When research is conducted to investigate a research question, data is collected from the respondents of the enquiry in order to solve the problem concerned. The results obtained should therefore provide an insight of the nature of the problem and should further give an idea as to whether to reject or accept the conclusions (Welman et al. 2005; Kumar 2005). In any study, within the research design, there is need to specify the number of groups and participants to be used and whether these groups and individuals are to be drawn randomly from the population or not and what should be done with them (Welman et al. 2005; Kumar 2005). Therefore, there is need to define the terms “population” and “sample” before outlining the sampling procedure used in the study.
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According to Welman et al. (2005:52) population “is the study object and consists of individuals, groups, organizations, human products and events or the conditions to which they are exposed”. In this regard, a population becomes a critical aspect of any research study, that is, any research problem of a study will need to relate to a specific population and the population involves the total collection of all units of analysis from which the researcher draws specific conclusions (Welman et. al. 2005; Cresswell 1998). Thus a population is the full set of cases from which a sample is taken. When we deal with sampling, the term “population” takes a new meaning different from the traditional sense that refers to people only. A population in research need not necessarily be people (Welman et al. 2005). From this perspective, the population from which a sample was drawn was Lusaka urban communities as well as from non-human sources such as written/print, and audio-visual sources. This was necessary as the study considered the multilingual language practices of modern Lusaka urbanites.
5.2.1.2. Sampling procedure
The notion of sampling is usually associated with selecting the ‘right’ cases from a known ‘pool’ of cases and that this can be done at one time. However, in the research practice of qualitative research it is often an iterative process (Flick 2007). This means that sampling in qualitative research is a continuous and repetitive process.
In qualitative research, sampling can be distinguished from a more formalized sampling to a more purposive and flexible ways of doing it. Qualitative sampling is flexible and may be determined by what a researcher is looking for. It can use the formal sampling or the purposive sampling (Flick 2007).
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According to Flick (2007) the sampling process consists of several steps, for example, selection of site or type of site, situations relevant to issues being researched; selecting of concrete situations in which the issues being researched become more visible and finally identifying other types by which the issue being researched is influenced as well. He further argues that the selection of sites and situations is most relevant for ethnographic research and for studies of communication such as conversational analysis. In this vein, I found Flick’s idea of the sampling stages important for the study. Thus, this study followed Flick’s steps of sampling. In the first instance, I selected the site or situations which were relevant to the issues that were being researched. These sites or situations included public spaces such as markets, Men’s Barbershops and Ladies’ Hair Saloon and some workplaces where people were identified for the purposes of the study. These where sites that were relevant to the issues which the research was addressing. Secondly, I selected the concrete situations in which the issues that were being researched became visible. Finally, I identified other types of situations by which the issue is further influenced or concretized. In this case, music genre, advertisements and online data were identified.
Selection process of the sites and situations were largely informed by the research’s objectives which sought to analyse how language as a localized social practice permeated different hybrid discourse practices. In this regard, sampling of this research constituted selecting people and situations. The selection of a sample is an important stage of any research and so is the sampling technique(s). A sample is selected from a population within a research site or source of information. As pointed out above, a population in this sense has been used to refer to a group of potential participants to whom results of the study were generalized. In this vein, care was taken in the process of selecting the sample as the results of the study can only be meaningful if the sample is representative of the entire population from which participants were drawn. By representative it is implied that the sample should have the exact or nearly exact characteristics of the population from which it was taken otherwise the results of the study may only apply to the individuals that actually participated in the study (Welman et. al. 2005).
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In order to come up with a sample thought to be adequate for the research, different techniques of sampling are used. They range from formalized random sampling or non-formalized non- probability sampling. These techniques are largely determined by the type of research questions and data to be collected and generally the research approach taken. In this study, I used purposive sampling. This was necessitated by the types of data that the study sought. Purposive sampling was used to select participants from a human population as well as from a non-human source to select written documents for analysis. Purposive sampling falls under the broader category of non-probability sampling. Non-probability sampling is a form of sampling which does not specify the inclusion of any respondent. Thus in some cases certain members or objects may have no chance at all of being included in such a sample. However, the advantage of non- probability samples is that they are less complicated and more economical with respect to time and financial expenses (Welman et. al. 2005). In view of this, I found them to be useful for the study.
Purposive sampling is used to deliberately obtain study participants or objects in such a manner that the sample selected is considered to be representative. In this regard, the researcher sampled the population that constituted the respondents and the sources of written documents for the study using purposive sampling. This was necessary in order to have a sizeable and manageable number of respondents that were easy to access within the stipulated timeframe and the resources available. It was equally conducive for the selection of parts of written documents that were easily accessible and available. The technique was thought to provide the best information that would achieve the objectives of the study (cf. Oketch 2006).
One of the key aims of a purposive sample is to serve a specific need or purpose. In line with this, the study had specific groups of people and sites where to find them for the purposes of collecting data that would precisely and conveniently answer the objectives of the study. Thus the technique of purposive sampling was used as it was ideal to locate the right people and sites where data that was thought to be correct or adequate to answer the objectives could easily be found.
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According to Flick (2007) sampling in qualitative research can also take a third point of reference beyond people and situations. In focus groups, for example, it is often the group that is seen as a case and not individual participants. In line with this, finding the right cases implies having groups that include people with specific relation to what is studied and with the right mixture of people, opinions and attitudes. In the case of this study, focus groups were identified and treated as groups. This was necessary as it provided an environment in which people would freely discuss within a group set up. I ensured that the groups that were selected included the right mixture of people who could talk freely amongst themselves and with the researcher. The aim of FDGs was to collect conversations. Besides, FDGs as a method of data collection has been found to be one of the reliable purposive uses of interaction to generate data (Mc Lafferty 2004).
In order to ensure appropriate variety that call for groups that are different enough to cover a wide range of experiences with or toward what is being studied, I formed groups that constituted the same gender, that is, one group consisting of females only and the other males only (Flick 2007; Rapley 2007). The other groups consisted of both genders. This was done in order to make comparisons at the level of different groups, the contents discussed and how each group constructed the identity of the ‘other’ and of the ‘self’ and how the issue of membership affiliation could be realised. Constructing of groups can also lead to sampling and selecting for an interview study that addresses individuals as well and this was what was done (Flick 2007). From the groups that were constituted, I sampled one to two individuals for key informed interviews based on their ability to provide rich information in the group discussions.
Flick (2007) argues that if we go beyond asking or observing groups in qualitative research, the logic of sampling may change as well and this is what happened in the case of this study. He puts it this way:
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When we address documents as data in research-either texts…or images…we often set up a collection of such documents – an archive or a corpus of materials, in such a case we do not make a selection of persons or situations in order to produce data by applying methods to study them, but we take existing materials, which we select in order to analyse them (p.10-11).
This means that the sequence of the sampling process is turned around; in the first place, we have the material, the selection, then the use of methods in place of first the selection, then the methods, and then the materials and the methods again. This was exactly the procedure followed in this study to come up with a corpus of documents and videos for analysis.
Flick (2007) contends that sampling in this case is about discovering the best ‘exemplars’ of these documents for answering the research question. He continues that this corpus can be set up at the beginning of the analysis and be redesigned during the process of the analysis and according to the gaps in the material or analysis so far. In view of this, at the initial stages of the analysis, I choose text messages as sent in on live TV shows but the corpus could not give rich data suitable for answering the research questions, I then decided to redesign the corpus by doing away with them and replacing them with online-based discourses which were more enriching than the latter.
Therefore, sampling in qualitative research has a wide range of meanings: to select people, groups, sites and situations for collecting data or to build a corpus of data for analysis. In each of these instances, sampling cases or materials is just the first step (Flick 2007). The sampling process continues as one would sample statements from the host of answers or from a discussion which directly addresses the issue of the study (cf. Heigham & Croker 2009). In this regard, I borrowed Flick’s idea of sampling statements or passages from the documents that were found relevant to answering my research questions. In this vein, Flick (2007:11) argues: “…sampling in qualitative research does not only mean sampling cases and materials, but also sampling inside materials and cases”. It follows then that the study found it necessary to select only those cases
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or examples from the sample (the corpus) that were directly relevant to the research question and dealt with them in more detail.
Rubin and Rubin cited in Flick (2007) suggest that sampling in qualitative study should be iterative and flexible. This implies that a researcher should be ready to adapt to the conditions in the field and new insights resulting from data collection which may entail reshuffling the original sampling plan. This was exactly what happened in the case of this study. The researcher had to reshuffle the process of selecting data in order to get the data that would be appropriate to find answers to the objectives.
In order to get a wide and comprehensive perspective on language practices in urban Lusaka, the sample was taken from public spaces such as ents’ Barbershops, Ladies’ Hair Saloons, market places, Boutiques, music groups and formal spaces of selected work places. The motivation behind this was that such places would provide a more representative sample as they constituted people from different parts of Lusaka and besides, popular music samples also provided some form of representation of language practices. This was found to be one of the ways that ensured a closely representative sample of the urban settings of Lusaka population. Considering the number of groups that were targeted, the sample comprised 80 participants drawn from the different locations highlighted above which were thought to represent sections of Lusaka urban population.
The study also purposefully sampled written and printed documents from local internet blogs, billboards placed in public spaces, advertisements as well as audio-video ads. Considering that it is impossible to collect and analyse all written documents that fall in the public domains, purposive sampling was used to select only those documents, videos, ads and music that provided the data needed in the study for further analysis. In this respect, I collected 50 internet- based discourses (from news blogs), 50 billboard print ads, 50 popular music videos and lyrics from Zambia based on the Top Ten TV show which features music videos on a weekly basis as
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voted for by viewers. In addition, I recorded 8 conversations from focus groups, and also recorded 5 radio discourses, 5 formal meetings including a presidential briefing. Moreover, 8 KIIs from selected from the FDGs were conducted.