Data collection

Data collection was divided into two phases.

The first phase which I call, Study I, was a free-listing survey of university stu- dents in urban Australia and Japan. Study I was conducted as a part of research collaboration chaired by Professor Naomi Aiba at Kanagawa Institute of Technology, and designed to understand a range of images and meanings of commensality and solo-eating among young adults in two societies from homogeneous samples. CCA shows higher validity with socially homogeneous group like students (Romney et al., 1986). The recruitment replied on convenient sampling at university classrooms. The data collection of Study I in Australia was conducted by myself, but the one in Japan was conducted by Professor Aiba and her research team at the Kanagawa Institute of Technology. The result of Study I was used to develop interview ques- tions for the second phase. All data collection of Study II in Australia and Japan was conducted by myself.

The second phase, Study II, entailed 30-120 hours of face-to face interviews with 40 Australians and 31 Japanese young adults consisting of a time-use questionnaire before the interview, five free-listing questions, and open-ended questions about their lifestyles and everyday eating. Interviews were conducted at participant’s house and workplace, and public cafe where were assigned by participants. I employed both snowballing and quota sampling to recruit young adults from diverse backgrounds to Study II. I set minimum quotas for gender, age, and occupation groups, and enables me to recruit participants of diverse backgrounds from small sample size. There- fore, contrary to Study I, participants in Study II consisted of young adults who

3.3. RESEARCH DESIGN AND ANALYSIS 47 had a wider range of lifestyle, marital status, occupations and employment status. Non-probability sampling including convenience, quota, and snowball sampling is often considered to have lower external validity, compared to probability sampling. However, non-probability sampling can also represent voices from the population by maximising quality of data. Bernard (1988, 95) asserted that supplemental infor- mation by ethnographic data like in-depth interviews and observations can improve credibility of these non-probability sampling.

Study I was conducted in 2011 at the Australian National University, Univer- sity of Canberra, and Kanagawa Institute of Technology in Japan. A total of 64 Australian students and 135 Japanese students who studied different majors agreed to take part in this study. All data collections were conducted in group at several university classrooms during and right after the lecture. The subject of each lecture were general chemistry, gender studies, education, population health, and nutrition science. Those who did not wish to participate were allowed to leave the classroom early without any penalty. After brief explanation about the study and written informed consent, a questionnaire (Appendix A & Appendix B) was distributed to each participant. All participants were asked to list words related to question I (eat- ing with others), II (eating with family), III (eating with friends), and IV (eating alone) in one minute per question. After the 60 seconds have passed, participants were asked to stop listing words and move on the next question. At the end of the survey, participated were asked to fill out a half page questionnaire about their demographic information.

As noted earlier, data collection of Study I was conducted by two sets of re- searchers, because Kanagawa Institute of Technology only allowed their employees to access the classroom and their students. I supervised the whole process of data collection and data entry conducted at the university, in order to make the process consistent to the one in Australia. However, I would like to note a issue which may affect the data collection conducted by two sets of researchers. Although the participation to the study is voluntary and anonymous, some participants in Japan may feel obligated to participate in the study due to their ongoing relationship with investigators who were a professor and staff members of their university. In con- trast, there was not a prior contact between Australian participants and me. In fact, more numbers of Japanese students than Australian students agreed to participate in Study I. However, Wilson et al. (2008) noted that the presumption that par- ticipants feel obligated to participate in research is not necessarily justifiable, and some of them feel comfortable to participate in the study if they know and trust the investigator.

In Study II, 71 young adults aged from 20 to 40 were recruited from Canberra, Australian Capital Territory and Sydney, New South Wales of Australia and the Kanto (eastern) area of Japan including Tokyo, Saitama, Chiba, and Kanagawa prefectures. Recruitment for interviews was conducted through online advertisement and introduction from participants and my acquittance in Japan and Australia. The face-to-face interview was conducted in Japan from September to December 2012, and the one in Australia was from June to August 2013.

All participants of Study II were asked to fill out the questionnaire about two- days time diaries (Appendix C & Appendix D) before they met me for an interview. The questionnaire was sent by email or post to participants at least a week before the interview, which provides enough time for participants to record one of their work- day’s and work-off day’s schedules. Similar to Study I, all participants were asked to listed words associated with question I-IV in addition to the question V (eating with work colleagues) in one minute per question. The question V was assigned only to participants who were working at the time of interview. The interview ques- tions (Appendix E & Appendix F) were a range from participant’s detailed views and actual practices of commensality and solo-eating to their everyday life practices (i.e. work-life balance and food-related practices). All interviews were recorded by an audio recorder and field notes with consent of participants. All data collection of Study I and II in Japan was conducted in Japanese and the one in Australia were conducted in English. All Australian participants were Australian citizens and all Japanese participants were Japanese citizens. Table 3.1 summarises differences between Study I and II.

Table 3.1: Methods in Study I and II

Method Study I Study II

(Student group) (Young adult group) Free-list survey Yes (Question I-IV) Yes (Question I-V)

Time-diary No Yes

In-depth interview No Yes