Local NGOs in national development: The case of East Timor

1.3 Conducting the case studies
The approach to the study of the six selected NGOs was to write case studies of their
changing roles and relationships, and their strategies over the five year period of the
study, through interviews with current and former staff members and volunteers. A
decision about who would be important to interview in each case was made in
consultation with the NGO, to ensure that key personnel responsible for different
aspects of its work over the five years were interviewed. 10 Often interviewees would
indicate that another person would be able to give me more detail about a certain
period or aspect of the NGO’s work and such ‘snowballing’ would lead to further
interviews. The number of people interviewed varied significantly among the NGOs,
according to their size and complexity, the staff and volunteer turnover they had
experienced, and the extent to which the individuals available had a broad overview or
only a limited picture of the NGO’s work.
A schedule of key questions was prepared to guide my interviews (see Appendix C),
but in practice respondents talked freely, often providing me with a richness of data
and stories about their experiences which rigid adherence to a list of questions would
not have encouraged. A number of my respondents already knew me quite well, and
knew that I had a level of knowledge of some of the events and experiences they talked
about. My questions simply helped me to check as the interview progressed whether all
the key issues I needed to know about had been covered. They were rarely used in a
formulaic way.
In addition to the interviews with the case study NGOs I also interviewed people from
key institutions with which they interacted, among them personnel from international
NGOs, official donor agencies (bilateral and multilateral), local NGO networks, some
government officials, including the Ministry of Planning and External Affairs and its
NGO Unit, a member of Parliament, and people from the Truth, Reception and
Reconciliation Commission. These interviews were intended to obtain stakeholders’
10 A small number of people it would have been desirable to interview were not available in East Timor
or Australia; they were studying overseas and could not be contacted.
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