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use the results, I produced a literary work based on a text description of the “what” participants progressed through their experiences. I devised a clean word-for-word item of information typical of a class or group. Also, statements that represented in a particular field of an investigation of “how” internship experiences had happened were accepted. I further analysed the themes, memos, and fundamental ideas that I recorded. For each interview, I reviewed the re-reading transcripts, ideas, and themes critical to the research (level 1 and 2). I described in Chapter Six, a higher thematic analysis of the topics (nodes) which contributed to the themes (the themes (level 3).
For this section, when I carried out the analysis of transcripts, viewing applicable ideas, combined with the experiences of participants in internship and employability voiced out by them in their interviews. Also, this allowed me making the collected information comprehensible by describing the consistent; I reported those facts (analysis levels 1 and 2). I used these sub- sections for the analysis of a text, and as a guide to the items of the theoretical framework, I dealt with at an earlier stage.
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Guideline 23). I described the informed consent form in an e-mail communication I addressed to the research population requesting their participation. All the participants handed over their filled in consent forms and other documents as required. I kept confidential the identity of the graduates, employers, and academics who took part in the study. I assured participants of anonymity, to enable them to discuss all the issues they needed and raise any issues they were comfortable communicating about, knowing their identity would not be divulged or published.
To ensure anonymity, I gave pseudonyms to all participants to hide their identity, and I presented the data in the dissertation in a manner that makes it impossible for anyone else to link the data with the individual research participants. Sometimes, I chose not to use data quotes even though they provided valuable information that would have substantiated findings by square brackets to make sure that the identity of participants and institutions remained anonymous.
I took the responsibility of explaining the ethical considerations to interviewees and also informed me. I would extend the research if required. I selected those participants engaged in internships, whether sponsors or graduates, relaying what the effects of joining in could be and the use to which they could use the data. I reinforced these details by the available written information I developed, including an outline of the research aims, methods and an accessible consent form that were addressed to each participant. I further reiterated this same information at the beginning of every interview, both at the first and second interview stages for graduates and employers. I concur with the argument of Miller and Boulton (2007: 209) who express that
“we now research social contexts in which experiences of the agency, power, and risk all shape the qualitative research meet and the question of the power of research and participant is of particular relevance in studies.”
After the interviews, I made sure that the data gathered from participants, which could contribute to their identities, remained confidential and that I could not reveal these data under the Law. In reporting findings, I did not insert the participants’ names, addresses or any characteristics that somebody could identify them in the reporting results. Also, the participants were informed that they were free to suspend their participation in case they wish to withdraw from the research.
They could withdraw for any reason they deemed fit, and they would receive a guaranteed statement from me for their dropout if ever that were the case. I prioritised ethics, which I believed crucial to the study. It was my responsibility as a researcher to respect my participants’
trust and protect their identity.
130 4.7 Limitations
Methodologically, this study was built on an analysis of internship and employability in which I used a semi-structured interview data with a qualitative, interpretative approach. The study emphasised on the analysis of interview data which may leave the research open to criticism of being subjective. I grounded this study in the review of the human experience.
Amundson et al., (2010), to increase understanding, identified the focus of phenomenology research through a vibrant, local statement that represented the experiences of participants in internship and employability instead of generalising to others. I contrasted the results with the experiences of participants in another research. Interviews were a fixed source of data because graduates, employers, and academics could only share their views of and views on what had taken place (Patton, 1980). I knew that personal bias, emotion and lack of awareness could have been misinterpreted by the perspectives and viewpoints. Besides, the interview data might also cause experienced or vulnerable participants to call to mind error and self-serving reactions (Hendricks, 2009).
The first and most clear potential weakness of this research was its limited sample size in which the total number of participants was eighteen compared only to the thousands of graduates who entered the labour market each year in many fields, the high number of potential employers, and the increasing number of universities. However, for qualitative research design, some ten individuals could be enough. Although the study did not present a stratified sample of participants of the Mauritian population, it did justice to the favourite category of graduates, employers, and academics. Considering that the research design was a qualitative type, I selected only a few participants. Selecting more participants would not guarantee that better quality information would have been collected.
I noticed another potential weakness of the study as the number of data-collection methods.
Instead of applying only a qualitative method, I could have conducted both quantitative and qualitative methods in parallel. A methodological triangulation also could have been adopted, in which I could have had two research methods would have been better than one in a single study.
This showed that I could have adopted a collection of more than one method. I could report the richness of the details with an added approach which could confirm or question specific findings of the views of participants, therefore enhancing the truth of the results.
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I considered an interview as a context-dependent, social and interviewees complied with the norms of social dialogue with the depth and scope of someone spoke what to influence the respondents’ expectations. As a researcher, I wished to find out the social norms for how one showed oneself (Silverman, 1993). I knew of the cautionary notes offered by qualitative researchers about the limits of interview data, and I found that interview data provided access to participants’ experiences and modelled accounts of their engagement in an internship. Therefore, realist researchers considered that interview data was useful because interviewees might give correct reports of events. Also, there was more area for interview bias to result, since the information depended on the quality of subjects and researchers (Brenner, Brown & Canter, 1985). Following the social aspect of the interview, I have to separate the distortions from the authentic experiences of the interviewees.
Considering the shortcomings on acceptable limits of the appropriateness of the findings was also significant because I needed to analyse these data. Flyvbjerg (2006) comments on the small- scale nature of case study research in education, for instance in internships, which might lead to this study exposed to criticism. Cohen, Manion, and Morrison (2007) find that critics were for this study which concentrated on its compositions. Since it was a theory used to form, decide, and guide this study, remained clear of these unforeseen complications.
My study aimed to explore the link between internship and employability. I believed the interviews had allowed for plenty of depth to get a comprehensive understanding of how academics, graduates, and employers thought and recognised the issues.