essential-guide-to-qualitative-in-organizational-research

16 –––––––––– QUALITATIVE METHODS IN ORGANIZATION STUDIES ––––––––––––––––––A few points are worth noting in relation to the extract. Coming from a realist approach,the guide includes more information-seeking questions than it would if used in othertraditions (for example, question 6), but these are followed up with probes to explore theinterviewees’ views and experiences in more depth. Questions 13 and 14 are designed to helpparticipants focus on concrete examples, rather than abstracted generalities – an importantprinciple in most qualitative interviewing approaches. Finally, it can be seen that itincorporates fully formed questions. Some guides just use topic headings, to encourage theinterviewer to be responsive to the interviewee and avoid presuppositions. The danger of thisformat, especially for inexperienced interviewers, is that the inteviewer becomes tooimmersed in the interaction with the interviewee, and slips into a questioning style close tothat of ordinary conversation, which may be too directive and closed (Willig, 2001).RECRUITING PARTICIPANTS FOR THE STUDYThe recruitment of participants to a qualitative interview study will of course depend on thestudy’s aims, and on its theoretical, epistemological and methodological position. Thus aresearcher using a discourse analytic approach would probably use far fewer interviews thanone taking a realist case study approach. This is in part a pragmatic matter; discourse analyticstudies involve the analysis of text at a very fine level of detail, and therefore analysis takesmuch longer than it would if a similar volume of material was tackled using methods foundedon realist assumptions. However, it is not solely a matter of research logistics. As noted in mysummary of types of qualitative interview, the social constructionist position of discourseanalysis views interview data as texts within which particular discursive practices and resourcescan be highlighted. This task does not require a large number of texts to ensurerepresentativeness, as it is assumed that these practices and resources are shared within a socialcontext (see Dick, Chapter 17, this volume, for further discussion). The relativist epistemologyalso means that gathering a large volume of cases cannot guarantee the credibility of a study,since we can never define all possible readings of a text, and no one reading should be‘privileged’ over another. In contrast, a case study which is making realist assumptions aboutthe interview data would want to be sure to include a sample representing importantdistinctions within the organizational population in relation to the change under investigation,and would assert that the analysis gains in validity by increasing the number of differentviewpoints collected via interviews.Notwithstanding the specific requirements of different methodological positions, thereare some issues relating to sample definition and recruitment which are widely relevant. Assuggested above, in deciding how many participants to recruit, the amount of time andresource available is a critical factor. It is very easy for an inexperienced qualitative researcherto seriously underestimate the time needed to undertake a study based on qualitativeresearch interviews. It is worth noting that even an experienced transcriber is unlikely tobe able to transcribe more than two one-hour interviews in a working day. Analysing sucha transcript in any depth is likely to require at least the equivalent to two or three full days’work – often much longer. To these figures must be added the time taken to develop theinterview guide and recruit participants, to carry out the interviews, and to travel to andfrom them, and to feedback findings (in verbal or written form) to participants and fundingbodies.In terms of criteria for recruitment, most qualitative studies set a premium on diversity,because (in varying manners and for differing purposes) they seek to show the range of ways