DATA COLLECTION

Data Collection in Qualitative Phase – Interview Guide and Procedure I mainly used an interview method for individual information collection from the twenty-six first-year, full-time, postgraduate, international students. During the interview process, participants were asked specific questions (see Appendix II and III for the interview schedules) and also requested to describe and interpret their thoughts and experiences regarding receiving an overseas education. I, as an interviewer, always carefully asked the research questions and listened to these interviewees’ interpretations. I also asked for more description if the information offered was unclear or was of interest for further investigation.

According to Kvale (1996), “[a]n interview is literally an inter view, an inter change of views between two persons conversing about a theme of mutual interest” (p. 2). A research interview is a professional conversation with structure and purpose and based on everyday life. “It goes beyond the

spontaneous exchange of views as in everyday conversation, and becomes a careful questioning and listening approach with the purpose of obtaining thoroughly tested knowledge” (p. 6). Therefore, it is not a dialogue between equal partners because the communicational situation or context is usually defined and controlled by a researcher or interviewer who also introduces the interview topic and critically investigates an interviewee’s answers to the

research questions. Its purpose is to get an interviewee’s descriptions about his or her life world through “interpreting the meaning of the described phenomena”

96

(p. 6). According to Cohen, Manion, and Morrison (2007), interviews allow participants, both interviewers and interviewees, to talk about their

interpretations of the world regarding where they live and to show how they look at things or situations from their own viewpoints. Therefore, an interview is not only related to collecting data about life; it is also part of life itself and so carries all the features that typify human interaction. An interview is a flexible approach for data collection but differs from an everyday conversation. It allows

interviewers to use multi-sensory ways (including verbal, non-verbal, spoken, heard and any other possible methods) to collect data. In spite of the

naturalistic features of the interview, it is nevertheless a constructed rather than naturally occurring circumstance. Therefore, a researcher must be skilled in establishing a context in which participants are comfortable to engage and reflect.

The two interview studies in this research took the form of a conversation

between the interviewer and interviewee. Interview issues included participants’ reasons for study abroad, and both academic and socio-cultural experiences. Verbal and spoken information was collected and recorded, although I also paid careful attention to the interview participants’ non-verbal expressions. The two interview studies were conducted based on the two separate but correlated interview schedules (Appendix II and Appendix III). Rules and ethics for

conducting interviews were also carefully established and followed. I expected to receive beneficial information for research investigation through the

qualitative interview data collection.

There are four types of interviews: informal conversational interviews, interviews based on an interview guide approach, standardized open-ended interviews, and closed quantitative interviews (Cohen, Manion, & Morrison, 2007). This empirical study related to international student adjustment uses ‘standardized open-ended interviews’ for data collection. One characteristic of this approach is that all the interviewees are asked the same basic questions with both the same wording and sequence exactly determined in advance. One of the strengths of this type of interviews is to increase the comparability of the responses because all respondents answer the same questions. Another

97

advantage is that the data collected are complete for each interviewee on the same topics addressed in the interview. Additionally, interview effects and bias can be reduced when there is more than one interviewer. The open-ended interview approach also allows decision-makers to review the instrumentation adopted in the evaluation. It also benefits the organization and analysis of the data collected (Cohen, Manion, & Morrison, 2007).

All of the interview questions were designed based on the main research questions. In order to apply these principles into the research design, I prepared and structured the two interview schedules and used them as the guiding tool for the interview implementation (see Appendix II and Appendix III). A general interview guide approach is usually used to direct the process and ensure the focus of data collection within some freedom and adaptability (Patton, 1990). Two semi-structured and face-to-face interviews were conducted with audiotape recording, handwritten note-taking, and interview transcription. Additionally, an interview protocol, including the heading, instruction, main research questions, probe skills, transition message, and space for comment and reflection of the interview (Creswell, 2003), was also designed and adopted to assist the interview. All of the interview participants were asked the same basic questions in the same order. Through this

standardized open-ended interview approach, the data collected were made more easily available for further analysis, comparison, and finding interpretation. The first interviews, depending on individual participant’s available time

schedule, took about forty minutes to one hour. The second interviews generally took at least one to one-and-a-half hours. A research journal was also kept during the study (see Appendix VI).

During the second interview, one evaluative task (see Appendix III) was designed to examine interviewees’ adjustment situation (related to the visual investigation of the U-curve hypothesis) and how satisfied they were with various adjustments and life needs during their study-abroad period. The design of the visual graphs is an original feature of the investigation which importantly and innovatively contributes to research methods in this field and the relevant knowledge in this research. Additionally, a relevant supportive

98

document, such as a self-evaluation form regarding interviewees’ monthly adjustment (see Appendix V), was also used for data collection and later research data analysis. The purpose of this support document collection is to numerically investigate the adjustment process of the interview participants and to see whether any adjustment process mirrors the U-curve hypothesis.

In this research, two interviews were conducted with every interview participant for data collection. The time period between the first and second interviews was about three months. The interview dates for each participant can be seen in Appendix VII.

Data Collection in Quantitative Phase – Instrumentation and Procedure This research used a questionnaire survey for the quantitative data collection. “The questionnaire is a widely used and useful instrument for collecting survey information, providing structured, often numerical data, being able to be

administered without the presence of the researcher, and often being

comparatively straightforward to analysis” (Cohen, Manion, & Morrison, 2007, p. 317). A quantitative survey instrument was developed for empirical quantitative data collection based on the previous literature review and the qualitative

fieldwork from the two interviews employed in the first and second study terms. The constructs of the survey instrument include data collection regarding

demographic characteristics, reasons for studying abroad, academic adjustment, socio-cultural adjustment, and overall adjustment of the first-year, full-time, postgraduate, international students studying at a southwestern UK higher education institution.

The survey instrument is named as International Student Adjustment Survey (ISAS). The content of the questionnaire is shown in Appendix IV. The online questionnaire was mainly developed after briefly reviewing the information collected from the student interviews both in the Autumn and Spring Terms of the 2010–11 academic year. It was also designed based on previous studies reported in the literature review. It also referenced or adopted some useful resources, such as the Michigan International Student Problem Inventory (MISPI, Galloway & Jenkins, 2005), including measurements of academic

99

advising and records, orientation services, socio-personal, and student activities; the Social Situation Questionnaire (SSQ, Bochner, 1982), including

measurements of difficulties experienced with various situations; and three college students survey instruments from the Cooperative Institutional Research Program (CIRP) at the Higher Education Research Institute (HERI) at UCLA. The three CIRP survey instruments included 2010 CIRP Freshman Survey (including measurements of expectations, values, goals, interactions with peers and faculty), 2010 Your First College Year (YFCY) Survey (including

measurements of academic achievement and engagement, residential

experiences, satisfaction, and college adjustment), and 2009-10 College Senior Survey (CSS) (including measurements of career plans, post-college plans, and cognitive and affective development).

A small pilot study (with nine participants) was conducted before the formal questionnaire survey. The questionnaire survey aims to investigate the research questions through the quantitative aggregated data. Therefore, the survey is not suitable for investigating each individual’s specific situation, adaptation or adjustment process, and the process of how reasons influence the decision of overseas education.

The questionnaire survey was designed on the Lime Survey system from the Graduate School of Education at the University of Exeter. Reasons for overseas education, academic adjustment, socio-cultural adjustment, and overall adjustments were the main four dimensions in the questionnaire design. Every survey participant was asked to answer all of the questionnaire items; the answers and participants’ information was then recorded automatically by the computer system.

The questionnaire was initially emailed to all of the first-year, full-time, postgraduate, international students at USW through the assistance of the Postgraduate Student Guild President. After this initial email information dissemination, I used a more direct means of finding students to participate in the online questionnaire survey: I walked around the different USW campuses and the streets in the city center of South West, disseminating the research

100

information and inviting first-year, full-time, postgraduate, international students to answer the online questionnaire. This strategy was continued from May 17th, 2010, to the beginning of August. Fortunately, USW staff members later helped the research with further follow-up email information distribution. The

quantitative questionnaire survey was finished by the beginning of August 2010. There were about 297 students participating in the online questionnaire survey but only 250 participants answering all of the questions.