Perdón y variables de ajuste psicológico

Analysis of qualitative data requires much thought and explanation (Hofstee, 2006:117). In this study, the thoughts and explanations emerging from the interviews

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(the data), were made more amenable to interpretation once the data had been coded and analysed with the assistance of the Atlas.ti program.

5.2.1 Interviews

Qualitative data consists of words and (personal) observations, and data interpretations are required to bring order and understanding to the process (Taylor- Powell & Renner, 2003:1). In this study, the data were collected during semi- structured interviews with the participants, and the data were subsequently analysed through Atlas.ti, and interpreted by the researcher. The final question in all the interviews was to request suggestions from the participants as to how the IAF could better meet their customers’ expectations. The researcher presented this last question in an informal manner to encourage maximum scope of response. According to De Vos, Strydom, Fouché and Delport (2005:66), on completion of the session, the researcher should rectify any misperceptions that may have arisen in the minds of the participants. The researcher thus also used the exchange during the final question as an opportunity to relate participants’ responses to those obtained earlier in the interview, and to clear up any misperceptions that he might have noticed.

Semi-structured interviews consisting of open-ended questions afford the participant the opportunity to pursue his or her response in detail. Although the purpose of the interview questions was to guide the participants, the interviewing process was flexible which allowed the researcher to probe for clarification and amplification of the participants’ perceptions of the work performed by the IAF. The interview questions dealt with the customers’ experiences and expectations, and the challenges they perceived the IAF to be facing. There were no right or wrong answers; each participant answered according to his or her own experience and perspective of the work performed by the IAF. The questions guiding the interviews were as follows:

 What are your experiences of the IAF?

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 What do you perceive as hindering factors preventing the IAF from meeting your expectations?

 What are the contributory factors that ensure your expectations are met?

 Do you have suggestions about what you would like the IAF to do to meet your expectations?

The interviews were conducted in no more than 45 minutes each, and the researcher used a digital recorder to record the interviews. The interviews were transcribed verbatim. The researcher personally conducted all the interviews (see section 4.3.3, chapter 4).

5.2.2 Analysis and interpretation of data

According to Patton (2002:440), all data collected through semi-structured interviews should be transcribed before the analysis begins. The analysis and interpretation of the data and the presentation of the results were guided by the aim of the study, namely to generate an in-depth understanding of identified key IAF customers’ perceptions of the work performed by the IAF in the National Treasury. The results of the study are presented, firstly, according to the four categories of key IAF customers as identified in the introduction to this chapter. Secondly, for each category of participants the themes emerging from communications, the ideas, concepts and phrases used by the participants in response to the interview questions were sorted and correlated. This is in accordance with the view of Pope, Ziebland and Mays (2000:114) who maintain that qualitative research uses analytical categories to describe and explain social phenomena.

Data interpretation is defined as going beyond the descriptive data, attaching significance to what was found, making sense of findings, offering explanations, drawing conclusions, extrapolating lessons, making inferences and considering the meanings of the themes (Patton, 2002:480). During the interpretation of data phase the researcher is immersed in the data, transcribing the data, listening to the digital

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recordings and reading the transcripts (Yeh & Inman, 2007:388). During the process of analysis and interpretation of the data, the researcher should play a significant role in constructing the meaning of words, identifying the themes, and thereby bringing order, structure and meaning to the mass of collected data (De Vos, et al. 2005:333). Personally performing all these tasks enabled the researcher to decide on the meaningfulness of the words and concepts that the participants used in their responses to the interview questions.

In order to analyse and interpret the data, the researcher was interested in discovering the themes and the sub-themes, which, according to Ryan and Bernard (2003:85) is one of the most fundamental tasks in qualitative research. The researcher organised the themes (experiences, expectations and challenges) and the sub-themes identified for each of the categories of participants, as a starting point. The key IAF customers participants were categorised as the AC (chairperson of AC and AC member), executive and senior managers (two deputy directors general (DDG) and the chief financial officer (CFO)), programme and operating managers (three chief directors), and the external auditors (two audit managers from the Auditor General South Africa (AGSA)). In this process, the researcher coded the answers of each category of participants into themes and sub-themes in order to recognise the differences and similarities between the responses of the participants in the various categories.

5.2.3 Data coding

Babbie (2010:338) and Saldaña (2009:8) both define “coding” as a process of arranging raw data into a standardised form. A formal coding process was followed during this study, as explained in section 4.3.5. The interview questions and the literature review formed the basis of the data analysis and interpretations and were also considered in the data coding. The researcher read through the transcripts, with the interview questions and the literature review in mind, and allocated codes to the data that appeared in the transcripts, thereby ensuring that all the data collected from the participants were comparable to the information described in the literature review.

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The data analysed in this study was drawn from the ten transcripts after the interviews had been conducted and transcribed. The researcher loaded all the transcripts on to the Hermeneutic Unit of the Atlas.ti program. As the data were loaded, the researcher used open coding to label the data according to the categories of participants, which are commonly known as “code families” in the Atlas.ti context. Axial coding was used to assist the researcher to relate the themes and the sub-themes to the specific “code families”. This was done while the researcher repeatedly read through the transcripts. This process afforded the researcher the opportunity to code anything he deemed important from the primary document loaded onto the Hermeneutic Unit. In this process, descriptive coding was used to code the phrases that were of importance according to the perceptions of the participants on the work performed by the IAF, and the coding was done line by line from the transcripts.

Since descriptive coding was used, the researcher also used In Vivo coding to honour the voices of the participants by capturing their descriptions or phrases without alteration. It was from the same perspective that the researcher identified the themes, using the epistemological insight gained from the literature review. On completion of the data coding, no further themes and sub-themes could be identified from the transcripts. The decision on the saturation of data coding was properly considered, because the researcher wanted to align and shape the data coding in line with the best practices discovered in the literature and discussed in chapters 2 and 3.