length, many participants had to travel a far way to come and be interviewed, and that the interviews were emotionally draining, I felt that RI00 was suitable reimbursement.
personally familiar. Could my own personal experience with an AIDS-related death cloud my interpretations? I anticipated that my bereavement experience would deviate from those of my participants in three important ways which would enable me not to over-identify with their stories. First, my loss was ten years ago, so I had plenty of time to adjust. On the other hand, I suspected that the losses of my participants would be more recent and their pain was likely to be more intense than mine. Second, I expected that the lives of participants would be more completely impacted by losses from AIDS than mine had. Whereas I had suffered only one loss to AIDS, my participants were likely to have suffered more. Finally, my experience as a bereaved individual was likely to be very different from those of bereaved individuals in South Africa in terms of socioeconomic circumstances. Nevertheless, I followed the advice ofWaldrop (2004) as best I could to keep my emotional reactions in check because I wished to protect participants from dealing with the undue burden of my reactions, and to preserve the integrity and validity of the data.
Because I have had a number of years clinical experience in the US assisting people who are bereaved due to AIDS and have published a number of articles on AIDS-related issues (e.g., Demmer, 2000; Demmer, 2001a), I had to make a conscious effort to see things fresh and new and not to be stifled by this background knowledge and experience.
I had to learn to be open and receptive to what I was trying to understand (Ely et aI., 1991). This proved not to be as big an obstacle as I anticipated. During the data collection process, I quickly became aware of the unique life circumstances of AIDS bereaved individuals in the South African context compared to those in the U.S. context.
Itwas important for me to acknowledge that I did not know very much about what it was like to have AIDS or to be affected by AIDS in South Africa, despite my own personal loss. I learned that many aspects of my bereavement experience did not mirror those of my participants.
Respondent Bias
Bodgan and Bilken (1992) cautioned that an interviewer's ethnicity, gender, age, and other characteristics could influence the rapport that is established with participants as well as participants' willingness to open up in interviews. Being a White male, I was
aware of the possibility that participants might not feel as comfortable sharing their experiences with me. To compensate for potential respondent biases that could arise at the beginning of the interview situation, I opened each interview by making a brief statement about my own background (personal and professional). Originally from Durban where my family still resides, I have spent a number of years living and working in the
us.
In addition to sharing my extensive professional experience working with people with AIDS and their loved ones, I hoped that disclosing the loss of my father to AIDS would enhance my trustworthiness with participants. According to Ely et al.(1991), when the interviewer shares personal information about himself or herself it "lets the interviewee know that 'you have been there' and can sympathize" (p. 41). I was confident that my personal and professional experience with AIDS-related bereavement would enable me to create a safe and trusting environment for participants to share sensitive information with a complete stranger. I was also aware of the potential for participants to tell me what they thought I wanted to hear or to present themselves or informationi~ a certain way because they did not know whether they could trust me to be themselves. Again, my extensive clinical experience was very helpful. I was able to discern discrepancies between responses (verbal and non-verbal) and I made sure to document my observations and comments in my analytic log.
Sample Size
With quantitative methods, much more emphasis is placed on sampling procedures, size of the sample, and generalizability of results. The present study makes no claim to be representative of all individuals in South Africa (or KwaZulu-Natal for that matter) who are bereaved due to AIDS. But as mentioned before, participants ended up resembling the pattern of those who are largely affected by AIDS in the South African context, based on the most current epidemiological data. With qualitative research, theoretical sampling is used and Strauss and Corbin (1998) made the point that theoretical sampling is not planned before starting the study but rather it evolves during the course of the study.
They also make the distinction that qualitative researchers sample "events and incidents and not persons or organizations per se. ..and persons, sites, and documents simply provide the means to obtain these data" (p. 215). In terms of applying the findings to
others, Guba and Lincoln (1989) explained that the context is important in qualitative research and conclusions and recommendations are limited to those in similar contexts.
Integrity ofthe Study
Unlike quantitative methods, the notions of reliability and validity are not accorded the same prominence in qualitative research. Rather, the focus is on the integrity of the study. According to Lincoln and Guba (1985), the following strategies ensure the integrity of qualitative research (i.e., that the findings represent as close as possible the expenence of participants): prolonged engagement, member-checking, and peer- debriefing. Prolonged engagement involves spending enough time with participants to build trust with them so that they open up, and staying in the field long enough to fully understand the phenomenon under study and to minimize researcher bias (Lincoln &
Guba, 1985). This was achieved by conducting two in-depth interviews (each about one hour long) over a two week period with each participant. The second strategy is member- checking. As themes were identified, I shared them with participants during the follow- up interview so that I could further understand and clarify these categories. Whenever it was possible, participants were given the opportunity to confirm that I had intrinsically characterized their experience (Ely et aI., 1991; Lincoln & Guba, 1985). Finally, peer- debriefing involves sharing findings with colleagues, to avoid over-identifying with participants, to check interpretations of data, and to discover information that might be missed (Ely et aI., 1991). I met with several social workers in Durban who had experience working with people affected by HIV/AIDS to discuss emerging themes as well as to bounce off some of my hunches, concerns and questions. I also conducted interviews with key informants. All of these individuals provided welcome moral support and validation of many of my hunches and observations.
In my effort to conduct an empirically sound qualitative study, I closely followed the guidelines of Strauss and Corbin (1998) in collecting, recording and analyzing data. I was guided by the following checklist:
• What concepts are being generated from the study?
• Are linkages made between concepts?
• Are the categories well developed?
• Are the concepts examined under various conditions and are they explained?
• What changes in concepts occur over time across conditions?
• Are the findings significant (offer new information or guidelines)?
• Will the findings be able to stand up to further testing and research?
Finally, I tried to keep in mind Shank's (2002) "seven deadly sins of qualitative research". To summarize, they are as follows:
• The sin of competitiveness: Trying to prove that one's qualitative study is just as good, if not better, than a quantitative study, and then putting inordinate emphasis on "quantitative-looking procedures" such as computerized data coding and analysis packages;
• The sin ofappropriation: Doing research not for research sake but to further some agenda;
• The sin ofrigidity: Being inflexible and refusing to give up control to participants who can guide one in the appropriate direction;
• The sin ofsuperficiality: Not being curious and refusing to dig deeper to draw out more extensive and subtle insights;
• The sin ofsentimentality: Believing that if we write up our findings with a great deal of emotion, we will be able to stir the emotions of the reader (in other words, manipulating the reader to feel a certain way);
• The sin of narcissism: Turning the focus toward the researcher and spending excessive time explaining who he or she is or has become;
• The sin oftimidity: Not taking chances or exploring insights that seem to defy the norm.
Conclusion
In this chapter, I have described the research design, the method of sampling used, the use of in-depth interviews and my rationale for employing qualitative methods. I have also discussed procedures for the collection, recording and analysis of data. Ethical concerns were described and how they were addressed in this study. Finally, I explained the challenges associated with this study and my efforts to overcome them. The
exploratory nature of the study allowed me to examine in-depth each participant's experience and yielded rich data. But because the study design was cross sectional and not longitudinal and it did not randomize participants and compare them with a control group, no causal relationships can be made. Self-selection could have influenced the study's findings and the small size of the sample prevents me from being able to extrapolate into the broad population of individuals bereaved by AIDS in either KwaZulu-Natal or South Africa. Despite these limitations, this study offers a descriptive investigation of individuals' experiences coping with the death of loved ones to AIDS and it is hoped that it may serve as a springboard for further research on this important issue. In the next chapter, short narrative portraits of each participant from the primary sample are presented. These are summaries or snapshots of each participant to capture the essence of who they are as well as their story.
CHAPTER 6