WITH DARK GLASSES

There is no doubt that phenomenography (which is not yet recognised as an English word by Microsoft words) is an off shoot of phenomenology, but though they share some features such as ‘human experience’ as their object of research (Barnard, McCosker and Gerber 1999), nevertheless they naturally differ from each other (Marton 1986). To better capture the differences between the two, it is necessary to understand them from their Greek origins. The two originated from Greek compound words which shares one root word –

‘phainomenon’ (phenomenon) meaning: appearance or experience. While the Greek suffix of one is graphein (graphy) meaning: description, the suffix of the other is logia (logy) meaning: study. So going by the above etymology, while phenomenology means ‘the study of appearance’ [or experience], phenomenog-raphy means ‘the description of appearance’ [or experience]. It is for this reason that phenomengraphy pays attention primarily to the description of experiences rather than the study of a phenomenon. So while phenomenography is an empir-ical science, phenomenology is an epistemologempir-ical project (Uljens 1992).

Again while interpretive phenomenology focuses on the essence of the phenom-enon, the focus of phenomenography is on the essence of the experiences and its variations within a group (Marton 1986, Hitchcock 2006). Furthermore, while phenomenology aims at capturing the richness of experience as it is described by an individual, phenomenography pays less attention to individual experience, but emphasis more on collective meanings (Barnard and Gerber 1999). So ra-ther than studying the phenomenon (HIV/AIDS) itself as phenomenologist do, the goal of this study is to describe the conceptions of HIV-positive students on the disease primarily based on their understandings and experiences with it.

The above facts made it clear that while phenomenology seems more philo-sophical, phenomenography is much more practical. So this study being an em-pirical science on the collective meanings students living with HIV give to the disease, much attention was not paid to exploring the disease itself from episte-mological stand points in search for the essence of the phenomenon or the rich-ness of an individual`s experience, but rather a collective description of HIV-positive university students` experiences in Finland and Nigeria was done. Per-haps I would have use phenomenology as my research tool if my goal was only to study a particular aspect of HIV/AIDS or to explore a given area of its expe-rience (e.g. the advantages of testing HIV-positive), but since my goal is to explore the entire picture of experiences with a disease I had only but limited knowledge of prior to starting this study with the aim of reaching particularly a group (students in limbo) who also probably have little knowledge about it, there was no better approach than phenomenography which enabled me to broadly explore and describe the whole picture on the experiences of HIV-positive university students.

42 Emmanuel Kalu

3.3

Useage of phenomenography in this study

In accordance with Marton (1986) and other phenomenographers as explained above, the qualitatively different ways the HIV-positive university students conceive the disease are mapped and described in ways that all the conceptual thought (understandings) and immediate experiences expressed by the students on their relationships with the disease are reflected, and the variation within the participants in range of meanings are arranged in a manner that others could recognise and evaluate (Uljens 1996). Since my aim is to explore the meanings two geographically separated groups who share the same fate give to their expe-riences with HIV/AIDS, it was necessary to broadly compare how their re-sponses relate and differ, so though phenomenography primarily guided this study, I simultaneously described and compared the results from the two groups (Finnish and Nigerian groups), in a unique approach I called ‘phenomengraph-ic-comparison’.

Subsequently, concept maps are used as in sense of Åhlberg (1993, 2004 and 2013) and Wheeldon & Åhlberg (2011) to create overviews of con-cepts/conceptions, their classification and their main relationships at the end of every category of description to separately show the Finnish and Nigerian par-ticipants` conceptions within each category. To further illustrate the outcomes, tables of comparison were use in the appendixes one to seven to compare Finn-ish and Nigerian participants` conceptions thematically in relation with facts from the literature. Then ‘propositions in text formats’ from the concept maps was also used in appendix 8 to present the concept maps on the participants`

conceptions through a different light.

3.4

Data collection and analysis

This section gives brief details on the participants, and what is ethically done to avoid the study from hurting them. Also in a step by step procedure, explanation is given on how the research data was collected and analysed with illustrations on the process followed in analysing the data.

3.4.1 Finding participants

Initially I planned to travel to many parts of Finland to interview the partici-pants of this study, but before long I realised that finding participartici-pants was going to be tougher than anticipated due to the sensitivity of the study. So after several attempts, I managed to find three participants, and unfortunately the three are from Uusimaa Region. I was lucky to be linked to the three through ‘Body Posi-tive’ (a Finnish HIV/AIDS organisation). Further efforts to find more Finnish participants were fruitless. The only person from another region who would have participated in the study unfortunately opted out as entitled to. Beside the limited number of PLWHA in Finland – 2600 (UNAIDS/WHO 2008), and the fact that the study participants are limited to HIV-positive university students, perhaps the difficulty in finding Finnish participants was also because the PLWHA in Finland often shy away from giving interview (Clarke 2004).

Methology 43

The Nigerian participants were also contacted through a HIV/AIDS organisa-tion (Hope Worldwide) in Lagos. The organisaorganisa-tion requested for a ‘letter of introduction and commendation’ from my supervisor, and after submitting it, her management helped in reaching out to the PLWH who fall within the crite-ria required for this study, and also provided a place where all but one were interviewed. But due to some challenges, I was only able to interview four par-ticipants before my stay in Nigeria was over.

3.4.2 The research subjects

A total of seven individuals participated in this study all of which are ladies;

three and four from Finland and Nigeria respectively. They tested positive to HIV through maternities, diagnostic laboratories, needle exchange centre, and sexual health clinic. While the Finnish participants are not public about their status, the Nigerians (except one) are public about theirs. All of them are on medications. Two of the Finns are still studying, while one has graduated, and two among the Nigerians had graduated (but one of the two re-enrolled for an-other course of study), while the an-other two are still studying. Among the Nigeri-an participNigeri-ants, one attends ‘Collage of Education’, (which is a tertiary institu-tion primarily dedicated to training Nigerian teachers). One in each country is in full time job. Two Finns and two Nigerians tested positive before gaining ad-mission into the university, while others tested positive while already in school;

even one of the Nigerian participant tested HIV-positive shortly before her graduation.

Furthermore, one of the Finns is in a relationship with a HIV-negative man, while the other two are still searching, and each of the two has a HIV-negative child. All their Nigerian counterparts are in relationship with HIV-negative men, three of them are married, and one is yet to, two of them also have two HIV-negative children, while a third has one. One of the Finnish participants is a committed Christian, while the other two are not too keen about religion. Then while three of the Nigerians are committed Christian, the fourth is a committed Muslim. As at the time the Finns were interviewed, the participants were about 26, 36, and 45 years of age, and had lived with the disease for about 7,12, and 20 years respectively. Their Nigerian counterparts were about 23, 28, 31, and 41 years of age, and had lived with the disease for about 9, 8, 8, and 12 years re-spectively. If I have had my way, I would have interviewed more students and limited the participants to only university students who are presently in school because the study is tagged ‘students’ and not ‘graduates’, but difficulties in finding participants made it ‘a mission impossible’.

3.4.3 Ethical issues in brief

Ethics is a broad field. As a concept guiding medical and social studies it has a long history which dates back to the ‘Declaration of Helsinki’ in 1964 (Snežana 2001). Particularly from social research ethics dimension; in as much as it is essential for a researcher to provide retrievable data, for ethical reasons it is also his/ her obligation to do his/ her research subjects no physical, emotional, or

44 Emmanuel Kalu

psychological harm²³. As such, protecting them should be his/ her priority up-held through not revealing confidential or identifiable information about them and also that of related third parties. So, researchers ought not to directly cite their study participants, but instead discuss the data gathered from them in con-fidentiality. Nevertheless, to uphold fidelity and scientific integrity, it is also important that while employing certain strategies to protect participants, facts are not twisted in ways that may lead readers to draw false conclusions. So, to arrive at the required ethical standards, some numbers of steps were followed while doing this study.

First, the interview of those who participated in this study was completely on voluntary basis, and to minimise their fears of being harmed, at the beginning each interview, the participants were assured that their identities will be kept secret, and the plans for achieving that was revealed to them. Although the study is a sensitivity one, ethical clearance was not obtained before its data col-lection commenced because the study needed only but a small number of partic-ipants, instead a ‘letter of introduction and commendation’ from my supervisor was used. So, from the beginning to the end of the study, measures were taken to ensure that the study will not hurt those who participated. Particularly in the presentation of the results, some facts were withheld in order to avoid giving rooms for the participants to be identified; for example, the cities and countries outside Finland where some Finnish participants had lived and where they test-ed HIV-positive were withheld. The name of their schools and their present residential cities were also withheld. Then as a study involving participants from two countries, their responses were judiciously compared.

Furthermore, to give readers good insight on who said what, and at the same time ensure that the participants` identities are well protected, instead of ‘pseu-donyms’ (fictitious names) I used numbers and figures to represent each of the participants in form of ‘reference codes’. The codes are made up of letters I agreed with some of the participants. The letters representing their sex and na-tionalities, and the figures were derived from the year each of them tested HIV-positive, and their presumed year of birth. Table 2 below contains a brief de-scription of how I arrived at the reference codes used for each participant.



23Most times ethical clearance is required before the commencement of field studies.

Methology 45

Table 2. Brief description of the reference codes used for each participant Num. Chosen

Letters

Figures from yr. of testing

positive

Figures from yr.

of birth

Sex:

Female

Nationality:

Finland/Nigeria

1 sh 04 85 f f

2 sn 99 75 f f

3 ms 93 67 f f

4 tp 03 89 f n

5 ht 04 84 f n

6 as 04 81 f n

7 aw 00 71 f n

So, the reference codes for the participants are: sh0485ff, sn9975ff, ms9367ff, tp0389fn, ht0484fn, as0481fn, and aw0071fn, and for accountability, each time a quote is used in the outcomes, the reader will find the code right at the end of the quotation in brackets to determine who said what. This also helps in judging if the distribution of quotes is balanced, but it is not designed to categorise or measure the experiences of each participant with the phenomenon because a given participant might have forgotten to give certain details, or preferred not to share given information with the researcher due to personal reasons, or perhaps did not reflection seriously on the phenomenon during the interview.

3.4.4 Data collection

Through a semi-structured interview questions, the data for this study was col-lected. I used four main questions and several sub-questions. Most of the ques-tions were not predefined in order to give rooms for unexpected answers (Ely et al. 1997), and some of the sub-questions were based on each participant`s earli-er response. Out of the three Finns that participated in this study, two wearli-ere in-terviewed face-to-face, while one who did not want me to see her face choose to write instead. Flick (2006) counsels that email interview can be used. Believing that if I send all the questions at the same time, they will be boring and discour-aging, and this participant may not respond to them duly, I sent the interview questions to her bit by bit until I gathered what I presumed to be enough re-sponse. But because she chooses to write, her answers were generally short. The other two, I separately engaged in in-depth interviews which lasted for about two hours because the interview continued until there were no more new ideas.

46 Emmanuel Kalu 

The four Nigerians that participated were also interviewed face-to-face. The interview of three of them lasted for almost 2 hour each, while the fourth lasted for little below one hour²⁴. The total interview time with the Finnish and Nigeri-an participNigeri-ant was almost 9 hours. The Finnish data was collected in 2011, while the Nigerian was collected in 2012. Although the participants are only seven in number, they served for this study because in phenomenographical investigations, data can be gathered from a small number of individuals, but in that case the outcomes will not be expected to be exhaustive (Marton and Booth 1997).

3.4.5 Processes of data analysis

In phenomenographic study, it is important that a researcher exclusively use his data because all the material therein forms a pool of meanings which the re-searcher needs, and it is his task to find them (Marton and Booth 1997). Using my chosen approach, the first step was to repeatedly listen to the recorded sponses of the two and four interviewed Finnish and Nigerians participants re-spectively. Subsequently, I transcribed them. The transcriptions were verbatim without skipping grammatical errors, stammering and repetitions made by the participants. In addition, the data collected via email was also arranged like the transcribed ones. Followed was my familiarisation with the data in search for relevant points from the participants` responses using my research questions as a guide. To explore all possible perspectives, I did multiple readings (Prosser 1994), which helped me to test the agreements between my research questions, interview questions and the participants` responses. Then I continued the pro-cess of familiarisation, but this time with my research questions in mind, and that also continued until meanings began to emerge, and I was able to select the most relevant quotations from the data which apply best to my research ques-tions.

Furthermore, I printed out the whole data, and starting with each of the Finn-ish participants I cut out selected relevant responses which in my opinion is in concord with my research questions, and based on the idea expressed I grouped them into themes. Again, based on their similarities and differences, the Finnish and Nigerian group themes were separately classed into categories and sub-categories, and ideas compared. The units of ideas formed afterward known as

‘categories of descriptions’ (Åkerlind 2005) emerged, and seven of them shaped the theories of this study. Ideally, the categories may be hierarchal, vertical or horizontal, but often the hierarchal categorisation is used in phenomenography to search for the hierarchy in the participants` responses from the most efficient to the least which is known as ‘outcome space’ (Marton and Booth 1997).

However, in this study, no outcome space was used because judgements were not made as to which opinions are better or efficient than others, but the re-sponses of all the participants were placed on equal importance.

24 The shorter interview here was because most of the participant`s responses are similar to those of the earlier three

 0HWKRGRORJ\ 47 

The formed categories were examined repeatedly, and the differences and simi-larities further identified, adjusted, and readjusted until the rates of changes minimised, core meanings stabilised, and a clear image of the phenomenon emerged (Marton 1986). Haven examined the entire text, and all relevant quotes contextually vetted (Marton and Booth 1997, Åkerlind 2005), the structural relationship between the categories were weighed (Åkerlind 2005). Throughout the analytic process I maintained open mind as counselled by Åkerlind (2005, 323) that, “Paramount is the importance of attempting, as far as possible, to maintain an open mind during the analysis, minimizing any predetermined views or too rapid foreclosure in views about the nature of the categories of description. The researcher needs to be willing to constantly adjust her/his thinking in the light of the reflection, discussion and new perspectives”.

In order to avoid disjoining of the participants` ideas and uphold their origi-nal thoughts, I kept my interview questions attached to the responses throughout the process because the nature of every participant`s ways of expressing herself is highly contextual. Then while writing out the results in chapter four, I quoted the participants verbatim (Marton and Booth 1997) because it is their` own words that attention should be drawn to and not that of the researcher. So, their grammatical errors, spelling errors, and so forth were not omitted, because phe-nomenographic studies attempt to describe the entire conceptions of partici-pants, and as such the researcher needs to be as neutral as possible throughout the analytic process. In the presentation of the outcomes in chapter four the quotations from the two groups in their themes were compared and re-examined. Figure five below shows the process followed the data analysis.

48 Emmanuel Kalu

Figure 5. Processes of data analysis

Repeatedlistening

torecorded

responses

Transcription

andreͲ arrengement

oftheeͲmail

data

Familiarisation

withthedatain

searchfor

relevantpoints

Multiplereadingstotest

theagreementsbetween

myresearchquestions,

interviewquestionsand

theparticipants`

responses

Continuationof

familiarisation

untilmeanings

begantoemerge

Selectingofthemost

relevantquotations

fromthedatawhich

applybesttomy

researchquestions Printingoutthe

wholedataand

cuttingout

selectedrelevant

responses Groupingofthe

ideasintothemes

andclassingthem

intosubͲcategories

andcategories

Differencesandsimilarities

furtheridentified,

adjusted,andreadjusted

untilrateofchanges

minimised,coremeanings

stabilised,andaclear

imageofthephenomenon

emerged

Towards bettering HIV/AIDS understanding 49

4 DESCRIPTIVE COMPARISON AND EXAM-INATION OF RESULTS

This chapter described, compared, and examined the results that emerged from the responses of the three Finnish and four Nigerian participants as explicit as possible using phenomenographic categorisation (categories, sub-categories, and themes). As explained earlier in chapter three, because the

This chapter described, compared, and examined the results that emerged from the responses of the three Finnish and four Nigerian participants as explicit as possible using phenomenographic categorisation (categories, sub-categories, and themes). As explained earlier in chapter three, because the