Field work was conducted in Cambodia over a three month period starting from the beginning of October 2014 to the end of December 2014, mainly in the capital city of Phnom Penh. The interview process was comprised of two steps: (1) preparation and (2) interview.
3.6.1. Preparation
All participants except the university students were contacted in advance by telephone to ask for an interview date, time and venue. On the phone, they were informed about the project and asked if they wanted a research information sheet [Appendix 2] before the interview, but all of them preferred to have the sheet at the actual the interview. A voice recorder, an information sheet to be given to participants and a consent form for the participants to sign on [Appendix 3], and a gift to give to participants after the interview were prepared one day before the interview date. A review of interview questions was also conducted to ensure the smooth flow of the interview.
3.6.2. Interview
Most interviews with key informants and university graduates took between 60 to 120 minutes while all interviews with university students took between 30 to 90 minutes. The face-to-face dialogue started with an explanation of the goals and objectives of the research, how the information was to be used and the ethical responsibilities of the researcher, asking for permission to record the conversation, and signing of the consent form.
During the interview, the voice recorder was on and the themes stated in the semi- structured interview schedule were discussed one by one. The order in which the questions were presented varied between interviews [Appendix 5, 6 and 7]. Subsequent questions based on participants’ responses were asked in the interview and some participants also shared additional information which was not covered by the planned themes. The conversations were conducted in the Khmer language [the language of Cambodia]. At the end of the interview, a small gift was given to each participant.
3.7. Data Analysis
Data analysis took place concurrently with data collection. The first step of the analysis involved the transcription of the interviews. All interviews were conducted in Khmer and the records were transcribed by the researcher in this original language.
The second step is coding. A thematic analysis was used to identify emergent themes in the data. This involved manual coding techniques, particularly focused coding and filing, which were employed to identify the themes. The interview schedule informed the coding process. According to Lofland, Snow, Anderson, and Lofland (2006) ‘focused coding’ is a technique in which themes are more selective while ‘filing’ is a technique in which similar data are grouped in the same place. Focused coding technique was applied when the interview schedule was employed to identify three main themes: outcomes for individuals, outcomes for society, and gaps between education policies and practices. Under these three selective themes, filing coding techniques are applied in order to help other sub themes to emerge.
The last step was to structure and present the results. In presenting qualitative data, direct quotations from participants were included and code names were assigned to each participant in order to ensure confidentiality of their information. KI is the code used to identify key information, UG is the code used to identify university graduates, and US is the code used to identify university students. The number is assigned in order to distinguish between members of each group. For example, KI1 refers to Key Informant 1; UG2 to University Graduate 2; and US3 to University Student 3 when direct quotations are made.
I decided to develop a case study which was based on real life of a university graduate and I presented it in section 6.2 [page 60-62]. The exposition of the case study made it easier for the presentation of the results in Chapter 6 because that case study provided a better understanding of the context of Cambodian education.
3.8. Ethical Responsibility
The project was conducted in compliance with the requirements of the Human Ethics Committee of Lincoln University [Appendix 1]. All materials used for fieldwork, the way of collecting data, the way of storing the interview record and script, and the process of using and presenting the information are all carefully, and professionally, reviewed and approved by the Human Ethics Committee of Lincoln University.
3.9. Summary
This research used qualitative methods to explore the role of education in development in Cambodia. The techniques employed to collect information were semi-structured in- depth interviews with three groups of participants: (1) key informants; (2) university graduates who were appointed as leaders of NGOs/private companies; and (3) university students who were currently doing their undergraduate programme at different universities. Some participants were identified and selected based on a purposive basis with a snowball sampling technique being used for the rest of the sample. The face-to- face dialogue was conducted with eighteen participants in total over the full fourth quarter of 2014. Data analysis, particularly coding and theming the data, was done manually and took place concurrently with data collection. In presenting qualitative data, direct quotations from participants are included with code names assigned for each participant in order to ensure confidentiality of their information.