Analyzing and Reporting

“Fieldwork ends when the researcher leaves the community, but the ethnography continues” (Fetterman 1998, 10). After the fi eldwork, the interviews were transcribed. The transcription process was quite demanding

as it included translation from Spanish to English. Moreover, noises like heavy rain on a metal roof, roosters crowing or dogs barking had been left without attention in the interview situations, but were not that easy to ignore in the transcription phase.

In this study the organization and analysis of the collected empirical data was made by utilizing categorization and qualitative content analysis. The whole process of analysis of data involved interpretation of the meanings, functions and consequences of people’s actions (see e.g. Hammersley &

Atkinson 2007, 3). This analysis was started by clarifi cation of the transcribed material, which meant elimination of digressions and repetitions. In this case, the digressions mean for example detailed explanation about happenings during the civil war in the 1980’s. The repetition refers here to the answers where the informant was mentioning the same things many times in different words. Simultaneously I acknowledged that the informants might have used the repetition in order to emphasize the importance of a certain matter. However, all the information related to the tourism programme was considered as important. Transcribed and clarifi ed interviews formed altogether 78 pages of corpus for the next phase of categorizing the data.

Categorization of meanings has been used already for a long time to analyze qualitative material as it can structure extensive and complex interviews and give an overview of the interviews (Kvale 1996, 197–199).

Particularly in the ethnographic studies, developing categories is considered as an important initial analytical task (Robson 2002, 489). As the empirical data was collected through semi-structured interviews, the next phase was fi rstly to categorize the corpus according to the main themes brought up in the interviews:

Development of the tourism programme

-Positive things about tourism

-Negative things and challenges about tourism

-Meaning of tourism to the informant

-Informant’s conception about the meaning of tourism to other

-people

After this initial categorization the main themes were divided into subcategories. For example, the subcategories under the last main theme were topics such as improved language skills (young guides) or cleaner community (for everybody). I acknowledge that at this phase of the analysis it was important that the categorization was still done as close as possible to the subjects’ self-understanding so that in principle the subjects could also accept the categorization of their statements (see e.g. Kvale 1996, 197–199). Even though the theoretical discussion in tourism research and development studies had guided me in choosing the themes of the

semi-structured interviews, at this point of the study I was still looking at the ways the local people had experienced the tourism development. This kind of interpretation of the situation by the interviewees represents so-called fi rst-level interpretation. However, the description of the informants’

interpretations is not suffi cient in the qualitative research. In fact, the actual analysis commences after organizing the corpus. (Eskola 2001, 145; Eskola

& Suoranta 1998, 142, 149.)

I continued the analysis by connecting the created subcategories to the analytical framework of participation and empowerment presented in the third chapter. By doing this I provided new perspectives to the corpus from previous research on the phenomena. As I had noticed already during the fi eldwork, the signifi cance of tourism development differed greatly between different actors. The next phase of the analysis was to organize the formed subcategories into an illustrative table and then divide the table according to different actors. This reorganization helped me to notice that it was more meaningful to divide the subcategories under the following main categories:

Description of the beginning of tourism development

Issues related to equal participation

-Importance of new skills, knowledge and confi dence about

-tourism

Feelings related to cultural presentation

Current challenges in the programme.

-The analytical process of categorization and sub-categorization of the corpus supported well the identifi cation of the most important issues and also, the analysis of the consistency and difference between the various opinions.

It is good to remember that the forms of interview analysis can differ as widely as there are different ways of reading a text and it has to be considered how deeply and critically the interviews can be analyzed (Kvale 1996, 13, 111). It can also be challenging to be able to separate affects that are attributable to tourism and those that are the outcomes of more general social change. The social and cultural characteristics of the host-community are continuously infl uenced by the political, economic, technological, social, cultural and natural aspects of their wider environment. This means that all the social problems that are coincident with the development of tourism may not have tourism as their principal cause. (Fagence 2003, 74–75; Rátz 2006.)

This study is written in English in order to serve better United Nations’

SGP in Nicaragua and also, to possibly reach other development organizations working with tourism development. The whole study will be sent directly to the communities participating in the study. However, this study should be

translated back to Spanish in order to serve better the people working with tourism development in San Ramón. That is why I am considering an option of later adding an annex about the recommendations for action, which will also be translated into Spanish. It would be ideal to be able to return to Nicaragua as soon as possible and hand the study of the communities in person. This would offer an excellent opportunity to continue the discussion about the possibilities and challenges of community-based tourism presented in this study. Even though this cannot be done immediately after fi nishing the study, a list of recommendations for action could hopefully benefi t the communities of San Ramón in some way directly.

I feel that the plan of sending this study to United Nations’ SGP and the communities of San Ramón has not had any restrictive infl uence on the content and no the reporting of the study. Throughout the analysis and reporting I have considered the confi dentiality and anonymity of my informants. This study acknowledges and follows the Guidelines on Research Ethics by Academy of Finland (2003) and the University of Lapland’s (2009) instructions for ethical research practices. The recorded interviews and the transcribed and clarifi ed data have been saved at Finnish Social Science Data Archive (FSD). I have seen the saving of this data as essential for ethical reasons and also, because the collected data could be used in the further studies⁵. The direct quotations of the interviews are coded and marked by referring fi rst to the number of the interview. After this it is indicated if the informant was female “F” or male “M”. The last part of the code presents if the informant had been participating in the tourism programme “Y” (Yes) or if the she or he had not been actively involved with tourism “N” (No).

As an example, a direct quotation from a young man working as a guide is coded 8MY.

I have added pictures and maps which serve the purpose of putting the study in context. These pictures have been taken by me and the people present in them have given their permission to use the pictures in this study.

5 (See www.fsd.uta.fi /english/index.html.)

5 CONTEXT OF TOURISM DEVELOPMENT