Data collection

The goal of the study was to examine the sensemaking process related to the com-mitment to change from the perspective of the employees in the middle of the change.

The data collection was done by utilizing interviews. Thus, the research was done by collecting primary data. The data collection was done in five face-to-face individual interviews. The data was collected during spring 2017. The time of the interviews is not specified to support the anonymity of the participants. The participants worked in

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the same municipality, which had changed the EPR system before conducting the in-terviews. Inside the municipality, the same patient recording systems are in use, and thus the interviewees have faced the same change. The fact, that the implementation had already taken place in the past, brought a retrospective perspective to the study.

The interviews were not conducted immediately after the introduction of the new EPR system to allow the participants to experience the change and implementation of the system. It has to be noted, that implementation is not a fast process. Thus, interviews immediately after introduction were not seen as purposeful. The interviewees were seen as representatives of their work community and professional group, and thus used as study objects in this change situation.

Interviews are seen as almost the only way to examine the meanings and interpreta-tions of people about different topics (Koskinen et al., 2005). According to Hirsjärvi and Hurme (2010), interviews are appropriate data collection methodology when the study topic causes a lot of variety in the responses, the answers require clarification and some deepening. Furthermore, interviews are used when participants are seen as subjects that are given the freedom to give information and elaboration about their experiences and ideas.

The interviews were conducted as semi-structured interviews. Semi-structured inter-views lie between survey interview and unstructured interview (Hirsjärvi and Hurme, 2010; Koskinen et al., 2005). Hirsjärvi and Hurme, 2010) explain that they focus on some predefined themes that guide the progress of the interviews. It is noted that the researcher defines the questions, but the interviewee may answer as they like, suggest new questions and depart from the question order. The interview questions were de-signed based on the literature review on commitment to change and factors that are seen to affect the commitment. Koskinen et al. (2005) note that theory driven qualita-tive studies are justified - especially when conducting semi-structured interviews – as semi-structured interviews require making theory explicit.

The same themes were followed with all of the participants. However, the order of the questions was not fixed, and the questions were modified and added according to the flow of the interview. Thus, the interview scheme acted as a map that guided the in-terview towards the themes that were chosen. This allowed the participants to explain

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and elaborate on their answers. The schemes for the interviews can be found in Ap-pendix 1 and ApAp-pendix 2 in both Finnish and English.

The participants were chosen based on the availability of the participants during the time of the interviews. This was because of the time restrictions and the working pace of the health care professionals in Finnish municipalities. The contact person in the health district asked the consents to participate from the interviewees, at which point they were introduced to the topic and context of the interviews. At the beginning of the interviews, the topic of the study was introduced for the participants again. The participants were also told about their anonymity and consents for recording the inter-views were confirmed. The anonymity of the participants was ensured to encourage free insights from the participants.

The interviews were conducted and recorded in Finnish, since all the participants were native Finnish speakers. This was done to avoid errors in the interpretation. For the same reason, the interview data was also transcribed and analyzed in Finnish. Only the sample quotations provided in section 4 were translated into English. There was total of 39 transcribed pages of interview data and the durations of the interviews ranged from 40 minutes to 1h 16minutes. Table below shows the details of the gath-ered data.

Table 1. Data collection

Interview Interview time Number of pages transcribed

Employee 1 (E1) 68 min 24 sec 9 pages

Employee 2 (E2) 39 min 58 sec 6 pages

Employee 3 (E3) 55 min 25 sec 6 pages

Employee 4 (E4) 43 min 55 sec 6 pages

Employee 5 (E5) 76 min 34 sec 12 pages

All of the interviewees in this study were women that worked in the health care pro-fession in a Finnish municipality. The participants included only women, as the sector of health care studied in this study is predominantly female. They all had worked

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eral years in this municipality and had experienced other EPR systems in their career as well. The participants were not all from the same profession and they used the new system to varying degrees. This is often the case in health care organizations and in different divisions of these organizations, since various professions work in delivering health care. However, all of the participants were familiar with the new EPR system and had participated in the change process.