CHAPTER 3 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
3.7 DATA COLLECTION METHODS
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realize improvements. The researcher appreciates that they need to speak the language of policy and work cohesively as a profession. Nursing leaders must translate new research findings to the practice environment and into nursing education and from nursing education into practice and policy. Participation in the study was voluntary. Nurses, who were not in managerial positions in the selected hospitals, were excluded. The district and specialised hospitals were also excluded from the study.
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3.7.1 Qualitative data collection
Eight face-to-face in-depth interviews with a minimum length of 20 minutes were conducted. The interviews consisted of a list of semi-structured open-ended questions based on the focus areas the researcher intended to study. The broad areas to be dealt with were informed by the overall objectives of the study and the particular stakeholder being interviewed. The interview schedule was developed and used for asking questions and recording answers during the interviews. This allowed the researcher to control the line of questioning (Creswell 2014).
Follow-up questions were asked to explore the particular themes, concepts, ideas and unexpected thoughts provided by the interviewees. The probes were used to clarify some discussion points by soliciting more details or examples of what had been said. The tape recorder was used to record information from the interviews. Handwritten notes were also taken by a research assistant as a backup system in case the tape recorder failed. The research assistant was trained prior to commencing the first interview on how to take notes.
The researcher self-monitored the appearance and performance of the research assistant.
The same research assistant was used for the duration of the study. The advantages of using interviews to collect data were that participants could provide historical information.
The researcher was able to clarify some questions where she could assess that there was misunderstanding. However, there are also limitations with conducting interviews. The researcher’s presence may bias the responses. The fact that not all people are articulate and perceptive is also a disadvantage (Creswell, 2014). See Annexure 3B for the interview schedule.
3.7.2 Quantitative data collection
Data were collected through self-administered questionnaires to participants to allow for generalisation. In order to address the objectives of the study, the researcher developed a structured questionnaire adopted from the existing tools used by Shariff (2012) and Salvador (2010) as a method of data collection. According to the authors the instruments were pre-tested for construct and content validity as well as internal and stability reliability.
However, the tool was reviewed by the researcher and the school statistician. A Cronbach’s Alpha test for the instrument was carried out by the school statistician using SPSS version 23.0. The Cronbach alpha is a measure of internal consistency, that is, how closely related a set of items are as a group. It is considered to be a measure of scale reliability. The rating of the different sections of the tool was the same, indicating high levels
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of internal consistency in questioning. The instrument had a high level of stability reliability.
The overall Cronbach alpha correlation coeffient score was 0.882, as illustrated in Table 3.2.
Table 3.2 Cronbach’s Alpha results Reliability Statistics
Cronbach's Alpha
Cronbach's Alpha Based
on Standardized
Items N of Items
.882 .874 43
The questionnaires offered the possibility of anonymity, which was crucial in terms of obtaining information. This method was appropriate especially because the sample was widely dispersed within different districts.
The questionnaire consisted of items to measure involvement of nurse leaders in the health policy development process, knowledge of the policy process, perceived barriers and facilitators to participation in health policy development, as well as questions to obtain demographic information. For questions that aimed to gather information about their level of agreement or disagreement (strongly agree; agree; undecided; disagree; strongly disagree), a Likert scale was used. Such a scale is designed to determine the opinion of the participant on an issue under investigation. It encompasses a statement or word with a scale after each question (Burns and Grove, 2005). The closed-ended questions in all the sections of the questionnaire were included to ensure comparability of responses and to facilitate analysis. Close-ended questions offer response options from which respondents must choose the one that closely matches the appropriate answer (Polit and Beck, 2012). Open ended questions were designed to allow people to respond in their own words. These open ended questions allowed participants to provide richer information from their experience on how nurse leaders are participating in all stages of policy development.
Adequate space was provided in the tool to permit full response.
The research information package was sent beforehand via e-mail when the researcher sought permission and at the time of booking an appointment for data collection with the nursing management teams. The researcher then delivered the self-administered
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questionnaires personally to the participating institutions. The questionnaires were administered to the participants after obtaining their consent. In some participating facilities, especially those that were far from eThekwini district, the researcher had to wait for the questionnaire to be completed on the same day. This assisted in ensuring an acceptable response rate. The questionnaires offered some anonymity because the name of the participant was not required. However, for data analysis purposes, the name of the institution was required. Using a questionnaire was convenient because a larger group of participants could be reached at a time. Bias was minimal as the researcher was not present in the room where the participants were completing the questionnaire. The main limitation of using a questionnaire was missing information, as some questions were left unanswered.