Estadística descriptiva

As discussed in the literature review section, existing studies on the experiences of international visiting scholars have mostly explored their cultural and language adjustment issues during their visits. An extensive study on the process of transition, including how scholars have located the opportunities to visit an institution in the United States while taking temporary leave from their home institution, has been missing from the literature. A few existing studies on the experiences of international visiting scholar were on visiting scholars from China. Since the differences in the societal, political, and economic context in their home countries could affect the experiences as international visiting scholars while they are in the United States differently, a further study is necessary to examine the experiences of visiting scholars from a different country.

The current study focuses on understanding Japanese visiting scholars’

experiences of transition in the United States. As discussed in Chapter One, the research questions to answer from this study are the following:

1. Why do Japanese visiting scholars visit universities in the United States? 2. What are their academic, social, and personal experiences during their visiting

periods?

3. What are the sources of challenges and support for Japanese visiting scholars? 4. How do Japanese visiting scholars perceive that personal and contextual factors

affect their transition in different periods of their transition?

This chapter discusses the methods of the current study. First, the selection of qualitative approach and the research design is explained. Then, population and sampling, the data

collection strategy, the coding process, the analysis procedure, the issues of trustworthiness, and the positionality of the researcher are outlined.

Research Design

The current study employed a qualitative research method with the use of

interviews as the primary data collection strategy. A qualitative approach is appropriate when researchers are interested in understanding the process of a phenomenon, especially from participants’ perspectives on the ways they make sense of their situation (Creswell, 2007; Merriam, 1998, 2002).

Among various types of qualitative research design, the current study used basic interpretive qualitative research. The characteristics of basic interpretive qualitative research include: researchers play a role as an interpreter of the meaning of the data, the data analysis is conducted inductively, and the findings are stated as descriptive text, rather than statistics or numbers (Merriam, 2002). In the current study, the interpretive qualitative design allowed Japanese visiting scholars to describe how they experienced the process of transition through their rich descriptions. In addition, the selection of qualitative approach is also reasonable for uncovering phenomena that have not been studied much (Marshall & Rossman, 2011). This also fits the nature of the current study, considering that there was no extensive descriptive qualitative study on Japanese visiting scholars.

Although qualitative analysis is usually an inductive process (Merriam, 2002), it also often utilizes a theoretical framework to guide the process; the framework also influences the research design (Creswell, 2007). This study drew upon Schlossberg’s transition model as a theoretical framework to guide the inquiry. Since Schlossberg’s

transition framework stresses the importance of individuals’ perceptions regarding their transition, the use of qualitative study and the direct engagement with the participants’ views through interviews are essential to utilize the theory to answer research questions. In addition, qualitative studies allow exploration of the complexity of multifaceted elements that affect participants and their situations holistically; this can lead to a deeper understanding of the phenomenon (Creswell, 2007). This characteristic of qualitative studies enabled the examination of numerous factors together that affect international visiting scholars’ transition to American universities, including Schlossberg’s four S’s.

Sample

The population of this study was scholars from Japanese universities who have spent at least one semester (12 to 15 weeks) at universities in an area in the east coast of the United States as visiting scholars during the period of 2011 to 2013. The definition of international visiting scholars was presented in the introduction section. These inclusion criteria were designed to answer the research questions effectively. First, participants needed to have spent a reasonable amount of time in the new environment in order to explore their experiences in the United States and the factors that affect their transition. For this study, the length of their visits was specified as at least a semester because academic institutions often use a semester as a typical segment of time. Semesters are commonly three- to four- months long. Second, in order to gather data from Japanese scholars who visited the United States relatively recently, participants were required to have visited the United States in the past two years.

This study used purposeful sampling to recruit information-rich participants (Merriam, 1998; Patton, 2002). The recruitment was done in several ways. I sent

recruitment e-mails to some relevant list-serves of Japanese people in an area in the east coast. I sent recruitment e-mails to some visiting scholars whose information was available on the websites of the host institutions in the United States. From the

information that was obtained online, recruitment emails were sent to the scholars who were the recipients of Fulbright scholarships during the period. I also recruited

participants at social gatherings of Japanese researchers in the area, and through my personal networks. Then, using a snowball sampling method, participants were asked to nominate other potential interviewees for the study (Merriam, 1998) in order to recruit other visiting scholars.

In total, twenty-six visiting scholars from Japanese universities participated in the study. I intended to approach 20 participants for this study. As a guideline of the sample size, Guest, Bunce, and Johnson (2006) states that twelve interviews can reach data saturation for a homogenous sample, while Kuzel (1999) suggests 12 to 20 participants for a more diverse sample. Since the participants included scholars from a various academic disciplines, ages, genders, marital statuses, and home and host institutions, the lager sample seemed to be appropriate. By the final interviews, I came across repeated themes and responses, and I concluded that the data had reached saturation (Glaser & Strauss, 1967; Lincoln & Guba, 1985).

I recruited participants at an area in the east coast of the United States. Since the location of universities and the academic atmosphere of the area can be a factor that affects the experiences of international visiting scholars, this study only conducted sampling from this area. However, in order to recruit as many as participants for this study, I did not limit recruitment of participants to one institution in this location, but

from eight institutions. This area has multiple universities including an Ivy League institution. In this area, several institutions are leaders in hosting international scholars (IIE, 2013a). Due to the concentration of visiting scholars to those research institutions, one institution in the area dominated the number of participants with 15 out of 26. This is explained later in the limitation.

Other than the participants, there were two visiting scholars who stopped

exchange of emails before setting up the schedule for interview. In addition, there were two visiting scholars who did not have time to take the interview, though one of them filled out the pre-interview questionnaire and sent it through email to me. There were two postdoc researchers who participated in the interview, but that they did not have an affiliation with the host university in Japan, which was found out at the interview site. These people and the pre-interview questionnaire were not included in the participants of the current study.

Although I outlined participant requirements in my recruitment email, there were some participants that did not meet the original participant requirements. For example, two participants had spent less than one semester in the U.S. However, I included their responses since their interviews responses gave similar accounts as other participants who spent more than three months. In addition, two participants did not have Japanese nationality, but worked for a Japanese university as faculty members. Furthermore, one participant did not hold a J-1 visa, which is the type of visa visiting scholars typically hold. I included their responses in the analysis because their responses shared similarity with other participants.

Among the 26 participants, fifteen of them were hosted at an Ivy-league research institution, four were at another private research institution, two were at another private research institution, and one participant each from two different private research

universities, one public university, and two different private research centers. Their home institutions were 17 private universities and nine public universities in Japan. The participants included 15 associate professors, eight professors, one assistant professor, one physician, and one instructor. All but the instructor were tenured faculty members at the home university. Among them, 19 of them received doctoral degree and four of them received a master’s degree from a Japanese university as their highest academic degree. There were two participants received doctoral degree from institution in the United States and another scholar received from institution in the United Kingdom. As their funding sources, all of them received some financial support from their home institutions in Japan. As additional funding sources, five scholars used their supplementary self-funded, four Fulbright scholars, three private fellowships, two host university, one research fund. The list of participants and their characteristics are attached in the appendix, and personal characteristics of the participants are provided in the following.

Table 2

Personal Characteristics

Gender Marital Status

• Male 19 • Married 16

• Female 7 • Single 10

Age Range Academic Fields

• 30-34 2 • History 4 • 35-39 7 • Medical 4 • 40-44 12 • Business 3 • 45-49 2 • Engineering 3 • 50-54 1 • Law 3 • 60-64 1 • Economics 2 • Unknown 1 • Sociology 2 _{• Chemistry} 1 • Geography 1 _{• Linguistics} 1 • Political Science 1 _{• Religious Studies} 1

Periods of Visits Time in the U.S. prior to the interview

• 6 months 1 • 1 month 1

• 10 months 2 • 2 months 1

• 11 months 2 • 3 months 2

• 12 months 11 • 4 months 2

• 13 months 1 • 6 months 1

• 14 months 1 • 6 months (1 month after returning) 1

• 16 months 1 • 7 months 3

• 18 months 1 • 8 months 7

• 24 months 6 • 9 months 2

• 10 months 1

• 11 months 3

• 11 months (1 month after returning) 1 • 24 months (2 months after returning) 1 Note. Two participants were employed by Japanese universities, but they were not Japanese nationals. All but one participant were on the J-1 visa.

Data Collection

As a main data source of this study, semi-structured individual interviews were conducted with multiple Japanese visiting scholars. Interviews are an effective approach to access the inner thoughts and perceptions of the participants (Rubin & Rubin, 1995). Since the nature of the research questions of this study is to understand visiting scholars’ perceptions about their transition experiences and uncover the factors that affect their transition, the use of interviews as a data collection strategy is reasonable.

A pre-interview questionnaire (Appendix A) and interview questions (Appendix B) were developed based on the research questions of this study. The concepts from Schlossberg’s transition model, such as situation, self, support, and strategy, also guided the development of the questionnaire and the interview questions. The pre-interview questionnaire mainly inquired about demographic information, the length and the timing of the transition, and previous similar experiences. Interview questions, which explored the participants’ transition, were organized chronologically. Questions related to

experiences prior to the visits were asked at the beginning of the interview. Then, experiences during the United States were explored. Finally, questions related to the processes and prospects after they returned to their home institutions were asked at the end of the interviews.

The interviews were conducted from April to November 2013. I sent an email describing the requirements to become a participant to potential participants who showed an interest in taking the interview, to ensure they met the criteria. Additionally, the consent form that described the purpose, the procedures, and the issues regarding confidentiality was sent electronically so that potential participants could review these

prior to the interview and confirmation their consent to participate. At the time of interviews, the contents of the consent form were explained and discussed with

participants before starting the interviews and any additional questions were answered. With the participants, a pre-interview questionnaire was administered and a semi- structured individual interview was conducted for 60 to 90 minutes to explore the

participants’ experiences as visiting scholars. The interviews were conducted in the Japanese language. For most of the participants, I set up a face-to-face meeting; however, some interviews were conducted online for participants who had already returned to Japan at the time of the interview.

Coding and Analysis Process

All interviews were conducted in Japanese, and then transcribed by the researcher. As suggested by Merriam (2002), the data analysis was started once I collected the first interview data, and while I was still recruiting new participants. The advantage of this strategy is to allow researchers to make modifications to ensure that the data collected address the research questions appropriately (Merriam, 2002). In addition, I recorded analytical memos to serve as a part of the analysis throughout the process of the data collection, transcription, and coding. Patton (2002) describes data collection and analysis as a dynamic process, where important insights for the analysis can emerge during the data collection. The analytical memos completed throughout the research process included potential patterns of codes, groups, categories, and themes.

In the initial phase of data analysis, data were coded or broken down to

meaningful segments and categorized by some patterns into groups (Miles & Huberman, 1984). Coding is helpful to simplify the long interview data into a manageable piece of

meaningful components (Coffey & Atkinson, 1996). As an analytical process, the constant comparative method was used (Glaser & Strauss, 1967). Although the constant comparative method was originally developed as a part of grounded theory, this method has been used for basic qualitative studies that were not necessarily aiming for building a theory from the data (Merriam, 2002). Through the constant comparative method, categories, groups, and codes were compared with each other, in order to consider a better way to connect categories, groups, and codes with each other to find patterns in the categories to draw themes (Glaser & Strauss, 1967). In the analysis and coding,

qualitative analysis software called HyperRESEARCH was used to assist in the process. The data were inductively analyzed in the first cycle of coding by using the open coding approach (Strauss & Corbin, 1998). I searched for and coded comments in the interviews that were relevant to answering the research questions. For example, in relation to the research question one, interview data that described motivation and reasons for visiting were coded; activities and experiences during their visits were coded for answering the second research question; support and challenges through their

transitional process as a visiting scholars were coded for the question number three; and other potential contextual and personal factors that affected their experiences of transition were coded for the final research question. During this process, I started to categorize the similar codes together across different interviews. If I came across better codes or

categories when I proceeded the coding of new interview transcripts, I went back to the coded interview to examine the better way to code and categorize.

From the second cycle of coding, I repeatedly went back to the codes with the continuous use of the constant comparative method as an analysis strategy (Glaser &

Strauss, 1967). While the data were mainly analyzed inductively, Schlossberg’s concept of the three stages within the transition (moving-in, moving-through, and moving-out) and the Four S’s was referred as a framework to categorize codes, especially for the research questions three (support) and four (situation, self, and strategy).

After repeating the process of reexamination of the potential codes, groups, and categories, an initial codebook was developed to respond to the research questions. In the development of the initial codebook, I solicited comments from a Japanese colleague as a peer reviewer, and received feedback from the members of dissertation committee to refine the codes. A doctoral student coded a few interview scripts that were translated in English by using my initial codebook. In addition, a Japanese researcher of higher education reviewed a coded interview in Japanese and gave feedback and comments regarding my codes and interpretation. Inter-rater comparisons appear below.

Validity

In order to enhance the validity of the findings of this study, several procedures were taken. First of all, I conducted pilot interviews prior to the current study to refine the research design and to examine the phrasing of my interview questions. During the pilot interviews, I conducted interviews with visiting scholars not only from universities and research centers, but also from companies and government offices, in addition to visiting students who were doctoral students at their home institution. Since differences in responses were observed by the type of their home institutions and their status,

participants were limited to visiting scholars only from universities or research centers to seek homogeneity among the sample to enhance the validity of the analysis. The pilot

interviews were also helpful to modify the phrasing and the order of the original interview questions.

I examine the potential influence of my personal views and background on the research process and the analysis of the current study in the following statement of positionality. In qualitative studies, it is important to recognize the background and the worldview of researchers themselves because they will influence the selection of the topic, the design of the research, and the interpretation of the data (Creswell, 2007; Sipe & Ghiso, 2004). In addition, through interactions with participants in the research process, participants and their responses might be affected by the researchers (Rossman & Rallis, 2011, p. 33). The examination and awareness of reflexivity is beneficial to enhance the trustworthiness of the research process.

Furthermore, paying attention to ethical and political issues is also crucial to enhance the credibility of the research. As a basis of ethical practice of qualitative research, Rossman and Rallis (2011) stated the importance of mutual respect and

reciprocal relationships for the researcher and participants (p.71). First, this study attends to the issue of confidentiality and privacy of the participants. The interviewees were promised by the researcher that personal information that would identify the participants would not be disclosed to the public. The information about the protection of

confidentiality was explained in the informed consent process and in the consent form. Second, the participants were notified that their participation in the study was voluntary and they were able to withdraw from the study without any sanctions at any time. The participants were encouraged to ask questions at any time, including before and after the time they agree to participate in the study.

In the process of data analysis, a fellow doctoral student agreed to take on the role of a second coder for part of the interviews to enhance the validation of the analysis. Since the original interview data were in Japanese, it was difficult to find a second coder who could understand Japanese and also the context of higher education research. I translated three interviews in English and asked the fellow doctoral student to code the interview by using my codebook. In total, 11.5% of total interviews were coded by this external reviewer and reached 80% of inter-rater reliability. In addition, I consulted with a Japanese higher education researcher in developing my codebook and in reviewing a coded interview to raise questions. Their opinions were incorporated to refine the part of codes and the analysis.

Positionality

In a qualitative study, the researcher influences the research process through the interaction with the participants and the interpretation of the data. Therefore, it is

imperative for the researcher to recognize and state clearly their values, experiences, and