking redress with the University’s ethics committee if they were concerned about the information or confidentiality of the interview process.
Data collection took place between January 2020 and September 2020. To mitigate any burden or inconvenience for taking part in the interview and focus group sessions, and protect participants’ physical health, mental health and privacy, support and wellbeing strategies were put in place under careful ethical considerations. Most of the face-to-face interviews took place between January 2020 and March 2020. Due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Singapore government imposed strict lockdown measures in March 2020 (Singapore Statutes Online, 2020). A variation to ethics was approved (see Appendix C) to accommodate the changed circumstances, and subsequent data collection was conducted on a virtual platform via Zoom.
The participants were informed that the interviews (see Appendix E) would be conducted via Zoom. At this point in time, many parts of the world went into lockdown, and Zoom became the most commonly used communication platform in many industries,
including healthcare, the courts and education (Puddister & Small, 2020; Roy et al., 2020;
Singhal, 2020; Zhang et al., 2020). Sloan and Quan-Haase (2017) and Sy et al. (2020) had already suggested the practical use of synchronous communication applications and virtual platforms for data collection and research communication. Indeed, several studies have successfully completed data collection using the Zoom application (Archibald et al., 2019;
Gray et al., 2020; Upadhyay & Lipkovich, 2020). Some three years earlier, Lobe (2017) highlighted that data collection has evolved and expanded with technological advancements and improvements. Online focus groups have become increasingly used to support or even substitute face-to-face research interactions with technologically mediated ones.
Focus groups, which aim to get the most out of team dynamics, are predicated on getting different groups of people together to gather different perspectives on a subject matter (Gill & Baillie, 2018). As such, physical distancing poses unique challenges for this method (Archibald et al., 2019), and focus groups are likely to remain impacted for an extended period during lockdown restrictions, specifically in Singapore, where gatherings are not permitted (Singapore Statutes Online, 2020). Therefore, the notion of collecting data using online focus groups was a feasible and practical method (Archibald et al., 2019; Stancanelli, 2010; Sy, 2020). However, adjustments, such as reduced numbers, were required to facilitate effective moderation and interaction within a virtual environment (Gill & Baillie, 2018; Sobel
& Reily, 2020; Taylor et al., 2017). Thus, the focus groups were capped at four participants for each session in this study. Moreover, it was actually safer and more ethical for participants to attend interviews and focus group discussions in their own homes and at their convenience during the pandemic. The virtual sessions ensured their wellbeing and safety were not compromised. Figure 4.4 details the ethical considerations for the study based on the two stages of data collection and describes how ethical protocols were strictly observed throughout the data collection process.
Figure 4.4: Summary of ethical protocols for data collection
HREC Approval
•University of Adelaide Human Research Ethics Committee (HREC)
•Ethics Approval Code: H-2020-005
Discovery Phase Narrative Interviews
•Potential participants were contacted and sent participant information sheet sent to them;
•Interviews, each one lasting about 60 minutes, were conducted and recorded via an audio recording device or Zoom application;
•Interview would be stopped immediatly in the event of an emergency or if participant was uncomfortable and referred for professional help or avenue to seek redress;
•Interviews were recorded using an audio recodring device or Zoom Application after the consent of the participants was obtained;
•Audio recordings were transferred to the Adelaide University Box;
•Audio recorded interviews were transcribed by primary researcher and deleted once transcription was completed;
•Transcribed interview data were stored in Adelaide University's Box accessible only to Ph.D. student and supervisors.
Dream Phase Focus Group
Discussions
•Participants who had completed the Discovery phase were contacted and assigned to the designated focus group based on vocation and availability;
•Focus groups sessions, each one lasting about 90 minutes, were organised and conducted via Zoom application;
•Interview would be stopped immediatly in the event of an emergency or if participant is uncomfortable and referred for professional help or avenue to seek redress;
•Audio recordings were transferred to the Adelaide University's Box;
•Focus group discussions were transcribed by primary researcher and deleted once transcription was completed;
•Transcribed focus group data stored in Adelaide University's Box accessible only to Ph.D.. student and supervisors.
4.5.2. Participant recruitment and sampling
Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 40 individuals, all of whom are conversant in English, including 30 older Singaporean workers aged 50 years and above from six different industries in Singapore; representatives of national industry bodies, policy advisers, representatives from training providers, workplace supervisors, human resource professionals and adult educators in Singapore. Purposive and snowball sampling strategies were used to recruit the research participants. The three ways of conducting purposive sampling are referrals, network contacts and snowballing (Jones &
Masika, 2020; Naderifar et al., 2017; Tan et al., 2020). The current study used all three methods to increase the chances of identifying suitable research participants. The primary recruitment method was through personal networks and official channels of communication to potential participants over emails. Care was taken to ensure the participants recruited were representative of the four main ethnic groups in Singapore (i.e., Malay, Chinese, Indian and Others). After initial contact was established with some participants, a snowball sampling method was applied. This sequence of methods has been applied in several studies using the appreciative inquiry methodology (Frerich &
Murphy-Nugen, 2018; Gallagher et al., 2019; Jones & Masika, 2020; Lawless & Chen, 2019; Naidoo et al., 2018).
A pre-interview phone call or email was conducted to ensure each research participant reflected the inclusion criteria (Korstjens & Moser, 2017). Before the interview, the consent form was sent to the participants via email together with the project information and ethics approval (see Appendix D). The project details were described again before commencing the narrative interview, and the consent form was reviewed. These interviews were followed up with a focus group discussion. The setting for each of the narrative interviews was decided by the individual research participant with a strict consideration for maintaining their privacy and confidentiality. During the recruitment process, homogeneity was never the sole intention for
generalisability but the deep exploration of shared experiences (Sim et al., 2018). The following criteria were used in an effort to achieve homogeneity (as far as possible):
1) older workers who are in active employment either full-time, on contractual terms, freelancing, or business owners
2) older workers who fulfil the first criteria and are 50 years of age and above 3) adult educators who are involved in training older workers for at least 10 years
4) human resource practitioners who have been in the human resource industry and continuing adult education sector in Singapore for at least 10 years
5) industry experts who have been involved in the employment sector for more than 10 years
6) career counsellors who have been involved in the retraining and re-employment of older workers for more than 10 years.
Due care was taken to ensure the participants were clear on the purposes and benefits of the research project and that their participation was voluntary. They were also informed that they were free to exercise their right to remove themselves from the project anytime.
Further, they were free to express and raise their concerns at any point within the period of participation or withdraw from the study without consequence. For this study, with the strict application of the ethics protocol, there were no occurrences of adverse events or incidents of participant dissatisfaction and withdrawal.