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be on section 28(1)(f) and on torture and assault cases only. During the interview session, the researcher paid attention to Carpecken’s (1996) advise and considered the following when conducting interviews:
Generate content about an event from an insider;
Check the honesty, the certainty and the exact meaning of the subject’s reply in a face-to-face interview;
Access a person’s definitions and understanding of concepts and processes that are of interest to the researcher;
Analyse both verbal and non-verbal responses;
Give immediate clarity if the interviewee was uncertain in his or her reply;
Ask follow-up questions to provide detailed and/or specific answers; and
Tap into beliefs, values, worldviews and the like on the part of the interviewee.
e) Upon completion of the interview session with each participant, there was a debriefing session in which the researcher rectified any possible misperceptions that might have arisen during the interview session and also discussed their feelings about the project.
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Table 4.2. The Six Phases of Thematic Analysis that were Utilised in this Research
Source: Adopted form Braun and Clarke (2006:87)
The researcher transcribed the lengthy information that had been briefly noted and tape recorded during the interviews. During this process, the researcher became familiar with the data. Gray (2014) postulates that typing the transcript yourself may be time consuming but it does develop familiarisation with the data at an early stage. The researcher started the coding process with the first interview, doing it after every interview that had been conducted on a particular day. This allowed the researcher to become familiar with the issues emerging from the data. Guest et al. (2013:13) state that the thematic analysis process “consists [of] reading through contextual data, identifying themes in the data, coding those themes, and then interpreting the structure and content of the themes”. In the process of coding, the researcher highlighted the key words and allotted a descriptive word that summarized or seemed pertinent to a particular passage. This means that, whenever the researcher found a meaningful part of text in the transcript that was being analysed, highlighters were used to indicate potential patterns with the aim of eliciting common denominators and differences within and across the
Phase Description of the process
1. Familiarise
yourself with your data:
The researcher transcribed the information provided by IPID investigators through interviews by reading and rereading the data, and noting down initial ideas.
2. Generate initial codes:
The researcher coded interesting features of the data in a systematic fashion across the entire data set, collating data relevant to each code.
3. Searching for themes:
The researcher collated codes into potential themes, gathering all data relevant to each potential theme.
4. Reviewing themes:
Then the researcher checked if the themes worked in relation to the coded extracts and the entire data set, thus generating a thematic ‘map’ of the data.
5. Producing the report:
This was the final opportunity for analysis. Vivid, compelling examples were extracted; final analysis of selected extracts;
relating back in the analysis to the research questions and the literature; and finally producing a scholarly report of the analysed data and the findings.
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material. The data were therefore separated into labelled, meaningful pieces and these were clustered together under an emerging theme.
Figure 4.2: Example of a Thematic Map
Source: Adapted by author based on interview with KZN IPID investigating officers
Maree (2007:105) suggests that the aim of coding is to create codes that act as collection points for important information and labels that act as markers to the way in which the researcher rationalises what it is that appears to be happening. Codes also enable the researcher to continue to make discoveries about deeper realities in the data that are then referenced by the codes.
However, to cluster all the pieces together, the researcher created a visual presentation of the themes which was done through the development of a thematic map (see Figure 4.2) for each section of the interview, which was divided according to the research objectives. The thematic map in Figure 4.2 is an example of how the themes were derived from the responses based on the four objectives of the study. Themes were generated from the codes and a full description of the themes related to each research question.
An independent researcher was asked to evaluate the coding scheme and to determine whether the labels had been correctly assigned to the material. This person also assisted in ensuring that each set of categories was comprehensive, mutually exclusive and exhaustive, and that together
Lack of evidence Complainant
Lack of
SAPS members Challenges encountered in
the investigation of torture and assault
Non-
compliance
Inadequate capacity at
IPID
Resources Manpower
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these categories gave a descriptive overview of the data and that it meaningfully linked the original research question and the data. The analysed patterns formed themes which, according to Gray (2014:609), “capture something important about the data in relation to the research question, and represent a level of patterned response or meaning within the data”. Before the researcher developed a written description of the participants from the IPID, an independent researcher explored each cluster in more detail to check for nuances and differences and to find out whether, in the original coding system, there were no alterations to be done or broadening of themes to include these nuances.