This Chapter is about methods
and techniques in data-collection during a qualitative research. We mentioned
earlier that qualitative research is eclectic. That is, the choice of
techniques is dependent on the needs of the research. Although this should be
true for almost all social research, it is particularly so with qualitative
research in that the appropriate method or techniques is often identified and
adopted during the research. Qualitative research is also multi-modal. The
researcher may adopt a variety of research techniques, or a combination of
such, as long as they are justified by the needs. The discussion below is therefore not to
identify a set of techniques unique to qualitative research, but rather, to
introduce the methods and techniques most commonly used in qualitative
research, and the issues related to such use.
We shall introduce the methods
and techniques in three broad categories: observations,
interviews and study of documents.
These are also the basic methods used in cultural anthropology (Bernard,
1988:62). Indeed, the discussions about qualitative research in education can
be viewed as a particular case in cultural anthropology.
Observations
Observation usually means the
researcher's act to find out what people do (Bernard, 1988:62). It is different
from other methods in that data occur not necessarily in response to the
researcher's stimulus.
Observation may be obtrusive or
unobtrusive. A researcher may simply sit in the corner of a school playground
and observe how students behave during breaks. He may also stand by the school
gate and observe how students behave at the school gate. Such cases of
observation may be seen as unobtrusive. In other cases, the researchers may not
apply any stimuli, but their presence per
se may have some influence on the scene. The most common example in this
category is classroom observation. Although the researcher may just sit quietly
at the corner of a classroom, the presence of the researcher may change the
classroom climate. It is, nonetheless, still observation.
Observation is a basic technique
used in almost all qualitative research. Even if other methods or techniques
are used, the researcher remains the most essential "sensor" or
"instrument" and hence observation always counts (McCracken,
1988:18-20). For example, when interviewing is used, a qualitative researcher
also takes into account the tonic or facial expressions of the informant,
because they help interpret the verbal responses. Such expressions are only
sensed by observation. If the interview is done in the field, then the
surroundings of the interview site also provide meaningful data for the
research. The surroundings can only be depicted through observation. Hence
observation is indispensable in almost all occasions of qualitative research.
However, the term observation may sometimes go beyond what
is seen. It also pertains to what is heard, and even sometimes what is smelled.
Case 4.1 provides one of such examples.
Case
4.1: Classroom Observation Scheme
In
the IIEP project on basic education, Leung designed for the Chinese research a
scheme for classroom observation. Classroom was taken as one of the
environmental factors affecting students' learning. The scheme was designed
after Leung stayed in local schools for two days. The scheme did not confine
itself to the performance of the teacher, although that was a part. The figure
on the next page shows one of the six sections of the scheme.
Different writers have different
ways of classifying observations.
Without running into juggling of definitions, we shall briefly introduce
observations as participant observations and
non-participant observations. More
detailed classification of observations can be found in Bernard (1988), Goetz
and LeCompte (1984) and Patton (1990).
Participant
Observation
Participant observation is
perhaps the most typical of qualitative research. Some authors even use participant observation as a synonym for
ethnographic research. Different writers may have slightly different
definitions of participant observation. The following description by Fetterman
is perhaps the most agreeable to most researchers.
Participant
observation is immersion in a culture. Ideally, the ethnographer lives and
works in the community for six months to a year or more, learning the language
and seeing patterns of behaviour over time. Long-term residence helps the
researcher internalize the basic beliefs, fears, hopes and expectations of the
people under study. (1989:45)
Immersion of the participant can
either be continuous or noncontinuous. The three classical cases we quoted in
Chapter 1 all include participation in the continuous mode. Li's study of
classroom sociology (Cases 3.8 and 3.9) involved one year's continuous
residence. In the second and third year she went to the school three days a
week. She combined continuous with noncontinuous participant observations.
Fetterman used noncontinuous participation when he was doing qualitative
evaluation of educational programmes.
Case 4.2: Noncontinuous Visits
In
two ethnographic studies, of dropouts and of gifted children, Fetterman visited
the programmes for only a few weeks every couple of months over a three-year
period. The visits were intensive. They included classroom observation,
informal interviews, occasional substitute teaching,interaction with community
members, and the use of various other research techniques, including
long-distance phone-calls, dinner with students' families, and time spent hanging out in the hallways
and parking lot with students cutting classes. (Fetterman, 1989:46-7)
|
II. Environment of the classroom
1. The classroom is on the
_____ floor of the school building.
2. The classroom is near
( ) residential area ( ) factories
( ) road(s) ( ) field
( ) marketplace
( ) others
_______________________________________
3. The number of windows which
provide lighting and ventilation to
the classroom:
( ) satisfies the required standard
( ) is below the required standard
4. The main artificial lighting
facility in the classroom is:
( ) florescent tubes total
no.__________________
( ) light bulbs total
no.__________________
5. Condition of lighting during
the lesson :
( ) bright (
) dim ( ) dark
6. Ventilation in the
classroom:
( ) well ventilated ( )
stuffy ( ) suffocating
7. Quality of air in the
classroom:
( ) refreshing (
) a bit smelly ( ) stingy
8. Environments for listening:
( ) very quiet (
) occasional noise ( ) noisy
9. Classroom's floor structure:
( ) concrete
( ) log
( ) mud (
) carpet
10. Classroom's floor
condition:
( ) clean
( ) some litter (
) full of rubbish
11. Classroom's wall
conditions:
( ) smooth & clean ( )
some stains ( ) dirty & damaged
12. Classroom's area: _____________m2; area/person: _____ m2.
13. Space use in classroom:
( ) looks spatial (
) fairly crowded ( ) very crowded
14. Furniture and other article
arrangements in the classroom:
( ) orderly and tidy (
) messy
Figure 1 Classroom Observation Scheme (Designed by
Leung Yat-ming)
|
Whyte's experience in the
Italian slum (Case 2) is perhaps the nearest to ideal in participant
observation. He stayed in the community for two years. He experienced the life
of a member of the Italian slum. In Whyte's case, native membership allows the
researcher the highest level of participant observation.
Most researchers are denied such
an opportunity, often because of constraints in time and resources, as we have
discussed at length in Chapter 3. Under all sorts of constraints, at best the
researcher "lives as much as possible with and in the same manner as the
individuals under investigation" (Goetz and LeCompte, 1984: 109). In these
circumstances, the researchers may not claim that they was doing ethnography,
but it is legitimate to apply ethnographic approach and techniques to the study
(Fetterman, 1989:47). Participant observation in its broad sense therefore
tolerates different lengths of time and different degrees of depth. There is a
full range of possible modes of participant observation, what Wolcott calls
"ethnographer sans[1] ethnography" (Wolcott, 1984: 177).
The most frequent case in
education is that a researcher may stay in a school and become a teacher in that
school. The researcher identity may or may not be disguised. The researcher may
then, as a participant, observe teachers' behaviours in teaching, in meetings,
in conversations, and so forth.
Sometimes, the researcher is
readily a member of the community (say, a school) and may still carry out
research as a participant observer. However, in this case, the researcher
should be aware of his/her knowledge of the community and should be cautious
that such knowledge would not lead to preoccupations about the school under
research. In cases where the researchers have successfully gained membership
(as Whyte did in the Italian slum), the distinction between a native member and
the researcher-as-participant begins to blur. This insider-outsider dialectics
will be further discussed later.
Nonparticipant Observation
Strictly speaking,
nonparticipant observation involves merely watching what is happening and
recording events on the spot. In the qualitative orientation, because of the
non-intervention principle, strict nonparticipant observation should involve no
interaction between the observer and the observed. Goetz and LeCompte assert
that in the strict sense "nonparticipant observation exists only where
interactions are viewed through hidden camera and recorder or through one-way
mirror" (1984: 143).
Dabbs (1982:41), for example,
used hidden camera in Atlanta at a plaza in Georgia State University, and
studied an informal group that frequently gathered during the morning break.
There are examples of using hidden video-cameras in school toilets to study
drug problem among students, or to use unnoticed audio recording device to
study student interactions. The use of audio or video recording device often
invites concern in ethnical considerations. Such problems are similar to those
arising in using one-way mirrors in interviews or psychological experiments.
Such cases are rare in policy-related research.
Another case of nonparticipant
observation with ethical problem is disguised observation, or covert observation. A typical example is
Humphrey's (1975) study on homosexual activities. He did not participate in
such activities, but offered to act as "watch queen", warning his
informants when someone approached the toilet. Another famous example is Van Maanen's
covert study of police. He became practically a police recruit. Over more than
a decade, he "slipped in and out" of the police in various research
roles (Van Maanen, 1982). Covert observations are again rare in research which
is related to educational decision-making.
Hidden camera or recorder and
covert observation occur only exceptionally. Most author would accept the
watching of audience behaviour during a basketball game (Fetterman, 1989:47) or
the watching of pedestrian behaviour over a street as acceptable examples of
nonparticipant observations. Interaction between the researcher and the social
community under study is often unavoidable. We have again discussed this at
length in Chapter 3 under the notion of researcher intervention. If we perceive
the problem of intervention as a matter of degrees, then the distinction
between participant observation and nonparticipant observation begins to blur.
The general principle across the board is that the researchers should minimize
their interactions with the informants and focus attention unobtrusively on the
stream of events (Goetz and LeCompte, 1984:143).
Wolcott's study of school
principal (Case 3) was perhaps the most intensive type of nonparticipant
observation that one could find in the realm of education. (He also used other
supplementary methods as mentioned in Case 3). He did live with the school for
two years, but he did not participate as a school principal which was his subject of study. He saw his role as one of
"participant-as-observer" (Wolcott, 1984:7). So was Li's study (Case
3.8) of classroom sociology in her first year. She did stay with the school as
a teacher but she never became a student
which was her subject of study. The following two years of her study, however,
was not nonparticipant observation
because she applied experimental measures. During the UNICEF research in
Liaoning, the basic method I used was interviewing and not nonparticipant observation, but I did have, at times,
nonparticipant observation when debates occurred between the local planners and
the provincial planners (Case 3.7), or when planners chat among themselves
about their past experience in the field.
The most frequently employed
nonparticipant observation which is relevant to educational decision-making is
perhaps observation at meetings. Typically, the researcher attends a meeting as
an observer. The researcher tries to be as unobtrusive as possible and records
everything that happens during the meeting. When Wolcott did his study on the
school principal, he was present at all meetings unless he was told otherwise
(Wolcott, 1984:4). The following was my experience of a non-participant
observation in China.
Case
4.3: A Validation Seminar
I
realized during the UNICEF research in Liaoning (Case 4) that one essential step
in the planning for basic education in China was validation. When drafting of an education plan was complete, the
draft plan had to undergo scrutiny in what is known as a validation seminar. In
essence, all those related to the plan, including leaders at all levels,
representatives of all relevant government departments, experts from all areas
- are invited to discuss. Relevant documents are sent to the participants well
in advance. They are then asked to comment on the plan during the validation
exercise. Only "validated" plans are submitted to relevant machinery
for legislation. The validation seminar for Liaoning was unfortunately held
before the UNICEF research. I got an opportunity, however, a year after in
1988, when the Shanghai educational plan was to undergo validation. The host of
the meeting agreed to send me an invitation. I attended the meeting in the name
of an "external expert", although I made clear to the host that my
major task was not to contribute. They agreed. During the meeting, I was able
to observe the roles of the various "actors" during the meeting. I
was also able to talk to individual participants during tea breaks and meals to
understand their background and their general views about educational planning.
I was able to do a number of things over the two-day meeting: (a) to classify
the over 40 participants into technocrats, bureaucrats, policy-makers and
academics; (b) to understand the different extents in which the participants
contributed to the modification of the plan; (c) the disparity in capacity
among participants in terms of information and expertise; (d) the
inter-relations between the different categories of actors and (e) the function
of the validation exercise. In the end, I concluded that validation was a way
of legitimation, which employed both
technical (expert judgement) and political (participation) means to increase
the acceptability of the plan before it went for legal endorsement. The
political aspect came to me as a surprise. It indicated a change in the notion
of rationality among Chinese planners
and policy-makers.
Interviewing
Interviewing is widely used in
qualitative research. Compared with observation, it is more economical in time,
but may achieve less in understanding the culture. The economy in time,
however, makes ethnographic interviewing almost the most widely used technique
in policy-related research.
Interviewing is trying to
understand what people think through their speech. There are different types of
interviews, often classified by the degrees of control over the interview.
Along this line, we shall briefly introduce three types of interviewing:
informal interviewing, unstructured interviewing, semi-structured interviewing,
and formally structured interviewing. We shall also briefly introduce
key-informant interviewing and focus groups which are specific types of
ethnographic interviewing.
Qualitative research of course
has no monopoly over interviewing. Interviewing is also frequently used in
research of other traditions. The difference between ethnographic interviewing
and interviewing in other traditions lies mainly in two areas: the
interviewer-interviewee relationship and the aims of interviews. Ethnographic
interviewees, or informants, are teachers rather than subjects to the researcher,
they are leaders rather than followers in the interview. The major aim of the
interview should not be seeking responses to specific questions, but initiating
the informant to unfold data.
Readers may find more detailed
discussions about ethnographic interviewing in Spradley (1979) who provides
perhaps the most insightful account of the subject. In-depth discussions about
ethnographic interviewing can also be found in Bernard (1988), Patton (1990),
Fetterman (1989) and Powney and Watts (1987).
Informal Interviewing
Informal interviewing entails no
control. It is usually conversations that the researcher recall after staying
in the field. It is different from "observation" in that it is
interactive. That is, the informant speaks to the researcher. By its own
nature, informal interviewing is the most "ethnographic" in the sense
that it is not responding to any formal question. It is part of the
self-unfolding process.
Case
4.4: Conversation during Travels
Almost
without exception, doing research in rural China involves long travels, usually
one land, sometimes by sea. Typically, the whole group of six or seven travels
in a van. The van may travel over five or six hours, or more. The journeys are
usually full of conversations. When it is too long, people tend to take naps,
but still, between naps people talk. The conversations often provide valuable
information not available during more formal sessions. For example, I had
always thought that the crucial factor that led to the low income of community-supported
teachers (Case 6) was finance. I was only through conversation that I realized
it was more a matter of rural-urban disparity in citizenship. As another exame,
once while was had a break on the road and stood by the van. I said jokingly,
"what do you think if the province were a country on its own". This
evoked emotions conversations which gave me a vivid description of the local
planners' perception of decentralization. A third example: I slept overnight on
a boat when I was travelling in a province to a small town. The man in the same
cabin happened to be a senior official in the local finance department. He told
me all kinds of reforms and shortcomings in the local financial system which
help me grasp an alternative perspective of educational finance.
Unstructured
Interviewing
Unstructured interviewing
applies minimum control over the informant and the responses. Unstructured
interviewing is formal interviewing. There is no disguise that the occasion is
just a friendly chat. Hence, there is always a question to answer, or a topic
to discuss. However, the informants have the liberty to choose their own scope,
depth, emphases, length and pace of the response. At times, the informant may
even choose to deviate from the original question or topic.
Case
4.5: Training Needs of Supervisors
Sung
(1992) attempted to study the management training needs of supervisors of
child-care centres of the disabled, in the view of designing appropriate
training programmes for the supervisors. She started with ethnographic
interviewing with some of the centre supervisors. The interviews started with
the supervisors perceptions about "problems" in their work. The
supervisors were quite articulate of their problems. However, none of the first
few informants mentioned anything about management as their felt problem, nor
did they relate their problems with training. In other words, the interviews
did not answer Sung's original question about training needs. However, the
interviews proved enlightening, because they provided the actual perspectives
of the supervisors. For example, they are more aware of their roles as
programmes developers, and are less conscious of their managerial roles. Some
of them in fact wished they could get rid of their managerial tasks. This allowed
Sung to have a completely fresh look at the meaning of training of centre
supervisors.
Most of what is known as
"ethnographic interviews" are unstructured. This is especially the
case at the early stages of the research, when the researcher knows little
about the subject to be studied and when there is comparatively plenty of time.
As the research goes on, the researcher may have gradually developed his/her
thinking and may choose to ask more specific questions in a narrower scope. The
interviews then tend to be more structured.
Case
4.6: Participation in Educational
Policy-making
In
1983, I did a research which attempted to identify the patterns of
participation by educational bodies in educational policy-making in Hong Kong.
The main body of the research was a questionnaire which asked for each
educational body's nature and its mode of participation in government
policy-making. the 68 educational bodies which provide valid data were then
classified according to their modes of participation by cluster analysis and
factor analysis. It was basically a quantitative analysis. The design of the
questionnaire was based on 14 semi-structured interviews with people who had
extensive experience with educational bodies. The design of these interviews
were in turn based on two background interviews with the Senior Assistant
Director of Education (who was the de
facto chief in planning) and the most prominent union leader. Both
interviews were unstructured and started with the grand tour question
"What do you see as the picture of participation in educational planning
in Hong Kong?"(Cheng, 1983:68). The informants were then allowed to
elaborate according to what they knew about the topic. There was no set time
limit for the interviews. The two interviews eventually took 70 and 120 minutes
respectively. The following diagram may help depict the process (Ibid.:95):
Background
Interviews ®
Pilot Interview ®
Main Interviews ®
Questionnaire
(unstructured) (semi-structured) (semi-structured)
Unstructured interviewing is
often characterized by the very few questions asked by the researcher. It is
therefore sometimes also called the open-ended interviewing. Indeed, a
successful qualitative unstructured interview often starts with a "grand
tour" question (Spradley, 1979:86) and no further question is necessary
until the informant has said all that is to be said about that topic. A grand
tour question is designed to elicit a broad picture of the native's world (Fetterman,
1989:51). Grand tour questions should lead the researcher to understand the
general framework in which the informants think, the terms they used, the context in which
such terms are used, and so forth (Werner & Schoepfle, 1987:318). The grand
tour question also gives the researcher a basis to frame further questions. In
practice, the researcher often has to do some "probing" in order to
continue the conversation. Skill is required in such probing so that it widens
rather than narrows the scope of conversion (Bernard, 1988:211-17).
Unstructured interviewing often
encounters information that the researcher is unprepared for. Such information are valuable input which may
change the researchers' perceptions. The
following is an example.
Case
4.7: Why do farmers send their children to schools?
In
an IIEP project in Zhejiang province of China, one of the research objective
was to understand why parents sent their children to schools. We started with a
crude questionnaire. One item in the questionnaire was the parent's expected
future career of their children. In drafting this section of the questionnaire,
census categories were used. In addition, some experienced teachers with good
knowledge of the past graduates helped check the list against all the possible
occupations past primary graduates had taken up. The section ended up with the
following occupations:
(01)
further studies
(02)
administrator in the village
(03)
professional technicians
(04)
skilled workers
(05)
professional farmer
(06)
businessman
(07)
local industrialist
(08)
military personnel
(09)
teacher
(10)
others
However,
ethnographic interviews with parents in a pilot village proved that the
questionnaire was far from painting the real picture. Rural parents were often
puzzled by the question "Why are you sending your children to
schools?" The most articulate of them expressed their puzzle in a
retorting question: "Why not?" or "Why should this be a
question?". We realized that these responses were valuable data. We then
asked: "When your child has completed primary school, what would you
expect him/her to do?" The question
did not normally get at immediate answers. Many parents, particularly the
illiterates, reacted with doubts and fussed about the question. We took these
responses as valuable data. The following are some of such responses:
"How
should I know?"
"What
do you mean?"
"What
do you think I should say?" (Turning to the local teacher.)
"I
don't know how to answer."
“I
have never thought of it!"
We
identified that there were parents who actually did not think much about their
children's future. This may or may not reflect a total neglect of their
children, as the following answers to further probing indicate:
"It
goes without saying that I wish they could go to universities."
"Of
course I want them to get education as high up as possible, but I don't know
what they are called."
"I
don't mind, as far as they can leave the village eventually."
"I
don't mind what they do, as long as they are not doing anything bad."
In
the end, we decided that the interviewers should ask the question in an
open-ended mode and allow answers such as
"I
have never thought of that"
"university
study"
"further
study, as high as possible"
"leave
the village eventually"
"as
far as not doing anything bad, irrespective of the occupation"
The
actual results of the questionnaire over a sample of over 200 parents revealed
that most of these items gained highest scores among rural parent.
Semi-structured
Interviewing
Semi-structured interviewing is
interviewing with an interview guide (Bernard, 1988:205). Semi-structured
interviewing follows all the principles of unstructured interviewing, except
that the informants are not expected to move too far beyond the scope defined
by the interview guide. By the nature of qualitative research, however, the
researcher tends not to stop the informant when the interview goes beyond the
designed scope. Nevertheless, the guide at least allows the researcher to
obtain data within the designed scope. This is useful in situations where the
researcher can only meet the informant once and hence the interview is not
likely to repeat.
Case
4.8: Overseas Informants
When
I carried out the study of educational policy-making in Hong Kong (Case 17),
many of the informants were interviewed overseas. One of the informants was an
expert planner in Bonn, Germany who was once a consultant of the Hong Kong
government. I interviewed him when I was able to travel to Bonn by train after
a meeting in Paris en route to
London. There were only two hours. I sent in advance a page of four broad
questions about one policy-episode which he participated. Each question was
preceded by a small paragraph to remind him of the context. The questions were
open-ended. The questions helped very much. The informant was able to recollect
his experience in Hong Kong before I went. The informant in fact led the interview. Another informant was
a chief educational administrator in Canberra, Australia. I was able to spend
two days in the city. Again, a similar page of broad questions were sent in
advance. I asked for two visits on the two consecutive days. The first day
interview was a grand tour of his perception of the particular episode in
focus. I made a study of the interview results and framed questions for the
second day interview.
A
third informant was a retired official from the Treasury of Britain. He was one
of the first members of the Hong Kong University Grants Committee which was one
of my foci of attention. In the letter I sent in advance, some broad questions
about asking him to enlighten me with his perceptions of the background, status
and role of the Committee. He was so pleased about the interview that it went
from 1 p.m. until 6 p.m. in the evening. He invited me to a second interview,
which took another four hours. He was not always focusing on the Committee. He
started with the beginning of the British counterpart (UGC) in 1919, traced its
development, and related its features to the Hong Kong Committee. He made
comments not only on the committees and the policies, but also on persons. I
was not at all worried by the "out-of-focus" conversation, and anyway
there was no way to stop him. The interview gave me a splendid picture of not
only the policies and organizations under research, but also dynamics and
culture within the organizations.
The broad questions in the first
two cases played the role of an interview guide. They helped to economize the
limited time available in such interviews. The broad questions in the third
case played a different role. They helped initiate the informant in unfolding
what was in his mind. Hence, the intended semi-structure in the third case gave
way to an unstructured interview, quite pleasantly for a qualitative
researcher.
Structured
Interviewing
In structured interviewing, all
informants are asked to respond to the same set of questions or stimuli, or, to
as nearly identical a set of stimuli as possible (Bernard, 1988:205).
Structured interviewing often involves a rather elaborate interview schedule.
Hence, structured interviewing is not very different from using a
questionnaire. In fact, Bernard (Ibid.)
regards even self-administered questionnaire as a special type of structured
interviewing. However, there remains a variety of approaches in structured
interviewing. It still allows the use of ethnographic techniques to various
degrees.
Case
4.9: Structured Questionnaire with Ethnographic Interviewing
During
the IIEP research on basic education (see Case 4.7), parents were interviewed
with a questionnaire. The researcher took the questionnaire and interviewed
parents many of whom were illiterate. The large number of parents, the
considerable number of researchers, the numerous items and various possible
responses made the questionnaire necessarily structured, with as many options
possible for each item. The questionnaire was printed and the researcher used
one questionnaire for each parent. During the designing process, we faced two
options: the researcher might either read out the optional responses for the
informant to select, or the researcher might stop at asking the question and
allow the respondent to give the answer. Eventually, we decided to adopt the
latter, that is, allowing the parents to provide the answer. The reason was
quite obvious. We discovered during the design of the questionnaire that
parents' answers often went beyond our expectations. Although we had included
as many as possible of these responses in the final draft of the questionnaire,
we could never be sure that other parents would not have other answers in mind.
If we asked the parents to respond to optional answers, we might still limit
them to what we had expected and miss those unexpected.
The above is just a brief
discussion of using interviewing in qualitative research. Readers may find more
detailed discussions in McCracken (1988), Bernard (1988) and Powney (1987).
Spradley (1979) in particular provides a very useful systematic analysis of
interviewing in the qualitative conventions.
Focus
Group Interviewing
In the broad sense, focus group
interviewing is in-depth group interviewing. Although the method itself may be
used in all conventions of research, it tends to generate qualitative data in
the emic sense (i.e. in the
participants own words and own categories)(Stewart & Shamdasani,
1990:11-13). Hence, focus group interviewing is often group interview in the
ethnographic sense.
Typically, a group of 8 to 12
informants are invited to a session of around one and a half to two and a half
hours (Ibid.:10). The researcher
initiates discussion by whatever way appropriate, such that the participants
are motivated but not guided to discuss on the relevant topic. The researcher
will then listen and observe the discussions that follow, applying as little
intervention as possible, as long as the discussion remains on the topic. In
such discussion, the participants are expected to unfold their knowledge and
express their opinions about the subject matter. Focus group interviewing is
also known as focus group discussion, perhaps because in ideal situations,
interaction between participants prevails over "interviewing" in its
conventional sense.
The strengths of focus group
interviewing are at least twofold. First, a large amount of information can be
released in a comparatively short period of time. Second, it also allows the
researcher to observe interactions among participants. Such interaction are not
observable in individual interviews.
The major weakness of focus
group interviewing is that under group situations, group dynamics and group
pressure come into play. Participants may not be ready to express their
independent views, or they may be actually influenced by the prevalent views
during the discussion. The information obtained may well be distorted
information. Such a weakness is perhaps less significant in a Western community
than in a confucian society such as those in East Asia. In the former,
individuals stand as independent entities and participants are more ready to
accept diverse views. In the latter, people often believe in collectivism and
correctness of views and what is expressed in groups may differ significantly
from what each individual think.
A focus group interview is more
successful when the topic is the participants' concern rather than only the
researcher's concern. In this ideal case, the discussion is usually very
focused with little intervention from the researcher, who acts as the moderator
of discussion. In other cases, where the topic of discussion is not so much the
concern of the participants, the research may have to apply more guidance
during the discussion and the ethnographic sense is preserved only with
caution.
Case
4.10: Community Perception of Basic Education
A
focus group discussion was held with a Neighbourhood Committee during a
research project to under the environments of basic education in China. Eight
members were present. The members were elected from the families who lived in
the neighbourhood which was made up of a street.
My
concern was to understand what are perceived as the basic education needs, so
that the questionnaire we were to design would be consistent with the
community's perceptions. In order to focus the discussion, I started with an
open question: "What are the characteristics of a man who cannot survive
the society?" The responses converged on two points: good adaptability and
good human relations. Adaptability includes adaptation to the nature and
changing environments, endurance and persistence and self-study abilities. Good
human relations include relations with family members, relations with peers and
work-mates, and the management of self in an organization. Those who cannot
survive were those who were unable to cope with the changing environment, who
evaded difficulties, who were unable to manage themselves and those who tended
to be self-isolating. No one mentioned literacy and numeracy which were our
anticipated answers.
I
followed with a number of probing questions each relating to literacy and
numeracy. "Don't you think a young person should learn to change an
electric bulb?" "Don't you think a young person should be able to
read the road sign?" The participants did not seem to appreciate that
these should become part of schooling. "They can always learn from their
neighbour or even ask the neighbour to help." "They can always ask
passers-by."
The focus group discussion above
proved extremely helpful. It was an international comparison and we had always
been focusing on literacy and numeracy as the basics of basic education. The
attainment tests turned out that most students had achieved the basic
requirements between primary 4 and primary 6. Parents therefore took literacy
and numeracy for granted and turned to social requirements. The picture of what
basic education was meant to parents was totally changed. This subsequently
helped interpret a large number of research findings which might otherwise
became inexplicable.
Case
4.11: School Needs for Teacher Development
The
Advisory Committee on Teacher Education and Qualification found it necessary to
know how teacher education and teacher qualifications are matching the needs of
schools. It was decided that a survey
would be conducted. The survey could be
conducted in the form of a questionnaire asking schools about the appropriateness
of various activities in teacher education and development. This, however, may narrow the respondents'
views to what is existing, or what is perceived as ideal in the teacher
educators' perspectives. The working
group eventually decided to conduct two focus group discussions, one for
primary schools and one for secondary schools.
In each group, knowledgeable teachers and principals are invited to
articulate their views about what they perceive of the most essential needs in
schools. They are asked to limit their
views on teachers. The focus groups
proved extremely useful in providing insights about the basic issues. Such issues, such as the non-teaching
workload of teachers, and the structural responsibility of teacher development
in schools, are beyond teachers' education and qualification, but are essential
to solve teacher problems.
The richness in data obtain from
focus group discussions may also mean difficulties in analyzing such data. This
is different from individual interviews where the informant follows a certain
line of thinking. In focus group discussions, the relations between views and
people are complex. Such a complexity, one may argue, is indeed a more accurate
reflection of the reality.
Readers may find more detailed
discussions about focus group interviewing in Stewart and Shamdasani (1990),
Morgan (1988) and Krueger (1988).
Study of Documents
Many may mistake that
qualitative researchers do not believe in second-hand data and hence are not
willing to read documents and other archival data. This is a misconception of
qualitative research. Study of documents has always been an important component
of research in the anthropological convention. Bernard has a straightforward
remark: "I see no reason to collect new data in the field if there are
documentary resources already available that address some of your research
questions" (Bernard, 1988:294). Pelto and Pelto (1979:119) made similar
remarks. In classical examples of educational qualitative research such as Wolcott
(1973:4), the study of the school principal paid significant attention to
written records and documents.
Documents refer to all kinds of written
records such as government policies, educational legislation and stipulation,
education plans, educational statistics, demographic trends, school records,
teaching plans, student health records, examination records, school meeting
minutes, school inventories, school accounts, classroom journals and so on. In
fact, it is difficult to fix a definite list until the researcher is in the
field. Then he/she can draft the list according to real needs. Often, the
researchers are not able to realize what should be read unless they are in the
field.
Case
4.12: Children Registration
One
of the major suspicions among international researchers about China was the
accuracy of enrolment ratio. This therefore became my major concern when doing
fieldwork. My first "teacher"
in this matter was a teacher of a village school in Liaoning who illustrated
how he planned for his school by showing me a book which registers all children
in the village who are from 0 to 17 in age. He called this the "Record of
Names" which was apparently not an official requirement. But he told me
that this was for his own benefit, because the number kept him alert of the
class sizes ahead and, when necessary, allowed him to plan in advance for
multiple-grade classes. He explained that, for example, if there were 4
children at five year old and only 3 at six year old, he might advise the six
year-olds to delay entrance for a year so that they might join a double-grade
class of 7 next year. He also explained that when he was asked to submit
statistics for planning, he needed no artificial projection, the number were
all in his books. Two years later, I found the same practice in Guizhou,
another province, but the principals called the book the "Cultural
Register". Even secondary school principals kept such a record, but with
age range from 0 to 23. The "Record of Names" or "Cultural Registration"
demonstrated that at least at the village level, the enrolment data was quite
transparent and there could be little honesty problem.
Case
4.13: Equipment Categories
The
first time I was in a Chinese village school, I heard that school equipment was
allocated according to categories. There were three categories: Categories I,
II and III. Apparently, Category I was of highest standard and was supposed to
be above average. Category II was of good standard more or less expected of all
school when resources were available. Category III was meant below average but
acceptable. The system in China was such
that the best schools were expected to be equipped with Category I items,
important schools such as centre schools with Category II and ordinary schools
with Category III. Village schools were often given no allocation at all. I
realized that this was a policy of discrimination which was quite different
from practices elsewhere in other countries. I never saw the actual document
until five years later. When I saw the actual document, I was further shocked.
The disparity was tremendous. The worth of items in Category I was normally
more than double that Category II and often more than three times that of
Category III. It is a policy that increases disparity. It is only when I
actually saw the document that I understood it was not only a matter of
priority, it was a cult of hierarchy. It was a culture.
There is not much in the
techniques of documentary study that is specific to qualitative research. It is
perhaps the appropriate use of the appropriate materials that is essential.
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