The first phase of data collection involves reviewing and extracting relevant information from documentary sources, both to serve as discursive material in the interviews and to provide context to the more specific responses that respondents will give. This took a period of approximately two weeks to complete, during which time the interview schedule was finalised. Following on from the completion of this, the interviews were conducted over a period of 8 weeks.
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3.7.1 Contacting Participants and Conducting the Interviews
Utilising a 50-25-25 split of participants, as outlined previously, and wanting to keep the research at a manageable size, it was decided that the target would be to interview 12 participants in total, with six of these being representatives of local planning authorities. In accordance with this, six of the nine local authorities from within the case study area were randomly selected and contacted regarding their participation in the study. Four of the initial six accepted the request, while two declined, so these were replaced with two more from the remaining three authorities, both of whom accepted. The same process of selection was used for the property developers and investment boards: a random sample of three were selected and subsequently contacted from a wider pool. All three of the initially contacted property developers accepted, while two of three initially contacted economic investment boards also accepted. A further five investment boards were contacted, but no further participants were forthcoming, leaving this group short by one. Consideration was given to adding an additional participant in the form of a local authority or property developer, but this was ultimately rejected in order to keep the respondents as balanced as possible.
As part of the process of contacting participants, a preliminary identification was made of who within each organisation may be a suitable interview candidate. Each organisation was free to alter this as they saw fit, as long as the nominated participant was actively involved in the process of planning for retail development. Once an interviewee was identified and agreed to take part, they were informed of what the interview would involve and what was required on their part. Participants were also given the choice of where the interviews took place: at their place of work, at the University or at a neutral public venue. Ten of the interviews were subsequently conducted at the participant‟s place of work, with one interview being conducted at the University. The average length of each interview was 62 minutes. In order to enable a more detailed analysis to be performed later, all of the interviews were recorded and stored in accordance with University regulations. A decision was also taken in advance of the interviews that they would be entirely anonymised, in order that participants be able to speak freely. While nothing inherently controversial or personal was discussed during the interviews, it was felt best to avoid any form of
Mark Davies - October 2019 71 identification that could be potentially problematic for any of the participants or organisations they represent.
3.7.2 Processing, Sorting and Analysing the Data
Once all of the interviews had been completed, the process of preparing the data for analysis began. The analysis of the data represented the final stage of the research project and involved a detailed cross-examination against wider historical, contemporary and theoretical information, in order to identify those relevant factors that influence the development of contemporary retail planning strategies. While there are many different ways in which qualitative data can be analysed (Mason, 1996), given the aims of this research project, it was determined that a combination of literal and interpretative analysis would provide the most effective analytical approach. Literal analysis would enable the findings to be presented at face value, showing the explicit factors that planners consider when they develop planning strategies, which could in turn be compared to other stakeholders and wider sectoral evidence. Interpretative analysis could then be used to delve beyond these literal statements, allowing for the identification of less obvious influences interwoven within the broader historical and contemporary contextual circumstances in which planning decisions are made.
In order to aid in the process of data analysis, it was decided that it would be beneficial to sort and index the data, both to enable the identification of pervasive topics or themes and to standardise the data that was gathered during each interview. In many ways, this was necessary because the interviews were semi-structured and therefore, the ordering of responses and the way in which key topics were discussed was not uniform. It was also felt that by indexing the data it would be easier to identify those factors of particular relevance to the respondents. In developing a series of indexing categories, it was decided to base these upon the four key themes that had been previously identified. This meant that at their broadest, the responses were classified according to one of four key indexing categories:
Current Challenges and Causes – responses relating to the key challenges being faced and how these are understood
Strategic Responses – responses relating to the development of long term retail strategies and the factors that influence this process
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Strategy Implementation – responses relating to the implementation of short term regeneration and investment strategies
Strategy Justification – responses relating to how strategies are justified in light of wider circumstances
Each of these four indexing categories was further sub-indexed according to the more nuanced nature of the responses. Once the data had been processed and indexed, the final consideration was whether a specific analytical framework would be used in order to analyse the data. Several were considered at this time, however, it was ultimately decided that it would be overly limiting to focus on a singular analytical framework, given the broad ranging themes that had emerged from the data collected. As such, it was instead decided that the analysis would draw from a variety of different theoretical approaches, including historical institutionalism, path dependence, risk perception, and behavioural psychology.