Case Study

The first phase of data collection revealed a great deal of interesting information about the extent to which eParticipation was being used in Scottish local authorities, the tools that were being used, opinions of officers etc. However, in order to achieve a better understanding of the factors that affect the development of eParticipation a more in depth study was required. Case studies are a widely used method in social sciences and allow for a detailed study of phenomenon in their real-life context. Yin (1994) indicates that a case study should be used when the researcher deliberately wants to investigate contextual conditions of a phenomenon because these might be highly pertinent.

According to Yin (1994) case studies are one of four types depending on whether they are a single or multiple case study design and on what level of analysis they employ. It is considered that this study represents a Single Embedded Case study as only one case is being examined but there are multiple units of analysis which allows for the study of different views and provides a more complete and rigorous study that only analysing one unit of analysis. In this case study design the main units of analysis were: elected members, senior officers and officers. Within these, further aspects to bear in mind are the department of the officers and senior officers and the political party of the elected member. This will be outlined further in the case studies findings chapter.

It is important, however with case study research to bear in mind a holistic understanding and not to overly fragment the case study findings. For this reason, the findings were presented thematically rather than by unit of analysis in most cases although it was sometimes more appropriate to focus on one unit of analysis (e.g.

elected members) in certain sections.

4.9.3.1 Selection of Case study

The local authority selected for the case study was Aberdeen City Council. Following the website analysis and through informal discussions with individuals involved in citizen participation, it was discovered that Aberdeen City Council had developed a number of citizen participation mechanisms including utilising eParticipation tools.

Aberdeen City Council were an early adopter of community planning, had a well established community planning partnership and had gone through a total restructuring in part to increase engagement and participation. Although there was little evidence that Aberdeen City Council was utilising eParticipation to a great extent and it was known that there had been a number of problems with the development of eParticipation tools, it was discovered that they had utilised a number of different mechanisms for eParticipation and in the absence of any local authority which appeared to have ‘flourishing’ eParticipation, Aberdeen City Council were the appropriate local authority to select for the case study.

The findings of case studies are often criticised for not being generalisable to the wider population (Yin 1994, Creswell 2007, Bryman 2004) and a single case study as was adopted in this study could be particularly open to criticism. Criticisms of the lack of generalisablity misunderstand the nature of case study research, however. Case studies may not be ‘statistically generalisable’ but are ‘analytically generalisable’ (Yin, 2004). The case study employed in this study is ‘exemplifying’. As Bryman (2004) explains: ‘Cases are often chosen not because they are extreme or unusual in some way but because they will provide a suitable context for certain research questions to be answered.’ (Bryman, 2004 p. 51).

Due to the fact that Scotland’s local authorities all vary in terms of structure, geographical area, socio-economic profile, political orientation etc it would never have been possible to select one local authority that would be considered ‘representative’ of the others. A multiple case study approach would perhaps have been appropriate if one council was found to have been particularly successful in adopting eParticipation as they could have been compared but as none were found to have this it was not considered to have been appropriate and the time and resource limitations would have led to less in depth studies being conducted (Creswell, 2007).

4.9.3.2 Case study data collection methods

This case study involved a number of points of data collection including:

• Analysis of secondary materials

• Semi-Structured interviews

• Participant observation

These will now be outlined briefly

Analysis of Secondary materials

Secondary documentary information is almost always used in case study research (Yin, 1994) and are used to corroborate and augment evidence from other sources. In this case study documents which were available for analysis included:

• Publicly available reports and strategies

• Internal administrative documents such as progress reports and briefing papers

• Minutes and reports of meetings

• Other published studies commissioned to evaluate the community planning partnership

The document analysis provided useful insights into the strategic priorities for community planning and provided points of triangulation for the primary data collection of this study but it is important when conducting document analysis to bear in mind that documents have been written for a purpose and may not be the ‘unmitigated truth’ (Yin, 1994).

Semi-Structured interviews

The main data collection for the case study was from interviews with elected members, senior officers and officers. The sample group selected for the interviews was devised through an initial interview with an officer at the Telephone Interview stages and from examining the organisational structure of Aberdeen City Council to determine key individuals involved in the development of the participation strategy and consultations.

Also from the analysis of the telephone interviews it was found that only interviewing officers involved in citizen participation initiatives was not sufficient. A ‘theoretical sampling’ approach was taken by identifying other stakeholder groups that should be interviewed. This groups included councillors from each political party represented in Aberdeen City Council including the lead councillors of Labour, Liberal Democrats and Conservative parties although unfortunately the leader of the SNP did not respond to interview invitations and council officers working in various departments of the Council.

It was determined that while there is a coordinated consultation strategy in Aberdeen City Council departments still conduct their own consultations independently and some such as Planning were highlighted as utilising progressive strategies. Aberdeen City Council have developed a community planning strategy including the Police and

Aberdeen Council for Voluntary Organisations and so these organisations also impact onto the overall consultation and participation strategies and so they were also invited to participate.

In total 25 key individuals were invited to participate in the research. An issue that arose at this stage was that several potential interviewees referred me back to the officer who I interviewed at the previous stage of data collection and were unwilling to participate themselves. After some follow up phone calls 19 accepted the invitation for interview.

The final sample group comprised of:

• Councillors from each political party and the Council Leader

• The Chief Executive

• A senior officer from the ICT department

• An officer and a senior officer from community planning

• Officers from Strategic Research and Information

• An officer from Resources Management

• A senior officer from Planning

• An officer from Planning responsible for ePlanning

• A senior officer from Democratic Services

• A representative of the community planning partnership from Grampian Police

• A representative of the community planning partnership ACVO

As the interviews were all conducted within the same local authority it was possible to conduct the interviews face to face. This was desirable because the setting of the interviews were all conducted in private meeting rooms or in a quiet area of the office.

Also, some interviewees brought documents to show to me to support what they were saying which would not have been possible in a telephone interview and (as indicated in the section on telephone interviews) it is easier to establish a rapport with an interviewee in face to face interviews.

The interviews were taped with the permission of the interviewee and transcribed in full.

An interesting research note was that while NVIVO was appropriate for the analysis of the telephone interview data, it was decided that it would not be used to analyse the case study interview data. While the case study interviews were semi-structured with a topic guide being used which was broadly similar to the telephone interviews and an inductive approach was taken for the analysis, the telephone interviews followed a broadly similar pattern and were analysed comparatively while the case study interviews were far less ‘standard’ given the diversity of interviewees and the fact that different areas of eParticipation were being investigated further depending on the role of the interviewee. For example, the ICT officers were able to provide a great deal of information about the ICT strategy while the elected members were able to provide insights into their perspective on eParticipation. It was found that analysing the transcripts without NVIVO was preferential. This is not to say that the approach was not methodical; transcripts were read through many times, key themes were identified and then ‘axial coding’ (Cresswell, 2007) was used to link themes together and create a coding structure. A coding sheet was constructed using Microsoft Excel and then key sections were copied and pasted in from which the theoretical analysis was further developed and the results presented in Chapter 6 with supporting evidence from the other findings from the case study research.

Participant observation

A portion of the research that was conducted consisted of participant observation. This was agreed early in the case study design and provided valuable insights into the phenomenon of eParticipation in the participating local authority. The participant observation element was largely focussed on the development of an online citizens’

panel. I attended meetings between officers from the strategic research department and ICT department as well as a meeting with other community planning partners.

Further, I developed some questionnaire questions for inclusion in one of the citizens’

panel questionnaires and provided an analysis of the technical evaluation of the pilot initiative to develop an online citizens’ panel.

Yin (2004) indicates that the major problem relating to participant observation is that the researcher is no longer an impartial observer but is instead influencing events. This was found to be the case in the participant observation element of this research. As an

‘expert’ in eParticipation I was often asked to contribute to these meetings and in particular to act as a ‘translator’ between the ICT officers and the research officers who had very little technical knowledge.