There are a number of different methods for collecting qualitative data, but for the purpose of this research, focus group discussions were considered to be the most appropriate, for a number of reasons. As previously stated, the purpose of gathering qualitative data was to investigate previous educational experiences and to carry out a deeper exploration of students’ understanding of the term ‘learning’ than was possible from the COLI. The students in this research were new to their programme and most of them had only recently arrived in the UK and were, therefore, unfamiliar with the environment and expected social norms. It was considered that the social gathering and interaction of a focus group would promote discussion and encourage students to talk openly, rather than an individual interview situation in which the student may be more likely to tell the interviewer what he or she thought the interviewer wanted to hear. In comparison to individual interviews, which aim to obtain individual experiences, views
and attitudes, focus groups extract a range of attitudes, beliefs and feelings within a group context. Kitzinger (1995) argues that interaction between participants is the essential characteristic of a focus group because the interaction highlights participants’ beliefs, feelings and experiences of the phenomenon. The interaction also enables participants to ask questions of each other, as well as to re-evaluate and reconsider their own understandings of their specific experiences. Students asking questions of one another was a central feature of the focus groups in this research. Academic staff in the university had been asked to encourage social situations in which students from
different cultural backgrounds could interact during the early weeks of their culturally diverse programmes. Focus groups neatly met this objective.
According to Morgan and Krueger (1993), focus groups are particularly useful when there are power differences between the participants and decision-makers or
professionals, which are clearly evident in this research. The power difference between students and academics is greater for international students than it is for home students in the UK (for detailed discussion see Chapter 5, section 5.4.1.3). Focus groups are also considered to be expedient when the researcher wants to explore the degree of
consensus, as was the aim in this research, on a particular topic (Morgan & Krueger, 1993).
Preparing participants for the focus group is important to allow a fuller and deeper discussion. Incentives, monetary or food, are often used (Bloor, Frankland, Thomas, & Robson, 2001) to encourage participants to attend, fully engage in the group and prepare for the discussion. Participants who are unprepared can alter the group dynamics. Given their status, post-graduate international students early in their programme, the students were likely to be apprehensive and unclear of the parameters of attending a focus group, therefore, along with the invitation email (see Appendix III), a list of conceptions of learning was also sent. The list of Purdie et al.’s (1996) conceptions was chosen as it was the original foundation of the COLI, and it was considered that
presenting the students with nine learning conceptions provided more substance for discussion. This allowed students to prepare their thoughts and feel more confident about the content of the discussions, encouraging them to attend.
Activity-oriented questions, which are encouraged by Morgan and Krueger (1998) as ‘questions that engage participants’ and are described by Bloor et al. (2001) as
‘focusing exercises’, provide an engaging way of eliciting answers and promoting discussion. Colucci (2007) suggests that an activity might be especially helpful for participants who are less comfortable with immediate verbal responses and need additional time for thinking or communicating their thoughts. This is particularly relevant for the students in this research as, for many of them, English was not their first language. An activity-orientated question would, therefore, allow participants time to reflect and prepare their response in English. During the focus group, Purdie et al.’s (1996) nine conceptions of learning were ranked in order of importance by each participant (see Appendix VII). This generated much deep discussion about the relevance of each learning conception. In addition to the activity-oriented question, a number of leading questions were prepared by the research to guide and probe the participants through the discussion, to elicit the required information (see Appendix VIII).
To ensure all participant voices are heard, the role of the researcher (Krueger, 1994) in a focus group is key. An individual interview is easier for a researcher to control than a focus group in which one or two participants may dominate the discussion. This was particularly evident in this research, as some participants had greater proficiency in English, and those who had poorer English language skills tended to make less contributions to the discussion, until the researcher specifically asked them to share their views and experiences. The researcher was an experienced university teacher and could confidently manage small group discussions in which one or more student dominated.
Focus group data, as with questionnaire data, must be subject to criteria to judge the credibility of the research. Silverman (2006, 2013) argues that if qualitative research is to be judged based on whether it generates valid knowledge then the research must be subjected to rigorous critique. The terms reliability and validity are generally
associated with quantitative research and have been rejected by some qualitative researchers, alternative terms have been introduced to qualitative research such as credibility and dependability (Lincoln & Guba, 1985). Others (e.g. Robson, 2011) argue that altering terminology questions the reliability and validity of qualitative research. Reliability is concerned with consistency or stability of the data collection procedures and results, while validly refers to the credibility of the research, is the
researcher is measuring what was actually intended to be measured (Long & Johnson, 2000; Ritchie, 2014)? Threats to reliability and validity are issues that require much consideration in all research.
One of the key motives for opting for a mixed methods methodology was to enhance the rigour of the data set as a whole. The combination of quantitative questionnaire data supported by focus group data, from the same participants, enhanced the trustworthiness of the end results. The validity of the COLI is addressed in section 3.5.1. Following much consideration it was not considered viable to provide full verbatim transcriptions of the three focus groups. However to ensure validity of the qualitative data, a strict regime of listening to and reporting the data was implemented. The researcher listened repeatedly to the discussions, initially identifying key issues. The focus group
discussions were considered after the quantitative analyses had been conducted, the intention being, the focus groups were secondary to the questionnaire data, to establish if different methods supported or questioned the survey analysis. Key issues that were raised in the focus groups were colour coded into themes. The data was left for a period then revisited to ensure credibility. Once themes from the focus groups had been
identified they were considered against the outcomes from the quantitative analyses, reported in chapter 5. The aim was to ensure the robustness of the overall methodology by applying documented procedures for the different elements of the data collection and analysis to ensure reliability and validity of the survey data and the credibility of the focus group data. Section 3.7 outlines the procedure of this study detailing the process for gathering the qualitative and quantitative data.