LITERATURE REVIEW
3.1 Sampling
3.1.1 Sampling of the websites
The study used purposive sampling on the choice of the universities; the reason was that the two chosen are local universities that offer comparable courses and are in close proximity to each other. There is a great possibility that each targets its own target population that might be diverse. These two institutions were selected as it would be useful to investigate any similarities or differences in the values transmitted by their respective websites. This was considered particularly important given that from the beginning of 2004 the two institutions would be merged into one institution, which would have a new website to represent a new merged institution.
Publicly available websites (not the intranet) of two universities in KwaZulu-Natal province of South Africa were chosen as the subjects of study. These were
1. The University of Durban Westville (UDW) website available at http://www.udw.ac.za (see Appendices A and B for graphics of the original and subsequent homepage). This study focused more on the latter (appendix B) being the latest and more responses were made with reference to it.
2. The University of Natal (NU) website available at http://www.nu.ac.za (see Appendix C for a graphic of the homepage).
Many websites are dynamic in nature: their layout and content may change hourly, daily, weekly or yearly depending on the respective producer (owner/designer). During the process of data collection, the UDW site changed completely as the site was given a whole new design
(including layout and content). This had an impact on the findings in that two sets of responses were received: those who responded referring to the original design (Appendix A) and those referring to the re-designed site (Appendix B). As a result, there was a need to go back to the
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respondents, check which design they had commented on, and then recode their responses accordingly to enhance the analysis. Sections of the content of the NU homepage also change regularly since the page incorporates a front-page newsletter. The news feed and photographs change and thus participants in the research responded to and evaluated different news stories and pictures.
3.1.2 Sampling of participants
The study used purposive sampling on the part of participants to interview in order to obtain the perspectives of a diverse range of stakeholders. The researcher's intention was not to survey a more collective response but to get individual responses and explore them more fully with the respondents and get richer material. Thus, when the researcher felt enough data had been collected that reflects people's experiences, recruitment of participants and the actual data collection stopped.
Participants (on the part of consumers/users) included representatives of all stakeholders in tertiary education including local and international students (both UDW and NU), parents, UDW and NU staff, and community members and members of human rights groups. Also participating were respective producers who designed the two sample sites as well as producers of non- university websites.
In order to get the volunteers on board, the researcher encouraged students and staff members from the local tertiary institutions and each of the two universities through a snowball sampling process. To ensure there were participants from the two universities, contact was made with people who were interested in taking part in the study to recruit others. The names and contact details of all the volunteers were sent to the researcher who checked and found that there were
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people from both universities in the sample. All volunteers were then consulted through e-mail for their informed consent. They were also asked to indicate their preferred method of
questioning between face-to-face interviews and self-administered questionnaires sent via e- mail. When they had chosen which type of participation they wanted in the study they were then interviewed or sent questionnaires during the three-month period from April 2003.
It is important to note that the timing and the announcement of the merger between the two universities had some effect in influencing people (especially the staff and students of the respective universities) to participate. It also made people sensitive about any comparisons they made. For instance, some participants did not want to give opinions that favoured one site over another. What the researcher did, to get such information was to re-assure the confidentiality of their responses as well as probe more in the interviews. Besides, in the questionnaires, the questions were set in a way that some responses for the last questions would help verify the consistency with those given in the preceding questions.
The study is based on responses of 30 participants collected through 14 interviews (10 face-to- face, 4 online) and 16 questionnaires. Participants were asked to browse the two websites (they were not told what to look for) and then answer the questions that followed. They (participants) could choose to provide answers for only one site or both sites per question. The sampling of participants summarised in Table 3.1 overleaf, depicts the stakeholders consulted.
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Tab/e 3. 1 Summary of the sampling of participants
Producers of the sample websites:
1. UDW: independent designer and site manager 1
2. NU: staff member and co-designer 1
Other Website Producers: 2
Designers 1
Owner/proprietor 1
Maintainer
Totals for the roducers out of 30 6
Consumers /Stakeholders in tertia education websites
Students 11
Staff members 5
Communit members 2
Human Ri hts Group members 2
Totals for the consumers (out of 30) 24