Familiarization of data set:
The interviews were read and re-read several times. The interviewees’ scores from the time perspective questionnaire were not noted until after the themes were developed so as to avoid influencing theme generation in this respect. This was so that I kept attending to the overall research question of how people viewed team work, and only attended to the differences between the individuals’ high and low Future and Present Fatalistic scores at the end of the process.
Generating Initial codes:
This was based on a ‘contextualist’ epistemological method which acknowledges both the way people interpret their experiences (an essentialist/realist approach, in which motivations, experiences and meaning are interpreted in a simple straightforward semantic method for which the use of language reflects meaning and experience) while also acknowledging the way that the social context impinges on the meaning (Braun & Clarke, 2006). The coding was carried out over the entire data set and codes were identified in an inductive, ‘bottom up’ way in which the resulting themes were strongly linked to the data. This inductive analysis included a coding process that did not try and fit into pre-existing codings but was a data driven coding process.
The data at this stage was examined initially line by line, and the general meaning was noted in a comment by the side of the transcript sheet (example in Appendix AA). This process occurred three times for each piece of data until virtually all the participant lines of each
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transcript were noted. The initial codes were then transferred to a new file without the transcripts and were collated into clusters or patterns. This was done by colouring matching themes that appeared at surface value to be mentioning the same topic across the entire data set (example in Appendix BB). Each candidate theme was then isolated in a separate document including the participant number and line numbers that the comment referred to.
After discussion with an experienced second analyst on each code explaining why and what the codes were showing, the matching codes were further separated into more in-depth codes within those potential coding clusters, for example separating those codes that mentioned leadership into different aspects of leadership.
Generating themes:
Further in depth reviewing of the coding took place separating codes from one another, which were then blocked together into groups that seemed to be connected in some way, to make four initial candidate themes: organisational aspects, leadership, positive and negative aspects of team membership. A further meeting was conducted with a co-analyst to discuss each candidate theme and whether they really explained the data. This led to a further studying of the candidate themes to try to pin them down more succinctly. This led to a re- evaluation of some of the previous themes. Five themes were identified from this second round of theme making: leadership: expectations, experiences and evaluations; negative aspects of team membership; socialisation and support; rewards obtained by being part of a team; and organisational aspects with roles, personal and team organisation.
Reflexivity
The above methodology describes the steps that were followed but reading through both Banister et al. (2011) and the Lyons and Coyle (2016) chapters on writing up qualitative methods in psychology a reflexive account is deemed an important aspect of the write up in order to illustrate how my commitments and assumptions have shaped the analytic process and outcome. I have been involved in several teams over many years including school teams, work teams, educational teams and sports and recreational teams. The sports and recreational teams I have been part of have provided me with companionship and have on the whole been thoroughly enjoyable experiences. Work teams have provided a hierarchy from which to learn the company’s processes and systems, and to have a form of back-up and comradeship whilst
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undertaking company business. I have also taken part in several educational team projects whilst studying research methods at undergraduate level. I personally did not always enjoy the experiences of educational team work and found I was one of those who tended to keep quiet but did what was required of me in order to achieve both the teams’ and the modules’, and therefore ultimately my own, goals.
I have also taught for the past five years on research methods courses from all higher education levels from first year undergraduates through to MSc level and have tutored around 60 teams through the processes of a group project. I have mentored groups who have been very cohesive (possibly too cohesive) and those that have imploded. I have watched one team split up into two separate teams mid way through the group process, and another team of five members who ended up working almost entirely separately. This has given me an interest watching the individuals within teams and how they react with each other. This study has enabled me to listen to others’ experiences of working in these small educational teams, and to find out what they think of the team process rather than just using my own experiences within teams.
The participants had all been students in a class on which I had taught, and therefore there was inevitably a degree of power imbalance within the relationship between us. However the formal teaching had finished before any interviewing was undertaken, and all the participants were in a post exam period, but before they had received their final marks for the module. None of them therefore had any idea of what their module marks would be but knew that their results were no longer in my control. I believe this made them feel in a more balanced relationship with me than would have been the case either before the end of the module or alternatively after they had received their results.
Four of the interviewees had worked together in a team of six and the process had not been wholly successful. Whilst listening to the students recalling their group work process I was aware that several of them were telling me the same information about how their team, in the research methods projects, had functioned but from their individual viewpoints. It was sometimes hard not to disclose that the same anecdotes had been told to me from another angle, showing them in a different light to the one they may have tried to portray during the interview.
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At the time of the interviews all of the interviewees were working on their dissertation projects and were undertaking data collection prior to writing their dissertation, and were, therefore, more sympathetic to my needs as a PhD student rather than my role as their tutor. Some of the participants asked me to reciprocate and take part in their dissertation studies, as a participant, which I gladly did. Others requested some help with the practicalities of their own dissertation from recruiting participants to analysing data. I was happy to help in whatever way that I could.
During the summer following the interviews I also attended some workshops held at the University on aspects of qualitative methods. One of the workshops I attended was on interviewing techniques and, although I managed to get a lot of good and interesting interviews, I am sure that if I had carried out my interviews after, rather than before, this workshop I would have gleaned an increased amount of rich data from using the enhanced skills that were learned through the workshop. The setting for the interviews was not the most conducive for getting people to talk. On the whole the rooms used were small and characterless areas furnished with table and chairs and little else. There is only one room in the university psychology department that allows privacy but has the feeling of a relaxing space, with more comfortable seating and softer lighting, and that unfortunately was not available during the time I was interviewing.
8.1.3: Findings
Theme 1: Team Organisation: - The individual and the group becoming a cohesive