Descripción de las notas de prensa escrita

In the beginning, I was really struggling with the qualitative nature of the study and the methodological design of it. The reason was maybe because I was so rooted in the quantitative style of research thus making it difficult for me to accept the qualitative style and change my theoretical perspectives as well as my attitude towards this new approach to doing research. To design a qualitative case study is very challenging since unlike other research methods, there is no possibility of a ‘recipe’ detailing a comprehensive ‘catalogue’ of research designs for case studies (Yin, 2009). Quantitative researchers usually want to relate their findings to generalisations, but I wanted to stick with the particular context of the research and say less by

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way of generalisation. Therefore, I observed qualitatively and recorded interviews as the best ways to conduct my study, as qualitative design generally is holistic and it looks at the larger picture (Janesick, 2000), whilst “case study focuses on holistic description and explanation”

(Merriam, 2009, p.43). Case study, with the Malaysian event industry as the case and the description of perceptions and/or reported experiences of Malaysian event practitioners as the data source (data-constructing process) became my preferred way/method to investigate the topic, focusing on their current existing practices on risk and safety as well as its surrounding issues. Due to the exploratory nature of this research inquiry, the choice (of qualitative case study) was even more appropriate, and confirmed that this approach has strengths in developing exploratory inquiry/study (Stake,1995; Merriam, 2009; Yin, 2009).

So now I recognise that this study is in fact a qualitative case study. This research project attempts to investigate the risks and safety issues within Malaysian event management industry as well as providing an insight into the important risk factors that are pertinent in managing and organising events from the perspectives of Malaysian event practitioners.

According to Stake (2000, p.435) “case study is not a methodological choice but a choice of what is to be studied”, and is not defined by methods of inquiry. Therefore, case study was chosen as the best approach to investigate this matter based also on Merriam (2009) who argues that determining to use case study largely depends upon what the researcher wants to know.

Although Yin (2009, p.37) basically maintains that case study can be exploratory, descriptive or explanatory, he justified the rationale for exploratory study, where “the existing knowledge base is poor, and the available literature does not provide any conceptual framework or hypothesis of note” (ibid, 2009, p.19). Thus, this research itself is justified as an exploratory study because there is certainly a lack of empirical research on the subject of event risk and safety at the time of writing. The reasons detailing the exploratory nature of this study are thus summarised below:

 There are no studies or research on event risk and safety within Malaysian event management context.

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 In-depth interviewing of participants in Malaysia is unusual in the research scenario, as most social researchers have been more inclined towards the quantitative or mixed-method approach.

 There are very scant empirical and/or qualitative studies on event management topics, all of them coming from outside Malaysia.

 There were reports on safety issues, incidents and accidents coming into existence in the Malaysian event management industry but no efforts had been made thus far to improve the situation (refer chapter one).

3.3.1 Methods

Merriam (2009, p.43) defined a qualitative case study as “an in-depth description and analysis of a bounded system,” in which she also argued that “it is the unit of analysis that determines whether a study is a case study” (ibid, 2009, p.42). Creswell meanwhile claims that case study research is a qualitative approach in which the investigator explores a bounded system (a case) through detailed, in-depth data collection through multiple methods. Thus, this research is bounded within a Malaysian context and focusing on Malaysian event/venue managers as its unit of analysis. The search for in-depth data was engaged through semi-structured face-to-face, one-to-one interviewing, a method that has been employed in this empirical research exploring the participants’ views and perceptions on risk and safety related issues among the Malaysian event management organisations. As such, my case study research aims to provide an initial understanding on the importance of risk and safety issues in this event management domain and also attempt to provide an insight on significant risk factors according to the perceptions of those event practitioners themselves, and incorporating my own reflections on the topic as according to Stake (2000, p.445), “the brain work ostensibly is observational, but, more basically, it is reflective.” Following his advice, perhaps the simplest rule for qualitative casework is to extensively focus on the thickness of data and what’s going on around it. Thus, this qualitative research attempts to be as close as possible to the data by giving particular attention to what has

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been said (and not been spoken) by the informants but at the same time being quite flexible in the interpretation and communication of the data itself (Geertz, 1973).

The pilot study had been designed for me to basically introduce myself to the qualitative approach of research as well as to sharpen my interviewing skills especially for my methodological choice of face-to-face, semi-structured interview. I had developed a research instrument or an interview schedule: an ‘interview guide’ consists of a list of questions and topics that the interviewer will be asking the respondents (Cohen & Crabtree, 2006). I had followed the guide but not in a rigid sequential way. On the methodological part, the piloting has provided me some sort of pre-testing of the interview schedule developed (Teijlingen &

Hundley, 2001). The study has been carried out in two phases:

Phase I : Identifying Key Themes

i. Preliminary Study (exploratory/pilot study) – semi-structured interview with six respondents.

Phase II: Exploring the Identified Themes

ii. Data collection for main study – semi-structured interview sessions with 33 face-to-face interviewees as a representative sample from the three categories of event organisations.