La educación en el tratamiento de la salud

I utilized two forms of interviews in this study: an asynchronous Internet focus group session and the follow-up interviews. As the interviewer, I put the participants’ experiences in context by gathering as much data as possible in light of the topic being studied up to the present time. I sent each participant a survey, via individual email, asking study participants to describe their work histories and educational backgrounds after graduation from high school to allow me to understand the context of their answers prior to the start of the study (See Appendix A). This information was not shared between the study participants. This allowed me to understand the work histories and educational backgrounds of the study participants.

The initial questions and an asynchronous Internet focus group session were posted on the University of New Orleans’ Blackboard and follow-up

questions were sent via individual email. I utilized the University of New Orleans’ Blackboard to access all nine participants who live in several locations around the country. “Blackboard is a Web-based learning, discussion, and class administration tool designed specifically for faculty that provides a secure, pre- made Web site” (University of New Orleans Blackboard Website, 2004) for individuals registered in a University of New Orleans class. Instructors at the University of New Orleans post announcements, quizzes, online surveys,

assignments and grades online accessible securely to each student. This format was chosen to provide an easily accessible and user friendly vehicle for online communications during the study. The Blackboard format requires enrollment for

student access. For the purposes of this study, participants were enrolled in a University of New Orleans course titled E.B.C.E. Research. Study participants were in-serviced in accessing all aspects of the Blackboard portions of the data collection. To maintain anonymity, participants were assigned simple usernames such as participant 1, participant 2, and so on. I emailed participants using their assigned usernames. They were instructed to answer the four questions posted on Blackboard (See Appendix B). Participants were also informed that follow-up questions would be sent via individual email (Appendix C).

During the initial phase of data collection, I posted four questions on the University of New Orleans’ Blackboard, (See Appendix B), to gather data about participants. Participants were asked to reconstruct their career and educational backgrounds since graduating from Ellen Martin High School. The participants were asked to give concrete details about their Program experiences. Questions focused on concrete details to determine participant experiences, attitudes and opinions concerning the Program. “The concrete details constitute the

experience; attitudes and opinions are based on them. Without the concrete details, the attitudes and opinions can seem groundless” (Seidman, 1998, p. 73). To accomplish this, I asked participants to reconstruct experiences rather than remember them (Seidman, 1998). In order to facilitate the reconstruction of

details of their Program experience, I formulated questions that helped the former Program students select events from their past. The participants could impart meaning to them bydescribing how the Program had influenced their

professional lives and explain which aspect(s) of the Program had exerted the greatest influences on their professional lives.

The first question asked participants to describe any aspect of the Program that had affected their lives after they graduated from high school and determine if the influence was short-term or long-term. The second question was written to determine the most important the Program experience, from the

viewpoint of the participants, and to determine how much this experience had influenced the participants. The third question was designed to determine the long-term influence of the Program on the participants. Finally, the fourth

question asked participants to describe challenges they experienced while in the Program and how they reacted to the challenges. This was done to determine if these participants had experienced flow while in the Program.

Once participants had answered the questions on Blackboard, I posted participant answers on Blackboard as a form of member checking, with care to protect participant privacy (Yin, 2003). I used the member checking session to correct errors in responses and elicit additional data about questions. Four of the nine participants commented on answers. Member checking is the sharing of the interpretative process, sharing interview transcripts with research respondents. Member checking gave participants the opportunity to verify answers posted by other participants and also gave them the opportunity to post additional

comments after additional memories of the Program had been sparked (Glesne, 1999). The member checking session also helped me develop new ideas and new interpretations.

Once I received the participant answers to the initial study questions, I coded the data and organized the coded data into categories. Interview excerpts from transcripts should be organized into categories to allow researchers to search for connecting threads or “meaning units” (Girogi,1985) and patterns among the excerpts within those categories. I looked for connections between the various categories that might be called themes (Yin, 2003).A good

questioner utilizes an answer to a question to formulate a number of new questions in an atmosphere of “adaptiveness with rigor but not rigidity” (Yin, 2003, p. 61). This session helped me to summarize the initial step in the data analysis process before proceeding to the Internet focus group session (Lincoln & Guba, 1985).