Data Analysis Methods

In this thesis, two main techniques of data analysis method were employed: thematic analysis and content analysis. The descriptions and application of these techniques will be discussed as follows:

a) Thematic analysis

The application of thematic analysis in qualitative research is commonly the fundamental concepts that have been identified from research data (Bernard & Ryan 2010) and which emerge as being important to describe the phenomenon under study (Fereday & Muir-Cochrane 2006). The researcher employed thematic analysis method to provide a structured way of understanding how to develop thematic codes and sense themes.

The employment of thematic analysis in this thesis was conducted based on six phases of thematic analysis as recommended by Braun and Clarke (2006): (1) data familiarisation;

(2) initial codes generations; (3) themes searching; themes reviewing; defining and naming themes; and producing the report. In implementing this analysis, the researcher also adopted three stages of coding processes as proposed by Corbin and Strauss (2008): open coding, axial coding and selective coding to enhance the thematic analysis in this thesis. In the first phase, the researcher sought to familiarise the interview transcripts and field notes through an open coding process. In this process, the researcher tried to understand any themes that emerged from the data by conceptualising line by line. This process eventually led to the second stage of the analysis that was the generation of initial nodes as illustrated in Figure 4.5. Nodes is a term used in NVivo that refers to concepts, processes, thought or ideas that derived from sources (research data or participants) (Edhlund 2011). The number of initial thematic nodes generated during the open coding stage was 301, whereby most themes were emerged during the familiarisation process, though the researcher have made general a priori codes before starting to analyse the sources in the NVivo.

Figure 4.5: Open Coding in Thematic Analysis

The next stage of coding process is axial coding, where this reflects the third and fourth thematic analysis phases; theme searching and theme reviewing. In these two phases, the researcher coded the data by grouping the themes that were similar or connected to each other in a patterned way (Buetow 2010). The classification of initial themes that emerged was refined and filtered based on the researcher’s judgment and intuition to ensure the generated themes accurately reflected the meaning in the data set and to provide a correct representation of participants’ views and experiences (Braun & Clarke 2006) on the factors that might influence the sustainability of Bumiputera NTBSFs. In addition, the researcher also sought opinions from his supervisors and other postgraduate students on the relevancy and importance of each theme to the phenomenon being studied as well as its link the theme with other previous studies. Besides, field notes from the interviews or memos were also used to help the researcher to refine the themes and to ensure the data were analysed consistently in this process.

Interestingly, through the NVivo’s interface, the researcher would also know the number of participants in general who were concerned on a particular theme or aspect by analysing the sources and references. In NVivo, sources refer to research materials (in this thesis referred as participants’ transcripts) and references refer the numbers of coding references coded for a particular node. If the number of sources or coding references for a node is too low, this would give an indicator to the researcher that the theme is considered not important from the participants’ perspective and could be merged with other themes or considered in the later stage of study or even deleted if the node is not relevant to the context in this thesis.

The last coding process is selective coding in which the researcher identified the core variables or themes that best explain the factors influencing the sustainability of Bumiputera NTBSFs. This process reflects the fifth and last process of thematic analysis in this thesis, whereby the researchers defined and classified the themes according to suitable names and produced the outcome report through the NVivo as shown in Figure 4.6. In this stage, themes were finally categorised according into three main themes; founder-specific factors, firm-specific resources and business support and assistances. In addition, the researcher has classified other themes that are not well-linked with the phenomenon understudied, but may be considered in the latter stage in this research as emerging nodes.

Figure 4.6: Final Outcome of Coding in Thematic Analysis

The thematic analysis using the NVivo also enabled the researcher to develop the tree-structured indexing system as proposed by Richards and Richards (1991) in which themes in this thesis were developed based on hierarchical structure that makes up the ‘tree’.

Interestingly, the concept of family values was also applied in tree index system where the node can be categorised as parent node and child node (Richards & Richards 1991). The single top category in the analysis is the parent node (a root), whilst other categories that are linked immediately below the parent node are called child node. ‘Siblings’ nodes are also used to refer the children of the children nodes in the analysis. The red box in Figure 4.6 shows that the application of these concepts can be exemplified from the Founders’

Human Capital node that is a child node for Founder-Specific Aspects node. It was then

broken down into several child nodes such as the investment of human capital node, which comprised the formal educational background node and previous work experiences node.

To enhance the data analysis in this thesis, the content analysis technique is also employed and will be discussed in the next section.

b) Content analysis

Having identified the important themes that helped the researcher to understand factors that influence the sustainability of Bumiputera NTBSF through the thematic analysis as discussed earlier, the application of content analysis is also employed to focus on the manifestation of relevant themes that relate to the thesis framework and to guard the researcher against any pitfall that occurs via the selection perception process (McMurray et al. 2004). Generally, the content analysis is an attempt to quantify qualitative data by noting frequencies of events, words, action and other variables related to research data (Crowther & Lancaster 2009). This analysis is also referred to as the constant comparative method in qualitative analysis (Glaser 1965) that suggests the analyst convert qualitative data into quantifiable form in order to develop evidence for a given proposition.

Hence, the application of constant comparative method or content analysis in this thesis aims to contribute to the refinement of identified themes by conceptualising the phenomenon understudied and patterning of the data (Boeije 2002) in order to provide an answer to this thesis’s research question. For instance, the representation the description and themes in the qualitative narratives was conducted through content analysis method by using NVivo, whereby the generation of NVivo coding queries from the research data has assisted the researcher to identify which factors have been cited most by the participants by looking at each theme’s sources and coding references. From this process, the importance of each theme or factor can be well-understood. Additionally, the generation of NVivo matrix-coding queries assisted the researcher to compare connections and contradictions between the identified themes in this thesis (Bazeley 2007). To illustrate this, the researcher created business networking approaches matrix-coding query as shown in Figure 4.7 to examine the different approaches practised by Bumiputera entrepreneurs in three different industries; ICT, Biotechnology and other technologies. From this analysis, the researcher can see the least approach practised by Bumiputera biotechnology entrepreneurs is business association membership. This can be related to the development

of the biotechnology industry in Malaysia, which is a new emerging industry and low Bumiputera participation in that industry compared with other technology-based industries.

Figure 4.7: An Example of Matrix-Coding Query Analysis