Conducting the Interviews

There are hierarchical relationships in qualitative interviewing (Fontana and Frey, 2008), which extend beyond gender to other social factors such as profession, age, social class and so on. This was very relevant to my research, given the “paternalistic social system” (Fontana and Frey, 2008, p.135) prevalent in the gender segregation in KSA. A significant feature of this project is that I conducted face-to-face interviews with all my participants, not just the female ones. To my knowledge, this has never been done before because the cultural context of the KSA imposes restrictions on both genders meeting and communicating face to face (Alebaikan, 2010).

I met the research participants in person after scheduling interviews on an individual basis. All the interviews were mutually agreed upon in terms of time, privacy and a noise- free environment. The interviews were conducted in two phases based on the availability of the participants:

Phase-1: Eight interviews were conducted across August - September 2014. Since the university had just resumed from the summer break, not many participants were available even though there was less administrative pressure on HoDs at that time.

Phase-2: The remaining 28 interviews were conducted between December 2014 and January 2015. At this time, more respondents were available and they had less administrative work since it was the end of the semester.

The selection of an appropriate place for the interviews was of prime concern to me since the first interview did not record well due to noise and other interruptions. Hence, for the subsequent interviews, I used a meeting room offered by DDQ, which is located between the male and female campuses and accessible to both genders. I conducted the interviews with male participants from the Humanities Colleges in the common meeting room, whereas the female and male participants from Medicine, Pharmacy and Dentistry Colleges were interviewed in their offices. This was possible because women are allowed to enter those campuses where there is a mixed gender staff and student population. Interviewing the participants in the meeting room contributed significantly to the richness of the data since these participants experienced a higher level of comfort and they seemed more open, transparent and relaxed, as they were away from their workplace and other staff members. Consequently, they were able to give valuable responses even in the case of sensitive issues where they might not have been so critical in a more public forum. For example, a Vice-Dean of Quality demonstrated openness during the data collection, saying:

I don’t say NC-triple A, I say NC trouble A. Because of a lot of orders, a lot of things. They go into small details and for everything, they need evidence. It’s very defined. This is between us - I give this

definition to NCAAA - the smartest way to waste time and money. It is a plot. We used to sit for hours with the HoDs to discuss only two items with evidence. It’s really crazy and you’re going why? And if we’re going to do it for each item, oh my God!

Prior to arranging the interview appointments, a Participant Information Sheet along with the Consent Form was emailed, detailing the aims of this research (see Appendix B). In addition, written consent was obtained from each participant prior to conducting the interview. The participants had the option to be interviewed in English or Arabic or a mixture of both languages. Depending on the participants, interviews with HoDs lasted up to133 minutes, whereas interviews with other stakeholders lasted up to 85 minutes. In most cases, the interview data was digitally recorded, after making the participants aware of this arrangement, and then transcribed for analysis. Participants were assured about the confidentiality of the data and the majority of them were comfortable with being recorded. The recordings helped me to easily review and accurately transcribe the interviews. In a few cases where the participants refused to be recorded, I relied on writing notes during and immediately after the interview. I recorded interview data on two smart phones and one iPad, which was easy to carry, and also simple to transfer the data to my personal laptop. Multiple devices were used in case of technical issues or the risk of losing data. After each interview, I immediately tested the recorder and wrote any comment on the nature of the interview, and then transferred data from these devices to my password-protected personal laptop. For further safety of the data, I copied these files to web based data storage facilities, for example, Dropbox, iCloud and SugarSync. In addition to ensuring that the questions outlined in my interview schedule were properly addressed during each interview, I tried to ensure that the process of probing did not inhibit me from listening to the participant’s responses actively (Kvale, 1996). I went with the flow of the interview without deliberately steering or asking questions about any specific issue. This was because I did not intend to lead the interviewees into answering the questions in a specific manner; therefore, I avoided asking leading

questions. Furthermore, I observed cultural norms of interaction, for example, when and whether to interrupt.