Successful data collection starts with identifying who the key stakeholders are in the organization. Typically they are people who have interest in and a strong impact on the organization´s future and growth possibilities. These are the people who have valuable insights into the selected topic (Cooperrider, Stavros & Whitney 2008, 206).
Individual and intrapersonal differences include demographic, physical and personality characteristics. Each individual´s unique combination of intrapersonal characters disposes the person to certain behavioral modes in group situations. This affects how the other group members react to the person (Kitzinger 1994; Steward & Shamdasani 2014, 18).
These individual characteristics should be taken into consideration when formulating the groups so that the participation could be maximized (Steward & Shamdasani 2014, 19).
I had two objectives when formulating the groups: I wanted to see if the opinions are different between people who have been actively volunteering for multiple years compared to those who have been volunteering in the organization for a shorter period of time. For this reason the groups were divided so that in group one I had people who had been actively volunteering for at least eight years and in group two were the members who had been active for less than three years. I also wanted my results to represent the whole club instead of just one team, and therefore I chose the group members so that they represented all the four different “teams” of the club (men´s, women´s, youth and Home Game Organizing Committee). I felt that this way my groups would be heterogeneous so that the members would raise different opinions, but at the same time the groups would be homogenous enough so that a synergy could be found (Gordon, 2008). The selected people were chosen in co-operation with the club president.
Before the actual group interviews I gathered all the group members into one Facebook-conversation (one for each group) and explained to them the purpose and target of my study as well as the research method. I had asked the club president to contact them and to ask if they would be willing to participate in the group discussions. All the people who we had originally thought for the conversation were willing to take part in the study. I chose to contact them via Facebook, since the club uses Facebook for their communication, so it was the easiest and most effective way to contact them all. I gave both groups the same set of questions so that they could prepare for the conversation beforehand. I wanted each group interview to last approximately two hours so I felt that six questions would be sufficient enough. I also wanted to leave room for the participants to ask questions and expand the topic, which is the basic idea behind focus group interviews (Eriksson & Kovalainen, 2016). The questions given before hand and used in both interviews were:
1) Introduce yourself (name and role in the Steelers organization). What would you consider is the best perk working as a volunteer for the Steelers?
2) What things do you consider to work well in the Steelers volunteer organization?
What are the occasions these things occur/appear in?
3) When have you personally felt like you have succeeded in volunteering?
4) In your opinion, what attributes increase the convenience of volunteer work?
5) Can you give an example of a situation in which you have felt appreciated for your work?
6) What would be the ideal situation in volunteerism in the next five years? How can you influence the situation?
The interview dates were decided together with both groups. Both groups consisted of 12 people since I anticipated that some people would have to be absent. I anticipated that I would have eight to ten interviewees per interview after the possible cancellations. In a working environment coming up with a common time that would fit all is much easier since it is part of their job to attend, whereas volunteers could be working or otherwise unable to attend. We set the dates for both interviews three weeks beforehand and I sent a reminder to all the interviewees five days in advance.
In the first focus group, with the volunteers with less than three years experience, only three people had said that they would not be able to attend. However during ten minutes before the scheduled interview, I received messages from people saying that they had forgotten or were otherwise unable to attend. I ended up having only two people present in the interview. With the second group, the volunteers with at least eight years of experience, I had four cancellations beforehand and two in the day of the interviews, so that the second group had six participants.
The downside of volunteering is that participation is always voluntary and if people are not committed enough they might not turn up at all (Gordon, 2008). In the Steelers organization this same kind of late dropping-out can be seen in the Game Day Organizing Committee, when people have said that they can attend, but in the game day morning
they announce that they are unable to come. The aim of my study is to find solutions on how to make volunteering more rewarding for everyone so that volunteering would be so much fun for everyone that this kind of dropping-out phenomenon could be avoided in the future.
I was previously acquainted with most of the interviewees so it was easy for me to form a relaxed environment with the interviewees. With the help of coffee, I let all the interviewees have an informal conversation before we started the actual interviews. At the beginning I wanted to take a bit more formal tone and I took time to explain what the aim of my study is and also opened up the concept of appreciative inquiry a bit more. I also explained that their answers and identities would be kept anonymous. At the end I reminded them that the conversation is meant to be relaxed. I encouraged them to reflect their answers and ask questions from each other if needed.
Both interviews went as I had planned them. The interviewees were active and my role was more to manage the time and make sure that the participants do not get stuck on one topic for too long. In some occasions the conversation drifted into negative things, but the participants were able to turn the negatives back into positives. In few occasions I had to direct the conversation into more positive things, usually by asking how they could change the situation in which case the participants started to think about possible solutions instead of the problems. I felt that all in all both conversations were really positive in their tone. There were no quiet moments, but everyone allowed each other to speak freely. People were genuinely interested in each other´s opinions and respected the answers. They supported each other´s views by nodding and always looked at the person who was currently speaking. You could tell that they were listening to each other since in most cases the next speaker started where the previous had left off. The participants were not disturbed by the recorder, as I had told them that it is only for my research purposes.
The first interview, with the more recent volunteers lasted 2 hours, 3 minutes and 56 seconds. The second interview with the people, who had been volunteering for over eight years, lasted 1 hour, 58 minutes and 32 seconds. Both interviews were held at the end of January 2018, in the following days. Since my aim was to get the whole club´s take on this matter, I felt like I did not get enough information on the topic with these focus
groups, since the participants were unable to attend. Therefore I decided to conduct individual interviews to some of the participants who were supposed to take part in the focus group interviews. I did seven individual interviews by phone, each lasting from 39 minutes, 37 seconds to 1 hour and 16 minutes and 11 seconds. I ended up having 8 interviews with people who has more than eight years of experience and 7 interviews with people who had less than three years of experience. There interviews were conducted during the first two weeks of February 2018. I used the same set of questions with the individual interviews as I did in the focus group interviews. In the individual interviews I had to ask more questions to define the answers, but the same set of questions gave a good structure to the conversations. The answers I got from the individual interviews were in line with the answers I got from the focus groups and therefore I chose to analyze them the same way.