Interviewing doctoral degree students

In the latter part of my research, I collected data by interviewing some of the international doctoral degree students of the UEF. Initially, I only intended to hold one interview session, and thus set out to find volunteers for a focus group discussion. I first sent out a general invitation to all foreign doctoral students at the Joensuu campus of the UEF (the invitation letter is found in Appendix 2). However, the invitation letter alone did not help me find as many

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volunteers as I would have hoped, which is why I needed to find another way of engaging with doctoral degree students, and was recommended to search for volunteers through the method of snowball sampling. According to Chromy (2008: 823), the snowball sampling technique is commenced by the researcher identifying one or more members of a small group. After this, these persons are asked to name other members of the same population, who are then contacted and asked to name additional people in the rare population and so forth (Chromy 2008: 823).

“The process continues until an adequate sample size has been obtained or until no new names are elicited from the process” (ibid.). Snowball sampling proved to be an efficient way to gather volunteers for an interview. For one thing, a simple email intended for a mass audience is very easily ignored, and secondly, it is harder for the potential interviewees to turn down an invitation that has been sent to them by someone they know. Since I have a fairly small sample of interviewees, I did not need to carry out several rounds of invitation during the process of snowball sampling. The participants of the focus group interview are presented in Section 3.2.2.

Since doctoral degree students are able to carry out their studies remotely, some of the volunteers for the interview could not attend the actual focus group discussion arranged at the Joensuu campus of the UEF. Therefore, I decided to have a discussion with three other volunteers separately. Thus, I had three one-on-one discussions via a video chat software Skype.

Although I tried to follow roughly the same lines of discussion we had had in our focus group discussion, I thought it was still important to let the interviewees speak their mind freely, in the order that seemed natural for a conversation. Our discussion can thus be categorized as a thematic interview.

In the end, I collected data by conducting two types of interviews: the focus group and thematic interview. Both types of interviews where important for my research since I was interested to hear about the genuine experiences that foreign doctoral degree students have had during their studies. The focus group method is explained more thoroughly in Section 3.1.2.1 and the thematic interview in Section 3.1.2.2.

34 3.1.2.1 Focus group interview

According to Wilkinson (2006: 50), “essentially the technique involves engaging a small number of people (usually 4–8) in an informal group discussion ‘focused’ around a particular topic or set of issues.” The researcher, who acts as a ‘moderator’ of the interview, leads the group discussion by asking questions, supporting the conversation and keeping everything on track. The discussion is usually recorded for later transcription and analysis. Tuominen (2012:

113) adds that the researcher may plan the questions and their estimated order beforehand, but it is the conversation and the group dynamics that lead the structure and content of the discussion. In other words, the purpose of the focus group is to generate informal and open discussion on the given topic, and not to rely on the previously planned questions. According to Morgan (1988: 9), focus groups can be used either as the main method of collecting data or as a supplement to other means of gathering data (quantitative or qualitative). As it happens, the focus group interview is a vital part of this particular thesis, but it is also not the only method of collecting data.

Wilkinson (2006: 51) presents different variations for the collection of the focus group data.

First, a focus group project can involve either one or more separate groups that can meet once or a number of times. Secondly, the participants may be unfamiliar to each other beforehand, or they may already know one another. Thirdly, the moderator may choose to be a part of the actual discussion or even be absent from the conversation. Finally, the data can be collected by audio- or video-recoding and with or without separate field-notes. With all the different ways of conducting a focus group interview, I considered the aims of my research carefully before the actual conversations. In the context of this thesis, it did not matter whether the participants knew each other in advance (due to the snowball sampling method, a few of them did), as long as they felt comfortable to take part in a discussion. I wanted to create a sense of an informal conversation where no ideas are unworthy to mention. Since I knew I would interview some of the students separately by Skype, I held only one focus group discussion with four participants.

Occasionally I would join in on the conversation, but acted as the moderator for the majority of time. Although I knew that bringing recording devices could potentially make the situation uncomfortable for the interviewees, it was vital for me to record the interview for later analysis.

Therefore, I recorded the focus group by audio (phone) and video (a video camera), and while

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this may have affected the conversation at first, the interviewees seemed to pay less and less attention to the recording devices as we proceeded with the discussions.

Wilkinson (2006: 52) separates focus groups from ordinary group interviews by pointing out that “the moderator does not ask questions of each participant in turn, but, rather, seeks to facilitate group discussion, actively encouraging group members to interact with each other.”

In Wilkinson’s (2006: 52) opinion, it is the nature of the back-and-forth-discussion that can be both a challenge for the moderator and/or the analyst, but also a strength of the method itself.

Morgan (1988: 15–16) also recognizes interaction as the main advantage of focus group, but notes that the moderator’s control over the assembly and running of the discussion sessions makes the situation an unnatural social setting. However, in a successful focus group discussion,

“the participants’ interaction among themselves replaces their interaction with the interviewer, leading to a greater emphasis on participants’ point of view” (Morgan 1988: 18). As for my research, I had prepared a set of topics I wanted to discuss – with a few questions that I was looking to be answered. However, I was not determined to follow the order that I had imagined for the discussion, but supported the conversation between the interviewees whenever it seemed they had more to say on given topics. In fact, discussion seemed to be generated quite easily, and in the end there were a few topics and questions that were left out of the interview.

Admittedly, it was more difficult for me to keep the conversation on track than to generate discussion.

Morgan (1988: 20) finds that focus groups tend to be easy to conduct and, in many circumstances, inexpensive and quick to arrange. Furthermore, it is thought that conducting this kind of the exploratory research requires less groundwork than regular interviews with ready-made questions (Morgan 1988: 18). In fact, it could be argued that the researcher does not have to prepare any questions beforehand, as long as the discussion topic generates a lot of conversation. On the other hand, this kind of approach might result in a very confused discussion and chaotic data collection, but the problem could be avoided by conducting focus groups with fewer participants (ibid.). Another notable advantage of the focus group is the aforementioned nature of interaction, which could generate productive dialogue on topics that even the researcher did not think to discuss. Yet, although interaction may provide abundant data, the researcher actually has seemingly less control over the type of generated data when compared to one-on-one interviews (Morgan 1988: 19). Based on my experience on the focus

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group discussion with international students, I found that the method is a productive way of gathering data, but it may not be as easy to conduct and quick to arrange as Morgan describes.

Perhaps the challenges regarding my research were based on my lack of experience with the method. Although arranging focus groups might require minimal groundwork, I would argue that preparing no questions before the interview places more emphasis on the personality of the researcher and his or her ability to create, maintain and control the conversation. All in all, carrying out focus group discussion was both interesting and difficult. At parts, it was a bit of a struggle to keep the conversation on track and to hold it within the agreed timeframe whilst covering all areas I had been willing to discuss. The influence of ELF (and ELFA) was present at each interview, which was sure to have an effect on the interviews during the actual conversations, and even more so during the transcription of the interviews.

Even though focus group is a method that relies heavily on the group dynamics and open discussion on given topics, it seems that the analysis part of a focus group is often presented as if the discussion would have been one-to-one interview instead of an interaction between people (Wilkinson 2006: 52). Apparently, it is very common to carry out content and/or thematic analysis on focus group data. Wilkinson argues that this often leads to researchers presenting quotes from individuals on specific topics, and not seizing the opportunity to analyse the interactional nature of the discussion (2006: 52–53). Wilkinson (2006: 53) notes that even if some focus group researchers actually quote parts of interaction, they may leave them unanalysed. Moreover, possible quotes on the interaction between the participants are often focused on whether they agree or disagree with each other. In the case of this thesis, I initially intended to analyse the focus group discussion as interaction between the participants.

However, since only a part of my data was collected through the method of a focus group and the rest of the interviews were held as one-on-one thematic interviews, this method of analysis proved to be impossible to execute. Yet, although there were four separate interviews, they still involve the same topics and overlap on many occasions, which is why I have merged all the discussions in my analysis. Naturally, at times, the discussions differed from one another, but I find that this had no effect on the result of my study. In the analysis part of this thesis, the focus groups are analysed together with the thematic interviews, which are explained in the following section.

37 3.1.2.2 Thematic interview

Since the two types of interview overlap to such a large extent in my study, in this section I provide only a brief description of the thematic interview. Thematic interview is a form of a semi-structured interview, which has features from both structured and unstructured interviews (Hirsjärvi and Hurme 2009: 47). To be concise, the thematic interview is a kind of discussion where the researcher tries to discover what sort of things are interesting for the interviewee (Eskola and Vastamäki 2007: 25). Although the researcher may define his or her discussion topics in advance, the questions are not fully formulated or organized (Eskola and Vastamäki 2007: 27). In practice, the researcher may carry a list of discussion topics, but not questions, and he or she controls and guides the discussion. Eskola and Suoranta (1998: 88) note that in Finnish studies, carrying out a thematic interview has been particularly popular probably because a thematic interview is quite an open form of interview research, and it allows the informant to speak quite unrestrictedly (Eskola and Suoranta 1998: 88).

When conducting a thematic interview, it is important to make the situation as natural as possible for the interviewees. According to Eskola and Vastamäki (2007: 31), this can be achieved for example by first discussing something other than what is actually in the scope of research. In order to create a comfortable atmosphere, the interviewer also has to consider the appropriate manner or speech (Eskola and Vastamäki 2007: 32). Considering my research, there are several components that might make the situation very challenging. Not only is the language of communication a second language to the researcher (as well as some interviewees), the topic involves a very academic context and the discussion is carried out via Skype connection, which diminishes the interviewees’ personal presence. Furthermore, the researcher records all interviews, and should definitely keep in mind that everything that the interviewees say have to be understandably pronounced for later transcription.