5.3 Data Collection
5.3.3 Data collection: timetable and changes
Table 5.2 overleaf sets out an outline of the timetable for data collection. Interviews at St. Ferdinand’s were to be held with the two participants at 8.30 on Saturday mornings before classes started. Arranging sessions at Grovesham, however, required greater negotiation.
Table 5.2 Data collection timetable
June 2015 Initial approach made to schools.
September 2015 Preliminary meeting with Jo Malinowska at Grovesham School.
November 2015 Original translator became unavailable; new translator found.
Preliminary meeting with Alina Rudawska and potential participants at St. Ferdinand’s.
December 2015 Consent letters sent to schools.
Signed letters returned from Grovesham.
January 2016 Fieldwork commenced at Grovesham (Block 1).
Three sessions held (S1, S2, S3): Weds. 6th & 20th January, 3rd February.
February 2016 Consent letters received from St. Ferdinand’s.
Jo on maternity leave; fieldwork suspended at Grovesham.
March 2016 Two sessions held at St. Ferdinand’s (Block 2):
Sat.12th & 19th March (S#1, S#2).
April 2016 Break for Easter holidays.
May 2016 Data collection recommenced at Grovesham (Block 3).
Three sessions held (S4, S5, S6): Weds. 11th, 18th & 25th May.
Jo Malinowska, who was helping to organise the sessions at Grovesham, informed me that no school time was available for interviews; she also felt that students might be reluctant to attend sessions held outside lesson hours, such as during the lunch break.
Instead, Jo suggested interviews could be conducted during the GCSE Polish classes held after school. She was happy to allow students to leave the lesson to participate in interviews, as she believed a study involving discussions about Polish identity could potentially be of as much value to the adolescents as a regular Polish class.
However, due to Jo’s pregnancy, Polish classes only took place fortnightly that term. Jo was scheduled to go on maternity leave in mid-February, with lessons due to resume in
the summer term. A further complication was that, Polish being an extra-curricular activity, not all the students always attended the lessons. This meant that the time spent with each participant was unevenly spread.
The initial research design had included a pilot study to be conducted at St.
Ferdinand’s prior to the main data collection at Grovesham. One reason why pilot studies are considered particularly helpful is that they can allow for revisions to the interview schedule (Kvale 1996). I was also aware of the need to gain experience in interviewing (see Oppenheim 1992; Kvale 1996; Roulston, Demarrais & Lewis 2003;
Robson & McCartan 2016). However, there were delays in sending out consent letters, while signed consent forms were not received from St. Ferdinand’s until mid-February.
It was therefore impossible to conduct the pilot study as planned.
Mindful of the need to retain a flexible approach when conducting research (Janesick 1994; Bryman 2015), I then devised the idea of three blocks of data collection. Tables 5.3 and 5.4 overleaf set out the structure of these sessions; these are followed by a brief description of each of the three blocks.
Table 5.3 Data collection sessions: Grovesham School
S3: Whole group discussion (25 min); group interview: Janusz, Greg & Beata (30 min).
S4: Pair interviews: Sylwia & Filip (15 min); Tomasz & Ryszard (20 min);
Sylwia & Yamina (10 min); Beata & Marek (10 min).
S5: Pair interview: Beata & Janusz (15 min); individual interview: Marek (22 min);
group discussion (8 min).
S6: Individual interviews: Sylwia (6 min); Filip (10 min); Ryszard (10 min); Marek (15 min).
Sessions at Grovesham lasted approximately an hour each. Timings of each interview (noted in brackets) are to the nearest minute, as there were frequent overlaps between interviews as participants came in and out of the room. The remaining time in each session, either before or after the interview, was spent either in general conversation with those present in the room, whilst we were waiting for everyone to come in and settle down, or chatting to Jo when students had left.
Table 5.4 Data collection sessions: St. Ferdinand’s Polish School
Students Age
Block 2 March 2016 S#1:
12 Mar
S#2:
19 Mar
Anna 14 Y Y
Krystyna 14 Y Y
Sessions at St. Ferdinand’s (S#1 & S#2) lasted approximately 50 minutes each, and consisted of pair interviews with Anna and Krystyna.
i) Block 1: Grovesham, Jan-Feb 2016
The first block of data collection was held at Grovesham School in January and February; three hours of data were collected. The initial session (S1) took the form of an observation of the first Polish class of term. Eder and Fingerson (2002) suggest that such ‘observation sets the ground for the interviews’ (p.11). My being present for the
Polish lesson allowed the students to be introduced to me; I also had the opportunity to gather some preliminary impressions and to note the language used during the class.
Session two (S2) comprised a group interview held with all those present, which Jo also attended. The aim was to build up trust; here, trust is understood as ‘the relationship between the researcher and the participants’ (Ryen 2006, p.222), an understanding which is crucial to a research project being carried out. Jo’s presence during this session and her potential impact on the research, is discussed in section 5.4.5.
The third session (S3) consisted of a smaller group interview conducted with some of the older students. This took up most of the hour. During this time, the remaining participants were also asked to complete the questionnaire.
ii) Block 2: St. Ferdinand’s, March 2016
The sessions held at St. Ferdinand’s comprised two 45-minute interviews with the two participants, Anna and Krystyna. Interviews were conducted before lessons began at 9.30am; the interview schedule was similar to that which had been drawn up for sessions at Grovesham (Appendix 2).
St. Ferdinand’s being a Saturday school, the setting was relatively informal. Both the participants and myself as researcher dressed more casually. Here, I drew on the idea of how a researcher might choose to present herself (Delamont 2002; Fontana & Frey 2003). That the participants and I were on first-name terms throughout may also have served to lessen the formality of the interview setting and allowed the interview to develop into more of an open discussion. By the second interview, the girls appeared comfortable enough to interrupt both each other and the interviewer, and even to pose their own questions to each other (Appendix 5, Extract A.1).
iii) Block 3: Grovesham, May 2016
The gap between the blocks of data collection at Grovesham was ultimately longer than anticipated: Jo’s maternity leave was followed by the Easter break. Polish lessons were then taken up with intensive revision for the GCSE oral exams which three of the students were sitting. Following this, however, normal weekly lessons resumed, and three interview sessions were conducted in May.
In these sessions, the atmosphere seemed more relaxed than previously. It appeared that the students had become used to my presence as researcher and were
enthusiastic about continuing the study. During the three hour-long sessions, the pair format which had worked effectively in the interviews at St. Ferdinand’s was used, whilst one-to-one interviews were also held with those participants who had been present at all or almost all the sessions.
5.3.4 Summary
While the initial research design had to be adapted and modified throughout the process of data collection, this can be seen to have ultimately benefited the study. The breaks between each fortnightly session enabled the translation of Session 1 at
Grovesham and interview transcriptions from S2 and S3 to be completed before the next block of interviews. I was also able to undertake a preliminary analysis of the data, where key themes emerged, and from which I could develop further interview
questions. This draws on Flick (2014), who advises examining the initial interviews to think about possible forms of analysis and how later interviews may be approached differently. In subsequent interviews, therefore, discussions were data-driven and accordingly became more purposeful. As I have described elsewhere (Naveed et al.
2017), one example was the way the adolescents at both Grovesham and St.
Ferdinand’s spoke quite early on about the emotional difficulties experienced when
their parents had separated, be this temporarily or not, such as when one parent went to England alone. The respondents’ apparent openness on this topic allowed me to explore further potentially sensitive questions about their emotional response to other events, including expressions of anti-Polish sentiment experienced at school, or their thoughts on the Referendum. Themes which surfaced in the initial sessions held at Grovesham School led into discussions held at St. Ferdinand’s, which then influenced the final block of interviews at Grovesham, such as the topic of returning to Poland. As I argue in Naveed et al. (2017), data collection at each setting was thus informed by the other, giving the project an overall cohesion that it might not otherwise have had (p.12).
Ethical considerations, including issues of transcription, are discussed next.