This section provides information on the method of data collection, the development of the interview schedule, and details concerning the interview process.
Method of Data Collection
A number of different methodologies have been used in collecting data – such as psychometric designs when looking at personality characteristics (Bessière et al., 2007),
77 and qualitative for social networking (as identified by Warmelink & Siitonen, 2011). For this study online semi-structured interviews, and email interviews, were chosen as the method of data collection.
Semi-structured interviews are commonly used in qualitative research (Howitt
& Cramer, 2008), but Darlington and Scott (Darlington & Scott, 2003) warned that interviews can reveal ‘what’ occurs, but sometimes the ‘how’ is unexplored, with critical information being left undefined. However, they reported that there are benefits, since they provide a flexible means of acquiring data, with the space to examine the thoughts and feelings of the participants.
Opdenakker (2006) argued that online interviews have many advantages in comparison to offline Face-to-Face (FtF) interviews, in accessing participants who may be geographically widespread, or unable to attend face-to-face meetings. He
acknowledged there are reduced ‘traditional’ social cues due to the lack of physicality but argued this can be overcome through the use of emoticons. Another advantage of online interviews is the reduced time and cost of conducting them (Davis, Bolding, Hart, Sherr, & Elford, 2004), though Kazmer and Xie (2008) argued that it can still take substantial amounts of effort to turn online data into useful material, through having to anonymise and clean the data. Kazmer and Xie (2008) acknowledged that even with these practices to engage with, the process would be faster than conducting face-to-face interviews given the costs of transcription.
A feature of online interviews that can cause concern is that there can be conversational disorder (Opdenakker, 2006), where participants and researcher ‘talk’
over each other, resulting in a disordered conversation with multiple simultaneous threads. This might reduce the flow in the conversation (Murray & Sixsmith, 2002), though Dickey, Burnett, Chudoba and Kazmer (2007) maintained that those with faster typing skills would be able to overcome these disadvantages. Reassuringly, Stieger and Goritz (2006) found the quality of data from chat programmes to be acceptable, and so it was not a concern for the thesis. Not-withstanding such issues though, synchronous interviews were chosen as one of the means of collecting data for study one, due to its appropriate nature for GT research (Charmaz, 2011), and the benefits in exploring the thoughts and feelings of the participants (Darlington & Scott, 2003)
In addition, a number of asynchronous interviews were also completed. There a number of benefits to asynchronous communication, including negating issues relating
78 to different time zones, enabling slow typists or those with English as a second language to take part, and in generating more detailed answers than might be acquired in a
synchronous environment (Fox, Morris, & Rumsey, 2007). Given these benefits, the decision was made to include synchronous and synchronous interviews in the study, so that the benefits of both systems might be accrued.
Development of the Interview Schedule
Following GT principles, no previous literature was examined before creating the interview schedule, but instead a small pilot study was developed to help inform the creation of the schedule. The questions for the pilot study were very general in
character, so as not to unduly influence the results, but were related to the research questions of the thesis. The pilot study was conducted on four MMO players, and produced four main themes, which were presented at the iiWAS Conference 2008 (Meredith, Griffiths, & Whitty, 2008) – psychological masking, reference to real life attitudes, gaming as a means of identity exploration, and concepts of emotional investment. A full write up of the pilot study can be found in appendix IV.
There are several commonalities between the pilot study results and the interview schedule – the concepts of identity exploration, emotional investment and referencing real life attitudes. The initial theme of Psychological Masking is also referenced in the interview schedule though not in its original form – it was merged with the concept of identity exploration.
In the interview schedule for study one, after initial ethical issues had been dealt with (i.e. participant information & informed consent), there were a number of
demographic questions which established the sex, age, location of the participant, amongst other variables. Following the advice of Strauss and Corbin (1990b) there were a series of broad questions, which then narrowed down to more specific ones, with questions grouped in thematic categories. The full interview schedule can be found in appendix V.
As part of the process of reflexivity, and following good GT practice (Glaser &
Strauss, 1967), the interview schedule was changed as appropriate after each interview.
From a GT perspective, this was a variant on theoretical sampling, whereby productive topics were followed more extensively, so developing emerging concepts (Knight,
79 Nunkoosing, Vrij, & Cherryman, 2003). This was also done when it was apparent that the wording of a particular phrase or question was not being understood properly by the majority of participants, or failing to generate any useful data.
Formal Interview Process
The interview process for the email interviews was significantly easier than for the synchronous ones – once a potential participant had expressed interest, an email was sent to them with a copy of the Participant Information sheet. They were requested to read the entire information sheet and, should they agree to take part, sign the
declaration and return the document. The participant information sheet included the following information / requests - whether the participant understood what was required of them, if they were over 18, if they understood that their work would be anonymous but not confidential, that they could withdraw their data if they so wished, that participation was voluntary, by what name they would wish to be referred to, and that having answered all of those questions, that they wished to take part.
Once this had been received by the researcher, a second email was sent to the participant, with a Word document with all of the questions in it. It was necessary to re-contact four participants to clarify their answers or to ask follow up questions.
For synchronous (Chat programme) interviews, a similar process occurred but in real time. Once a potential participant had replied to a post in a forum, contact was established with details about the study, confirmed that they were over 18, and asked if they would like to take part. If the respondent said they did, then contact details and an appropriate time to meet online were arranged. For the synchronous interviews, two chat programmes were used – MSN Messenger and Skype – although Slype supported video calling, this feature was not used in the interviews, to ensure a greater degree of parity between the synchronous interviews.
For both groups, after completion of the interview, an email was sent thanking them for their participation in the research, together with the debriefing form and a reminder concerning the withdrawal of data, and regarding anonymity.
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