Establishing Access To, Making Contact With, and Selecting Participants

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Establishing Access To, Making Contact With, and
Selecting Participants

• 9310010A Nina
• 9310016A Alexia
• 9310018A Carl
• 9310032A Peggy
• 9310050A Doris
• Instructor Mavis Shang
• Date Apr.9.2008

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The Perils Of Easy Access

• The easier the access, the more difficult the
  interview

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Interviewing People Whom You Supervise

• May not talk openly
• Interviewing Your Students
• Hardly be open to his or her teacher
• Interviewing Acquaintances
• May limit the potential of interview
• Interviewing Friends
• Assume you know your friend

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Taking Oneself Just Seriously Enough

• Not take themselves seriously as researchers
• An uncritical attitude
• Doing research is a work that elites do
• Research has long been seen as a male preserve.

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Access Through Formal Gatekeepers

• Range from legitimate (to be respected) or
  self-declared (to be avoided)
• E.g. parents, teachers, principals,
• superintendents ? legitimate
• Must gain access through the person who has
  responsibility for the operation

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• Research an experience that takes place in many
  sites
• ? Do not need to seek access through
• an authority
• E.g. High school teachers who teach in
• many schools ? go directly to them
• The more adult the potential participants, the
  more likely that access can be direct.

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Informal Gatekeepers

• Persons who are widely respected and do not have
  authorities but hold moral suasion
• ? not to use them formally for seeking access,
  but to gain their participation as a sign of
  respect
• ? help researchers gain access to others

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• Avoid Self-appointed gatekeepers
• Must be informed
• Try to control everything

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Access and Hierarchy

• Difference between research and policy studies
• ? The latter are often sponsored by an
• agency
• Affects the equity of the relationship between
  interviewer and participant
• Interviewer seems higher

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• Establish access to participants through peers
  rather than through people above or below them

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Making Contact

• Do it yourself.
• Third parties seldom do justice
• Have not internalized
• Do not have investment
• Seldom response to questions that arise naturally

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• A contact visit
• ? Select participants
• ? build a foundation for interview
• relationship

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• Make a contact visit in person
• Telephoning is often the first step to contact.
• The major purpose of the telephone contact
• To set up a time that the interviewer can meet
• participants in person to discuss the study.
• Time For arranging a separate
• Money contact visit
• Effort

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• 1. The most important purpose of contact
• visit is
• To have a basically mutual relationship
• with the participant.
• Group contact visit
• Advantage save time because the interviewer
• can explain it to many people
  at
• once.
• Disadvantage one participant may affect the
• attitude of the others
• participating

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• Characteristics that can enhance a contact
• visit
• Tone Seriousness but friendliness
• Approach Purposefulness but flexibility
• Presentation Openness but conciseness

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• 2. A second important purpose of the
• contact
• visit
• To decide whether the participants is
• interested.
• Participants should understand
• The nature of the study
• How he or she fits into it
• The purpose of the three interview sequence

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• Building The Participant Pool
• Another purpose of the contact visit
• The appropriateness of a participant
• The major standard for appropriates is
• whether the study is central to the
• participants experience.

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• Some Logistical Considerations
• Develop a data base of their participants
• A simple participant information form
• Facilitate communication
• Record basic data about
• Keep in touch with the participants
• Avoid disturbing the participants

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• The contact visits can also be used to
• determine
• The best times let participants choose the
• hour
• The best dates
• The best places - convenient, private,, etc.
• After the contact visit, interviewer should write
• follow-up letters to the participant.
• Disagree thank them for meeting
• Agree confirm the schedule of interviewing

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• Sometimes the no-show is
• Poor communication
• Lack of enthusiasm
• Before the interviewing begins,
• Pay attention to the details of access and
• contact.

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Selecting Participants

• In-depth interview
• Purpose to understand the participants
• experiences, not to predict or control that
• experience
• Researchers task
• ? to describe the experiences
• ? readers can connect to the experiences

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• Define the issue
• ? to see whether the participants
• experiences can be accepted to most
• people
• In-depth interviewers job
• ? to ask some deeper questions that
• make participants to say more about
• their experiences during the interview

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• Two possibilities for making connection
• (1) Find connections among the experiences
• from the participants
• (2) Open up for readers the possibility to
• connect their stories
• Purposeful sampling ?
• a non-random sampling technique based on
• member characteristics relevant to the
• research problem.

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• Maximum variation sampling
• ? select in order to get maximum
• differences of perceptions about the topic
• among rich information
• ? allow the widest possibility for readers to
• connect what they are reading

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• Another useful way
• ? select some participants who are
• outside that range
• ? for interviewers to check themselves in
• order to prevent drawing easy conclusions

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• Snares to Avoid in The Selection Process
• Participant is reluctance to get involved
• Strike a balance between easily accepting and
• ardently persuade
• Participants are too eager to be interviewed
• In-depth interviewing elicit person to be
• interesting no matter he is famous or not.

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• How Many Participants Are Enough?
• Snowball sampling ask participants to identify
  people or sites to study (e.g. Homeless people)
• Two criteria for enough
• Sufficiency gt cannot interview only
• person in any
  particular
• category
• Saturation information gt begins to hear
• 
  the same
• 
  information
• Enough gt not learning anything new