Understandability and Transparency of the Financial Statements of ...

to understand the meaning behind an interviewee‟s words (Bedard & Gendron, 2004;
Taylor & Bogdan, 1998).
Several authors (Ghauri & Gronhaug, 2005; Hayes & Mattimoe, 2004) suggest that it is
useful to take notes to ensure any key points are highlighted, and to highlight aspects to
clarify with the interviewee. In this research, the interview guide (Appendix Three) was
used to „tick off‟ questions and add follow-up questions asked (Bedard & Gendron,
2004). Notes were also useful to check the extent to which the interviewee‟s response
made sense and to recollect their answers should the tape recorder fail. This fortunately
happened only once at the end of a very long interview.
After the interview Ghauri and Gronhaug (2005) consider it is also important to write
notes on whether you are able to get all the answers, how much time it took and your
opinion of the interviewee‟s responses, i.e. open or reserved. These details will also aid
the reviewer later when the transcript is read (Hayes & Mattimoe, 2004). To facilitate
this interviews were timed so that there was sufficient time to sit in the car after the
interview and write notes. Sometimes the researcher drove around the corner to write
the notes so as not to discomfort the interviewee.
As previously discussed many interviewees were reluctant to be in even a formal
interview which meant there are seventeen informal conversations and thirty-six follow-
up interviews. Interview notes were utilised afterwards to record conversations that took
place outside the formal interview situation (Patton, 2002). Taylor and Bogdan (1998)
considered this data is very important and should be analysed along with data collected
during the formal interview process.
Further complicating the note taking was that some interviewees‟ information „dried up‟
if I started taking brief notes as a memory prompt. This meant the period of time after
the informal conversation was essential to write notes and remember phrases before the
information was lost. Again, this sometimes meant driving around the corner, so that the
interviewee did not see the notes being written, while the information was still fresh in
the researcher‟s mind.
All notes made after and during the semi-structured interviews, informal conversation
interviews and follow-up interviews were included in the data analysis by typing up the
notes. Next, how the data from the interviews and documents was analysed is discussed.
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