CONTACTOS URANO-SATURNO

I conducted individual interviews with PPs including members of various CBOs (such as VDCs, FFSs, women’s groups, village banks, rice banks, the agricultural cooperative and youth groups),non-project villagers, the most vulnerable households, village leaders, deputy village leaders and village secretaries. Individual interviews were conducted in order to gain their in-depth and diverse views. Those who participated in individual interviews were selected through quasi-theoretical sampling—for instance, not only villagers who were highly involved in LWD projects but also those who were less involved in order to increase theoretical density. Such quasi-theoretical sampling was partly informed by prior participant observation and FGs—for example, those who mentioned seemingly important and relevant ideas in meetings, training sessions and FGs in the light of the research question. I crafted open-ended questions as well as questions to gain details, which would be amenable to GT analysis11 (Kinoshita, 2003; Charmaz, 2006; Saiki-Craighill, 2006). Like the FGs, some of the intervieweesfound that some phrases and words (especially rights-related) used in questions were difficult to understand and thus I continuously modified those for improvement.

11

See Appendix 3 for the final and most common version of the individual interview schedule for project participants. Note that different versions were used for different interviews.

Following that, based on the FG and individual interviews, further

quasi-theoretical sampling was done to choose PPs who seemed to exhibit a deeper transformation of their perspectives on claiming their rights. I conducted further in-depth interviews with them to try to find out such processes. My idea for these in-depth interviews came from life story interviews that I had employed for Module Two mini-research. Life story interviews, by focusing on particular individuals in particular places, elicit meanings of the significant experiences in their lives (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000; Riessman, 2008). Merriam and Kim (2012) claim that narrative analysis, of which life story interviews are part, suits research on TL, as interviewees are enabled to share such significant (and hence probably transformative) personal experiences through story-telling. An interview schedule for each respondent was tailored based on their previous narrative of perspective transformation12. However, some of the interviewees had difficulties in articulating such processes, perhaps due to their lack of experience and ability to think that way.

In addition to PPs, this study also interviewed LWD’s six senior staff, including two Programme Managers who were in charge of LWD’s programmes at the research sites. I interviewed those senior staff in English, so the interviews would flow better, as they had a good command of English. I asked the Cambodian postgraduate students in my university to transcribe these interviews as they had a better understanding of English with a Cambodian accent. Finally, government representatives, including two commune chiefs from the research communes and two district chiefs from the research districts were interviewed.

The details of interview procedures are as follows. The duration of each interview was between thirty minutes to one and a half hours. I modified interview schedules as the study became progressively focused as well as in accordance with the roles and identities of the interviewees. The interviews were audio-recorded. However, I observed that some research participants became nervous when I started

audio-recording. In fact, some of the government representatives were hesitant about and declined the use of the audio-recorder and I therefore stopped audio-recording them.

Another problem was interview sites for respondents in the villages, which were normally the ground floor of their houses on stilts. In other words, interview sites were

open-air, where anyone could watch and listen. I recall a few incidents in which respondents started worrying that someone might have been overhearing their

interviews. I tried to choose places where there was less possibility of that, but given the open-air lifestyle of rural Cambodia there was not much I could do.

I also noticed the research assistant’s misinterpretation, which made me misunderstand respondents’ narratives and thus I asked them further inappropriate questions. I had asked him to take notes for accurate interpretation and afterwards considered that I should have reinforced that practice. On the other hand, he and I were aware that his note-taking had disrupted some interviewees’ speaking. Therefore, what I did afterwards was to have the transcribers even transcribe the research assistant’s verbal interpretation for me so that I was able to identify gaps between what research participants said and how the research assistant interpreted.

Although this research does not aim to achieve theoretical saturation in GT analysis in the conventional sense, as will be discussed later, it is still good to present here, for justifying this research’s sample numbers, that in general data equivalent to 20 to 60 individual interviews are required for theoretical saturation or the generation of a substantive theory (Butler-Kisber, 2010). As for this research, in addition to data from the around five week participant observation and nine FG interviews, I conducted 45 individual interviews13, which as a total are likely to be more than sufficient even for the standard theoretical saturation.

Table5: Individual Interviews

Project Participants 19

Project Participants (Life story interviews) 9

Non-project Villagers 3 Villager Leaders 4 Commune Chiefs 2 District Chiefs 2 LWD Senior Staff 6 Total 45 13

This figure excludes informal conversations and interviews as well as email interviews, for example, to inquire into some background information.

3.5 Analysis