Two different semi-structured interview guidelines (see Appendices j and k) were used to collect data for the study. Semi-structured interview guidelines or topic guides were chosen over other research instruments to appropriately focus on all communication issues that are relevant to print IEC materials, HIV and tertiary institution learners. They were chosen also because they did not restrict the interview procedure to the guideline, but allowed the addition of other questions and the repetition of some questions where necessary, for appropriate responses to be elicited (Jegede, 1995). Moreover, the guidelines allowed questions to be
113 clarified with the interviewees (Bell, 1993). For example, during the collection of data,
questions were asked in English as they appeared in the interview guidelines, but they were also translated into Sesotho for clarification purposes. Barbour (2007: 33) supports this process, in that it allows “the researcher to focus on issues salient to those being studied, rather than emphasizing the researcher’s preconception or agenda”. Respondents were subjected to semi-structured interviews with the underlying assumption that this type of interviewing would assist in the acquisition of some information that could not easily be captured through questionnaires (Schrerak, Colthrap and Cooner, 1997), because they allowed probing for more information and clarification of what was required, where and when
necessary.
The items in the interview guidelines were structured around the issues of the
comprehensibility, attractiveness, persuasiveness, acceptability and credibility of print IEC materials. Hence, a 15-item interview guideline was structured and used for all respondents of the study during the first focus group discussion. Using the 15-item interview guideline, a meeting for the first group discussion was held to explore the learners’ understanding of the materials. Another focus group meeting, using a seven-item interview guide, was held four weeks from the first one to establish the type of meaning the learners attached to the print IEC materials and to find out whether or not the materials had any influence on their attitudes towards HIV-related issues.
Thus, a different interview guide, entailing five questions, was used for the second FGDs.
Two individual interviews were conducted per institution, using the same learners who participated in both discussions and the same interview guide to solicit clarifications. These interviews were conducted immediately after the second set of FGDs, to establish whether or not their peers had any influence on their participation during the FGDs. These individual interviews were held to also solicit clarification and elaboration of any issues raised during the focus groups. Besides this, individual interviews were found to be an ideal forum to explore detailed personal experiences and to evaluate the intended interventions. It was expected that the second FGDs and individual interviews would reveal further implications for improving
114 youth oriented messages aimed at preventing the spread of HIV. The documents (the
materials), as a form of documentary analysis, were used on two levels. A semiotic analysis of the documents was conducted prior to collecting data from the above mentioned population.
Then focus groups and individual interviews were used as data collection methods for student analysis of the same documents (HIV materials).
The interview guidelines were structured around the effectiveness of the print IEC materials at conveying messages aimed at curtailing the spread of HIV among youth and young adults in relation to the three theories: communication, semiotics and discourse analysis, and the seven concepts: sign, object, interpretant, denotation, connotation, elaboration and anchorage and relay that make up the theoretical and conceptual framework of the study.
The guideline for the first meeting ended by asking the respondents to give their opinions on the quality of the materials and how print materials can be improved so that they can ‘talk to them’ as a community (in a school setting), and to youth and young adults in general in their respective districts. The second meeting ended by asking which type of IEC material the learners thought would be most appropriate to get HIV and AIDS messages through to youth so that they could provide insights on what can be done to improve HIV prevention
message(s) and the outline of print IEC materials in order to ensure that they positively influence attitudinal change among youth and young adults, especially in their respective districts. In addition, respondents were asked how they acquired HIV and AIDS-related materials and the frequency with which they acquired them. This was asked to verify the supposition that people living in the mountainous areas are highly disadvantaged regarding their access to media and other educational facilities, (as was mentioned in Chapter one) and are, therefore, not so exposed to information or literature as are their peers in the urban areas.
Using semi-structured guidelines helped the exploration of the “investigated issue in detail”
(Henn et al., 2006: 162). They allowed for the probing, prompting and using of flexible questioning, since the study inquired about a rather hypothetical entity created from theory and speculation. The hypothetical entity was that IEC materials inform, educate and
communicate with people. The same guidelines were used for all three institutions, so that the
115 predetermined questions were not deviated from, in order to be able to demonstrate a
comparative element between the different contextual circumstances of the three institutions at the end of the inquiry. Moreover, these guides were used because they helped to create some level of standardization across the six interviews that were conducted in these institutions.
Having deliberated on the study instruments here, the next paragraph looks at how the trustworthiness of these instruments was assessed.
4.9.1 TRUSTWORTHINESS
Henn et al. (2006) argue that small scale qualitative research (like this one) is often criticized for lacking both structure and system. Their argument is that the findings cannot be used for generalization. They claim that this is because the number of cases (items or respondents) used in this approach is too small. They consider generalizability to be problematic in small- scale qualitative research (Henn et al., 2006:178) and go on to show that, “some researchers claim that generalizability should not be considered as a standard against which the credibility of a research should be assessed”, especially because the goal of researchers who use this approach is not to discover general laws of human behaviour, but to describe and explain the existing patterns of behaviour of a specific group, as was the case in this study. The intention here was not to investigate the general laws of the Lesotho tertiary institution learners’
behaviour in regard to HIV, but to describe their responses towards print IEC materials that are used to prevent HIV, with the aim of explaining the patterns of responding to these type of IEC materials. Looking at the overall population of Lesotho, this approach is trustworthy enough to make general conclusions concerning youth and young adults in Lesotho.
Since this was an interpretive study, it was evaluated by assessing its credibility, transferability, dependability and confirmability, the preferred terms in qualitative research to the concepts of validity and reliability, in order to demonstrate the trustworthiness of the research (Rule and John, 2011).
4.9.2 CREDIBILITY
According to Bradley (1993: 436), credibility refers to the “adequate representation of the constructions of the social world under study”. In an effort to establish an adequate rapport, all
116 institutions were visited a day before the actual data collection meetings were held to conduct an orientation meeting with participants. Besides orientating the respondents about the study, these meetings were also carried out in an effort to augment the amount of time all the participants and the researcher needed to spend with each other. For instance, Chilisa and Preece (2005: 166) indicate that respondents are likely to relax and “volunteer different and more sensitive information” when a researcher spends more time with them. Substantial FGDs and interviews were conducted to avoid repetition by the respondents of information, themes, patterns, trends and examples. Besides talking to the supervisors, to help improve the
credibility of this study, peer-debriefing meetings were also held with fellow PhD cohort members, who helped to scrutinize the procedures used for the study, as well as the findings, conclusions, and analysis. Negative case analysis was achieved by recording all issues that do not appropriately fit the categories of the study, so that the working thematic interpretations based on the discovery of such cases could be revised. Interpretations were checked by asking respondents if the notes accurately reflected their deliberations at the end of every discussion and interview.
4.9.3 TRANSFERABILITY
Transferability, according to Bradley (1993: 436), is the extent to which the “researcher’s working hypothesis [sic] can be applied to another context”. However, they warn that
researchers should understand that it is not their task to provide an index of transferability; but theirs is to provide high-quality “data sets and descriptions” that are transferable to different settings or contexts. The fact that the same instruments were used in all three contexts here is in itself an indication of the transferability value of the instruments. Patterns within the findings also demonstrated the transferability of findings to different settings within the Lesotho tertiary learning context.
4.9.4 DEPENDABILITY
Dependability is the “coherence of the internal process and the way the researcher accounts for changing conditions in the phenomena” (Bradley, 1993: 437). To enhance dependability, three different sets of FGDs and individual interviews with similar participants were
117 conducted. The first meetings were held to establish message(s) that the learners deemed the materials to convey and their perceptions on the materials’ significance and appropriateness to them. The second meetings were aimed at finding out the kind of meaning that they (learners) attached to the materials, whether or not the materials raised any critical awareness for them, whether or not their exposure to the materials influenced their attitudes towards HIV-related issues, whether or not the materials offended them in any way or affected their feelings after the first discussion. This was done in view of the fact that dependability can be determined by checking the consistency of the study processes (Bradley, 1993). During these meetings the learners were also asked to suggest topic(s) that they felt should have been included and those that they wanted removed from the material(s). They were also asked to make suggestions regarding the materials’ layout so that it would attract the intended audience.
4.9.5 CONFIRMABILITY
Confirmability refers to “the extent to which the characteristics of the data, as posited by the researcher, can be confirmed by others who read or review the research results” (Bradley, 1993: 437). Regular presentations before my supervisors, cohort members and their supervisors were made as a technique for checking the internal coherence of the data,
findings, interpretations and recommendations to set up the trustworthiness of this study and to ensure that it conforms to the requirements of qualitative research. Their comments thus helped to rule out bias and improve the quality of the methodological triangulation used in the study.