Data collected through semi-structured interview

Face-to-face semi-structured interviews were done concurrent with stage 1 (c) of the questionnaire distribution (table 4.6). The interview questions are based on the quantitative questionnaires to the registered quantity surveyors. Initially, the maximum number of interviews proposed were twenty interviews (eight government; ten consultant firm; two contracting firm) until saturation is achieved or the limit of each group is reached. The survey respondents were asked whether they were prepared to participate in the subsequent phase of data collection, which were the personal face to face semi-structured interviews. The researcher was able to conduct a total of twenty two face-to-face semi-structured interviews (table 4.7).

For semi-structured interviews, there is no ideal number of interviews (Baker and Edwards, 2008). The importance of the various kinds of sampling used in a qualitative research lies primarily in the quality of information obtained per sampling unit, not the quantity (Sandelowski, 1995). Thus, it is intended to interview as many respondents as available from the phase 1 questionnaire.

The purpose of the interview was to provide the researcher with a relatively flexible format for the gathering of data, and due to the popularity of the method in social sciences. Interviews can be structured, semi-structured, or non-structured (Fellows and Liu, 2008; Saunders et al., 2007; Creswell, 2003).

Structured interviews usually have a fixed number of questions and restricted responses. It is argued that structured interviews are more efficient in terms of the time taken to collect the data and the degree of reliability and validity is generally greater than in the semi-structured and unstructured interview formats (Creswell, 2003). Meanwhile, unstructured interview is the opposite of the structured interview. Both methods of interviews were not suitable for this research.

The researcher applied the semi-structured interview method when collecting the data face- to-face with the interviewees since it is thought to be more appropriate and suited the nature of this research. It is an interview where the researcher has a series of questions that are in the general form of an interview schedule but is able to vary the sequence of questions (Bryman, 2004). During the interviews, the researcher gained more understanding on the researched phenomena which is the quantity surveyor’s professions and what they do in detail during the different stages of the construction process. From there, the researcher obtained ideas on how the quantity surveyors’ roles relate to the performance of their jobs and also the motivation aspects.

Before the interview sessions were conducted, the list of the potential participants was gathered from the list of questionnaire surveys. The respondents were contacted in order to ask their permission to be interviewed at their offices. Before the interview, the researcher informed the potential interviewees, the aims and purpose of the research through email. Individual quantity surveyors who agreed to be interviewed were then contacted by telephone to set up the date of the interview.

Questions were asked during the interviews with the participant providing responses in their own words. Some questions were asked to experts to give their view. The result of this approach was a richness of data, which was unbiased by any interpretation that the interviewer might have placed on it. The semi-structured interviews for this study were conducted face-to-face. The researcher felt more comfortable to conduct face-to-face interviews so that ambiguities in questions or answers are immediately clarified by the researcher. During the interview sessions, local language which is Bahasa Malaysia was mainly used. Some of the interviewees used full English language and some of them used a mixture of both Bahasa Malaysia and English. The interviewer adopted the language that the

interviewee chose in order to ensure that they were comfortable to answer during the interview session, and to encourage spontaneity.

4.15 Summary

This chapter attempted to describe in detail the methodological approach adopted in this study. In order to determine the most appropriate philosophical positions, careful considerations must be made based on the nature of the problem and the research questions established. The research comprises of seventy one numbers of feedbacks from the questionnaires, using: postal; email; and web questionnaires. This was further reinforced with twenty two semi structured interviews to triangulate the results.

In order to achieve the aim ‘to develop a conceptual framework on the motivation of quantity surveyors in the Malaysian construction industry through the impact, challenges, and effectiveness of the current motivational practices for achieving improved job performance’, a diverse range of methods to collect both generally applicable data and in-depth data were employed. This use of a range of methods concurs with the views of: Weston et al. (2001); Perry (1998); and Gable (1994); that research of this nature should attempt to mix methods to some extent, because it provides a greater perspective on the phenomena being studied. The data collection methods employed for this research were questionnaires (web; email; and postal) and semi-structured interviews.

5.0 QUANTITATIVE DATA ANALYSIS