ANÁLISIS DE LAS ENTREVISTAS

4.4.2.1 Interviews

Interviews are interactions between the participants and the researchers that produce data as words (Burns & Grove 2010:271). Kvale (1996) as cited in Packer (2010:47) states that interview is a conversation that has a structure and purpose. The aim of qualitative research is to capture the social world of the participants from a broad and holistic approach (King & Horrock 2010:6). ‘If you want to know how people understand their world and their life, why not talk to them?’ (Kvale 1996 as cited in King & Horrock 2010:7). Qualitative interviews provide the means to collect data that show how people live and exist in their world in order to understand a phenomenon of interest.

At the root of in-depth interview is an interest in understanding the lived experience of other people and the meaning they make of that experience. For this to happen researchers have to keep their egos at bay and put the interviewee at the centre

because their stories are important (Seidman 2012:29). Reflexivity helps the researcher to consciously consider their biases, values and experiences that may shape the researcher’s role in the interview process (Polit & Beck 2010:216).

The researcher’s aim was to create the conditions under which the participants felt able to talk freely about what was important to them. Planning the choice of interview location is very important: steps were taken to ensure that interview rooms are private, convenient, quiet, adequately lit and safe. Similarly, accessibility and confidentiality was considered (Martin & Gynnild 2011:88).

In this grounded theory study on experience and perceptions of school-based sexuality education, the researcher used semi structured interview guides to conduct interviews for data collection with individual participants (parents and teachers) and focus groups with the adolescents. An audio-recording was used after obtaining permission for its use to capture all information during interviews. The researcher made field notes during and after the interviews. Field notes help the researcher to record information, synthesize and interpret data (Polit & Beck 2010:354). In this study, field notes included key points to follow up and full description of nonverbal behaviour during the interaction essential for full and accurate interpretation of the data. A reflexive journal was kept to provide an account and record of own perspectives, thoughts, feelings and knowledge about the topic as the data emerge. Reflexive journal and field notes are records that enhanced credibility by creating an audit trail (Polit & Beck 2010:498).

4.4.2.2 Individual interviews

In-depth interviewing is a particular kind of conversation between a researcher and participant that requires active asking and listening. Data collection at an individual level is aimed at discovering main themes and range of variation in experiences, beliefs, norms and practices of individuals. Individual interviews provide greater depth from individual participants and yield large volume of data in form of transcripts (Hesse-Biber & Leavy 2010:94, 177).

In this study, an individual interview was conducted with teachers and parents. Purposeful sampling was used to recruit the participants who had the knowledge needed to contribute to the understanding of school-based sexuality education. A semi-

structured interview guide was used to guide the discussions. Semi structured interviews is an open ended interview which has a list of topics to cover, they are used to collect similar information (Polit & Beck 2010:568).

4.3.2.3 Focus groups interviews

A focus group interview (FGI) is an interview of a group of people gathered to discuss a focused issue of concern. The aim is to describe and understand the meanings and interpretations of a select group of people to gain understanding of a specific issue from the perspectives of the participants of the group (Liamputtong 2011:3, 31).

FGI methodology is based on the symbolic interactionism theory (Liamputtong 2011:16) with three premises; (a) individuals behave toward things based on meanings the things have for them, (b) the meaning of things is acquired through social interactions they have with others and (c) these meanings are managed and changed through an interpretive process that individuals employ in dealing with the things they experienced (Blumer 1969 as cited in Liamputtong 2011:16). Therefore, FGI provides an avenue for direct contact, interaction and inductive analysis and reconstruction of reality (Liamputtong 2011:17). This constructivist grounded theory study seeks to understand the interaction between participants during the sexuality education programme from their perspectives through the focus group discussions.

The basic tenets for FGI according to Merton, Fiske and Kendall (1990) in Martin and Gynnild (2011:119) are; homogenous groups to promote greater productivity, adopt a nondirective approach allowing participants to respond regarding what is significant to them, create an informal atmosphere much like a conversation, circular sitting arrangement to promote group interactions, give introductory remarks to acknowledge diversity of the participants with no correct or incorrect answers, prepare interview guide with general topics but not fixed questions to which one rigidly adheres and remain on a topic area until participants have exhausted all relevant responses.

FGI has several advantages that make it suitable as method to solicit participants’ views, experiences, opinions and meanings of an event.

• It offers the researcher a means to obtain understanding of a wide range of views that people have about a specific issues as well as how they interact and discuss the issue (Klenke 2008:132).

• For grounded theorist researchers, FGI provides the benefit of quick emergence of the core category (Martin & Gynnild 2011:129).

• It has the ability to cultivate people responses to the discussions as they evolve (Barbour 2007 in Liamputtong 2011:7).

• The group processes allow participants to explore their views, generate

questions and express freely their points of view than individual interviews. This encourages other members to speak up (Liamputtong 2011:21).

• FGI is suitable for discussions on sensitive topics like sexuality because the multiple lines of communication generate a ‘safe space’ for discussions for others who share lived experiences (Liamputtong 2011:21).

In this study, FGI was used to solicit views, thereby gaining understanding of experiences of school-based sexuality education from the perspective of the adolescents in primary schools.