Data Analysis Strategy

107 information sheet and a participant informed consent form were developed, translated and verified following the same process as for the interview protocol. The participant information sheet provided a summary of the study, informed participants that the interview will be audio-recorded, of their right to refuse participation, of their right to withdraw from the study at any point in the interview and withdraw their data within a cooling off period of two weeks (researcher’s professional email address and telephone number were provided). To protect participants’ anonymity, each participant was asked to self-select a pseudonym that was recorded at the point of consent to the study. Only these pseudonyms are used when reporting participants’ data throughout this thesis.

Interviews in the UK were conducted in English; interviews in Ukraine were conducted in Russian, both country studies were carried out over the period of March-May 2009.

In order to obtain an initial insight into participants’ lived experience in their sociocultural context, the interview began with participants being asked to talk about themselves, what changed in their life in the last 10 years, and their views on globalisation. Participants were then asked open questions about each of the cultures in question (i.e. “in your understanding, what is global culture and how would you describe it?”). The researcher used probing questions to encourage participants to detail their reasoning and to explore participants’ views and feelings regarding the role of each culture in their sense of self and identity in detail. The interviews lasted between 60 and 90 minutes, and were all audio-recorded with participants’ consent. “Memoing” (Miles and Huberman, 1984: p69) was used to keep field notes throughout the data collection in each site, to record researcher’s impressions and specific details of how the interview progressed (Lofland and Lofland, 1999). Memoing enables greater engagement with the research material and context, and acts as a supporting mechanism for articulation and clarification of assumptions (Birks, Chapman and Francis, 2008)

4.3.2 Data Analysis Strategy

Audio recordings of interviews were transcribed verbatim. Transcriptions of the interviews conducted in Russian were verified with a native Russian speaker who works in the UK as a professional Russian-English interpreter in the public sector. Consistent

108 with derived etic approach (Berry, 1979), analysis was completed following sequential steps: first, each transcript was analysed and coded; next, the data of one country sample was combined and a cross-case analysis was performed to identify commonly emergent themes; last, the data samples were analysed side by side to assess results’

comparability and identify cross-culturally emerged themes (Miles and Huberman, 1994).

Each transcript was read through first, to get the researcher immersed in the

‘life world’ of the participant (Burnard, 1991). Subsequently, each transcript was coded by marking passages relevant to research questions and sorted following a combination of meaning categorisation and meaning condensation approaches (Kvale, 1996; Krueger et al., 2001). Meaning categorisation involves coding of data under particular categories, while meaning condensation “entails an abridgement of meanings expressed by the interviewees into shorter formulations” (Kvale, 1996: p192). Coding was completed in several steps, following the process outlined by Strauss and Corbin (1990) for qualitative research analysis. Specifically, data was coded first against three main meaning categories derived from theoretical assumptions, as follows: 1) perceptions of environment; 2) expressions of cultural meanings; 3) expressions of cultural affiliations (LC, GC and FCs). Subsequently, the data assigned to these categories was reviewed to identify sub-categories that were allowed to emerge freely, resulting in 8 main sub-categories and 74 sub-codes emerging across cases, each reflecting a particular aspect of a main category (for example, under the ‘expressions of cultural meanings’

code, sub-codes such as ‘metaphors and associations,’ ‘practices/lifestyle’ emerged;

under ‘expressions of cultural affiliation’ code sub-codes such as ‘emotions,’

‘self-identification’ emerged). Table 4-6 presents an example of interview transcripts analysed by meaning categorisation and meaning condensation (Kvale, 1996). Full emerged coding structure is detailed in Appendix 1 (p:259).

The researcher had de-briefing sessions with the director of doctoral study as the data collection and analysis progressed. At the country-level analysis, the researcher also had a debriefing session with one of Ukraine experts concerning the findings emerging from Ukraine data analysis. In these sessions, the data, the emergent findings were discussed

109 and interrogated in depth, posing questions as to whether propositions and hypotheses to be utilised in the subsequent steps of enquiry require revision or adaptation. This process is reflected in the manner in which the study results are reported in the next Chapter 5: findings of Phase 1 enquiry are reported and discussed first; the next steps of the analysis (measure development and validation, operationalisation of new measures) utilising Phase 2 data to build on the exploratory findings.

110 Table 4-6: An Example of Transcript Analysis Using Meanings Categorisation and Meaning Condensation Approaches

Natural Transcript Analysis by Meaning Categorisation Analysis by Meaning Condensation

Pre-set category: perceptions of lived environment (PLE)

Emerged sub-category 1: Views (VWS) I mean, I’d say everyday...you meet people with different opinions, from different places around the world, from different cultures, and...you would see influences from around the world...and it’s just you become increasingly comfortable with that, it doesn’t become an invasion, it’s more just increased, erm, options, you know, you just have more ...in the supermarket you would see influences from around the world

Emerged sub-category 2-3: Own mobility (MOB_CULTEXPS)

111

4.4 Phase 2 (Studies 2-4)

This section presents data collection and analysis strategies adopted in Phase 2 to further address proposition 2, and to address propositions 3 and 4 by testing hypothesis 1 and 2 (see Table 4-1). The main objectives of Phase 2 were to obtain data to:

1) develop psychometrically sound measures of Local Culture Affiliation (LCA), Global Culture Affiliation (GCA) and Foreign Culture(s) Affiliation (FCA); 2) test existence and generalisability of the proposed construct of Consumer Multiculturation and resultant cultural identity orientation strategies distinguished in CMIO Matrix on a larger population sample; and 3) test the hypotheses concerning the relationships between cultural identity orientation strategies and culture-informed behavioural intentions (willingness to buy) and cultural attitudes (cosmopolitanism and consumer ethnocentrism).

In seeking to address the objectives above, Phase 2 was designed to include three studies: Study 2 – measure development with expert judging; Study 3 – pilot;

Study 4 – survey. Data collection strategy for the main survey (Study 4) is presented next, while Studies 2 and 3 are discussed in Section 4.4.2.2.1 of the data analysis strategy section in order of the objectives they addressed.