Procesamiento de datos

This study has taken a thematic analysis approach to finding meanings in the participant interviews. Ayres et al. (2003:867) describe thematic analysis as “a data reduction and analysis strategy by which qualitative data are segmented, categorised, summarised, and reconstructed in a way that captures important concepts within the data set”. Braun and Clarke (2006) suggest six phases a researcher should adopt to complete thematic analysis successfully (see table 2 below).

Table 2: Reproduced table in the light of Braun and Clarke, 2006

Phases Description of the process

1 Make myself familiar with my data

Listen, read and re-read the transcribed and translated data.

2 Make initial coding Highlight important features of the data in a systematic fashion across the entire data set, collating data relevant to each code using colours.

3 Search for possible sub-themes

Transferring codes into potential sub-themes, gathering all relevant to each potential theme.

4 Review themes and subthemes

Checking if the themes and sub-themes work in relation to the coded extracts (level 1) and the entire data sets (level 2).

5 Define and name final set of themes

Keep analysing to refine the specifics of each theme, and the overall story the analysis tells, generating clear definitions and names for each theme.

6 Completing the report

The final opportunity for analysis. Select vivid, compelling extracts; relate the analysis back to the research question and literature; producing a scholarly report of the analysis.

In this study, thematic analysis has been used to analyse the data collected and all six phases were applied. For the purpose of analysing the interviews thematically, the first step started immediately after all audio records were transcribed into text. The Arabic interviews were then translated into English.

Phase one: Make myself familiar with my data

Although Braun and Clarke (2006) advise researchers intending to use thematic analysis to become familiar with the collected data, they do not explain or define how to perform this step. My understanding is that Braun and Clarke (2006) encourage the researcher to take free reign to engage with the data in order to gain familiarity with it. In this research, the first analytical step began even before all interviews were transcribed, as I started to familiarise myself with the data by repeatedly listening to the original recording. Then when I began to transcribe I found myself almost remembering some of the terms or important issues indicated by the participants. Of course, listening to the Arabic recorded interviews was easier in terms of getting every aspect mentioned by the participant, but transcribing interviews conducted in English was simpler because I did not need to

complete the further step of translating them. Translation is a challenging task, as there are many different ways of interpreting what has been expressed. As a researcher, I had to be very careful to ensure that I was not influencing the translation through my own expectations. The fact that I was using thematic analysis made this process easier, as while it is difficult to justify all translation at word level (Mundays, 1998), given that there can be many English words that could substitute for an Arabic one (see appendix 4), the overall concepts generally do not require such a detailed level of translation. The translation process also made me more familiar with the data because I had to come back to it again, and I also discussed some of the ideas mentioned in the recordings with a professional translator which made me very close to my data in different ways. As soon as the data was prepared in a Word document, I read it line by line, recording comments on my first impressions of what the data was saying. I performed this step until I had completed a read through of all interviews. I followed the same process when I analysed the observations and official documents.

Phase two: Starting initial coding

Once I had become more familiar with my data and some brief notes had been made, the second phase of thematic analysis began. Line by line coding was performed, this involved identifying “the most basic segment, or element, of the raw data or information that can be assessed in a meaningful way” (Boyatzis, 1998 cited in Braun and Clarke, 2006:18) and then assigning names to the segments. These components are known as codes and were used to help build themes. In this phase, any element that the researcher thought relevant to research aims or which related to topics from the literature review was coded, even if the ideas which emerged seemed contradictory (Braun and Clarke, 2006), for example, changes and decision making. In this phase, a large number of codes was initially generated (see appendix 5), sometimes up to twenty for interviews, and the

collating process was done simply by sticking different coloured paper on the wall and comments on each paper to indicate which parent interview script the cluster belonged to. Notes were also made to illustrate how the clusters were produced and could be connected. Different attempts were typically made before arriving at the final groupings.

Phase three: Searching for possible themes and sub-themes

As soon as all the data had been coded, I started to group the colour codes into clusters, attempting to identify sub-themes using different colours. My understanding of the meaning of a theme is based on the definition of Boyatzis (1998), who described a theme as “a pattern in the information that at minimum describes and organises the possible observations, and at maximum interprets aspects of the phenomenon” (Boyatzis, 1998 cited in Braun and Clarke, 2006:161). Thus, to illustrate this with a concrete example, analysis of the transcript of the original scripts identified a number of comments that referred to the role of middle leaders in relation to leadership (see appendix 5). When grouped together they pointed to a possible underlying theme about different issues and factors related to middle-leadership. The number of the line in the relevant theme, alongside the code of the interview, was mentioned underneath each of them to simplify the follow-up step, when themes and sub-themes were reviewed for the final version of the themes (see appendix 6).

In terms of the interviews conducted with middle leaders in general and Saudi middle leaders, issues such as ‘self-censorship’ were recognised. Self-censorship appears when participants do not feel comfortable communicating certain information in front of people they do not know. This explains the appearance of hesitation, unfinished sentences, euphemistic expressions, gestures or tones of voice that leave others [the researcher] to draw their own conclusions. Therefore, I had to use my insider knowledge of Saudi society to try to understand what the speaker might be attempting to imply and to interpret

this appropriately when allocating labels to categories. In the English context, this was not a common issue, most statements were clear and when there was a lack of clarity the supervisors were always available to clarify ambiguity in participants’ comments.

Phase four: Reviewing themes and sub-themes

At this stage, being precise in naming the themes and sub-themes was one of my main concerns. I was aware of the advice (Braun and Clarke, 2006:91) that possible candidate themes are not really themes (e.g., if there was not enough data to support them, or if data was too diverse), while others might collapse into each other (e.g., two apparently separate themes might form one theme). Other themes might need to be broken down into separate themes (Braun and Clarke, 2006:91), as I show in appendix 7. In order to complete this phase I had a long meeting with my supervisors and different diagrams and drafts were produced to ensure that names given to the themes and sub-themes reflected what the data was saying. This phase was one of the most challenging because it is time- consuming, requiring multiple careful reviews of themes and sub-themes, and a number of changes had to be made. I tried to discover any overlapping or redundant codes or any codes that did not appear to fit within an identified theme. To complete this step, I produced a large table to track the possibilities of overlapping or redundant codes.

Phase five: define and name a final set of themes

Here, searching for the essence of each of the themes was crucial. In this penultimate phase, a complete picture of the data starts to emerge, and the researcher needs to think how each one of the themes can be linked to the objectives or answer any concerns and questions (Braun and Clarke, 2006). The phase was not completed until the core of each theme was specified and clear definitions and names were found for each theme. In order to complete this stage, I drew a large diagram to illustrate possible themes and how they

could be connected. All of these issues were discussed with the supervision team and a new diagram (9) was produced on the basis of their comments.

Phase six: Producing the report

I began to understand the deeper meanings and possible connections of the data, which was no longer raw or purely descriptive. I began to link each theme to the research questions and then to support the ideas and meanings proposed in each theme with quotations from the original scripts.