CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
4.7 Methods of data collection
4.7.1 Interviews
The intention of qualitative interviews is to perceive the world through the eyes of the participant and they can be a beneficial source of information, on condition that they are used appropriately. The aim was to always “obtain rich descriptive data that will help the researcher understand the participant’s construction of knowledge and social reality” (Nieuwenhuis in Maree, 2007, p. 87). Seldman (1981, p. 1) states that
“you interview because you are interested in other people’s stories”. “All interviews are interactional events and interviewers are deeply and unavoidably implicated in creating meaning that ostensibly resides within participants” (Manning in Holstein &
Gubrium, 1995, p. 4).
Both parties, “the researcher and the participants, are thus necessarily unavoidably active and involved in meaning-making work” (Holstein & Gubrium, 1995, p. 4).
Bergum (in Morse, 1991, p. 61) refers to a “conversation rather than interview, as conversation implies a discussion and captures the attitude of the interaction”. A qualitative interview is an interaction between an interviewer and a respondent, in which the “interviewer has a general plan of enquiry but not a specific set of questions that must be asked in particular words and in particular order” (Babbie &
Mouton, 2001, p. 289). The key target of the interview was the conversation that was conducted between the participant and the interviewer. When the participant is interviewed, the conversation covers the illustration of the interactions and entails feedback on the illustration. Described by Kahn and Cannell (1957, p. 149), as a
“conversation with a purpose, in-depth interviewing may be the overall strategy or one of several methods employed in a study”. Kvale (in Sewell, 2001, p. 1) defines qualitative interviews as “attempts to understand the world from the participant’s point of view, to unfold the meaning of people’s experiences and to uncover their lived world prior to scientific explanations”. Rubin and Rubin (1995) added that in qualitative interviews the interviewer, for example, asked a question and expected an answer. If the answer was quite short and did not deliver this necessary information, the interviewer could ask a series of other questions to encourage the interviewee to answer more in-depth in order for the interviewer to explore the number of phases of the subject.
101 Qualitative interviews can take many forms including:
• “Qualitative questions added to structured surveys and questionnaires at the end, or annotated in the margin;
• Semi-structured interviews where the questions are more open and answers recorded in more detail and where spaces are left for unanticipated issues which arise in the course of conversation;
• Open-ended but more probing interviews where the broad issues to be covered are clear but the order or ways in which they are asked are decided in the course of conversation;
• Completely open-ended ad-hoc conversations with people as the opportunity arises and determined by what they are interested in talking about” (Platton, 1990).
Hitchcock and Hughes (1995) provide three types of interviews, known as structured, semi-structured and unstructured within the broad categories of standardised and non-standardised interviews. Unstructured interviews help “to clarify concepts and problems and allow for the establishment of a list of possible answers and solutions which, in turn, facilitate the construction of multi-choice questions, the elimination of superfluous questions and the reformulation of ambiguous ones” (Bless & Higson- Smith, 1995, p. 140). de Vos et al. (2005, p. 293) suggest that “the unstructured interview is used by the interviewer to elicit the information in order to achieve understanding of the participant’s point of view or situation”.
I had two rounds of interviews with the subject head, subject advisor and the cluster leader. The first one was before I conducted the observations and the second one was done after the observation. I confined the second round of interviews to these participants because I observed in the workshops that they direct the activities at the workshops, so I needed to understand what informs that approach. I also had to confirm the functions as outlined in the document on the establishment of the subject clusters. Depending on the category and the availability of the respondents, the interviews were held in different places. For the subject head and the subject advisor, these were held in their respective offices; for the cluster leader and one of
102 the teachers, the interviews were held at a restaurant as that was convenient for them; for the other teachers, the interviews were held in their schools either at the staff room, office or classroom.
I had considered two forms of interviews from the above: the semi-structured interviews and open-ended questions to accommodate unanticipated responses and follow-up questions. This was also meant to accommodate other issues that came about as a result of the questions asked of different respondents. Flexibility in these two forms is guaranteed because a response to a question leads to a sub-question that allows the researcher to gather more information from the respondents. This approach made it possible for me to listen carefully to the responses, try and interpret the meaning of the response and then, based on that response, a follow-up question informed by the answer given. This assisted me to get a better understanding of other variables linked to this model of teacher professional development. According to Babbie (2007), for a researcher to get rich data from the respondent using interviews, one must be a good listener. Lastly, these two forms made it possible for me to interact with the respondents and direct the flow of the conversation.
In qualitative research open-ended interviews allowed the participants to come up with resolutions or supply understanding of the happenings but the focus is mainly on their own views of the event or phenomenon being studied. “The semi-structured interview requires that a researcher is attentive to the responses of the participants so that the researcher can identify new emerging lines of inquiry that are directly related to the phenomenon being explored and probe them. In the structured interview questions are detailed and developed in advance, much as they are in survey research and if they are overly structured they prohibit probing” (Nieuwenhuis in Maree, 2007, p. 87).
“Research interviews involve the gathering of data through direct verbal interaction between individuals” (Cohen et al., 2000, p. 269). In essence a qualitative interview allows for the researcher to probe the respondents, especially when there are responses that assist in answering research questions. These will be responses which, added to those gathered through documents, will give me a better
103 understanding of the phenomenon. The interview is a conversation between two people and the interview would have been started by an interviewer. The purpose is to get more information on the phenomenon that is being researched, in the process learning about the interviewee’s beliefs, views, perceptions and opinions.
Strengths of interviewing
de Vos et al. (2005) suggest that interviews have strengths in that they are a valuable way of sourcing huge quantities of data quickly and are an especially productive way of obtaining depth in data. Interviews are important because they provide the “means to get inside the context and understand the subject of investigation from the perspectives of those who are centrally involved” (Sayed, 1995, p. 147). Interviews can achieve optimum data collection if they enable the interviewer to gain in-depth insights and subtle nuances in the perspectives of the respondents (Mouton, 2001).
Gilham (2000, p. 10) asserts that “the positive feature of interviews is the richness and vividness of the data it turns up which enables one to see and understand what is reflected rather than more abstractly in other kinds of data such as statical summaries”.
Weaknesses of interviewing
However interviews also have limitations. They involve personal interaction and cooperation is therefore essential. “Participants may be willing to share and the researcher may ask questions that do not evoke the desired responses from participants. Furthermore, the responses could be misconstrued or even at times untruthful” (de Vos et al., 2005, p. 299). Seidman (1998, p. 91) mentions a further aspect: “researchers must avoid the risk of changing the interviewing relationship into a therapeutic one: the goals of each are different”. Perceptual data gathered through interviews have the problem of lack of reliability, with the prevalent culture of blame in the school system and the sensitive topic of performance appraisal and evaluation. The views and responses of the various stakeholders on the teacher, may be different from respondents in the same institution. Some perceptual data gathered through interviews perceived by the researcher as unreliable were improved through the other two sources that were used in collecting data. People are
104 apt to recall what might or should have happened, based on their attitudes or beliefs, rather than what actually did happen (Schacter, 1999; Schwartz, 1999).
Challenges that face the researcher when using qualitative research interviews are
“establishing rapport in order to gain information from participants, coping with unanticipated problems and rewards of interviewing in the field, and recording and managing the large volume of data generated by even relatively brief interviews”
(May in Morse, 1991, p. 188). de Vos et al. (2005, pp. 287-288) suggest that “before entering into a discussion about the types of one-to-one interviews and focus groups, it is necessary to focus on more general but very important aspects that the researcher should know about and be skilled in doing”. Another challenge cited by Cohen (2000) is the problem of documenting the responses, especially if the interviewer has a responsibility for writing them down and the quality of responses, that is, reputable and sound is independent of the interviewer.
Discussion of interview schedule
The interview for teachers consisted of Section A, which focused on personal details.
Section B had eight questions (see interview schedule in Appendix A). The first part of the questions focused on the experience as a Life Sciences teacher to establish the teacher’s passion for the subject. This is very important, because some schools do not allocate subjects based on the teachers’ major subjects due to the shortage of teachers. Where necessary, the respondent was able to say something about other related issues that were not raised in the interview and were deemed important.
They were each given varying times to respond to each question depending on what they wanted to say as they were responding.
In Questions 9-10 I wanted to establish the cluster’s role in the professional development of the teachers and whether teachers have their own specific needs for personal development. In Questions 11-12 I wanted to know how long they have been participating in their cluster. This assisted me in understanding if they are benefiting by participating or if they are seeing any value in participating in their cluster. In Questions 13-14, based on the agenda of the meetings, I wanted to establish whether this is one person’s responsibility or it is a shared responsibility.
Questions 15-16 helped me understand if the respondents learned anything from
105 these sessions and the response should be supported by specific examples as proof.