Sorority Rituals - Reflections On Rites of ... - Mari Ann Callais

descriptions of the study, were evaluated and approved by the National Panhellenic Conference
Research Committee. One of the limitations was that the interviews took place during the
summer months, which meant that fewer sorority women were available to be selected. I do not
believe that this affected the study greatly, I only wanted to include it for point of reference.
Interview Arrangement
The individual interview should "illustrate the value of detailed, descriptive data in
deepening our understanding of individual varieties" (Patton, 1990, p. 17). The individual
interview allowed me to gain perspective from various women as it relates to their personal
thoughts and experiences. Focus group interviews allowed me to get perspectives from groups of
sorority women who were and were not from the same chapter or affiliation. "Groups are not just
a convenient way to accumulate the individualized knowledge of their members, they give rise
synergistically to insights and solutions that would not come about without them" (Brown et al.,
1989, p. 40). I chose focus group interviews because they have several advantages. Patton (1990),
states:
It is a highly efficient qualitative data collection technique. In one hour, the evaluation
can gather information from eight people instead of only one person. Thus the sample
size can be increased significantly in an evaluation using qualitative methods through
focus group interviewing. Focus group interviews also provide some quality controls on
data collection in that participants tend to provide checks and balances on each other that
weed out false or extreme views (pp. 335-336).
Individual and group interviews were arranged with the assistance of the Greek advisor or
university authority on each of the campuses selected for the study. These campuses were
selected based upon various criteria such as size of chapters, private colleges and universities
verses public universities and the location of these campuses. I chose institutions that have
different types of sorority cultures and structures and arranged the interviews at various campuses
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