Designing the Data Collection Method

The data collection techniques developed for the main study are described below. The modifications made in relation to the methods after the pilot study phase are presented in chapter 4, section 4.2.6. Here, the topics and themes for the casual conversations are discussed, the development of semi-structured interviews described and finally, the problematics of engaging with the personal narrative technique are examined.

Creating topics for casual conversations

According to Gaudio (2003), casual conversations are types of occurrences that happen

‗naturally‘ and presuppose a particular type of social interaction, between parties, which conforms to the practices and norms of the social setting. As previously explained, this method was chosen as a way to investigate more intimately the unstructured stories women construct about their everyday experiences and leisure, and vis-à-vis the socio-cultural environment they occur in. So, for the purpose of understanding the meaning of Sofian

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women‘s leisure choice, the plan is to focus mainly on casual conversations with the interviewees, before and after interviews. Moreover, as some of the participants are the researcher‘s friends and she meets with them on a regular basis, this interaction (in the form of casual talk) is an important source of information and is included in the study. So, a plan is devised to engage in casual conversations with both friends and acquaintances on topics of everyday nature, like work, family, leisure and other personal relationships. The conversations are to have similar phases, orientation and flow, regardless of whether the participant is a friend or an acquaintance (A person the researcher has met, but does not have intimate knowledge of is referred to as an acquaintance in this study). A noticeable difference in the verbal communication is primarily the slightly more formal tone of the conversation with an acquaintance. Only conversations that took place during the pilot data collection phase and the main data collection are included in the study, as to include all past, present and on-going conversations would be a daunting task. No audio-recording was used during the discussion and thus the researcher relied on her own recollection. All conversations consist of the following phases: 1) typical, customary greetings, 2) talk of unrelated to the research topics, 3) talk of topics related to the study, 4) closure.

As a consequence of the spontaneity of the conversations and their unstructured nature, a schedule of the discussions could not be established in advance. Additionally, the duration, depth of discussion and other additional topics of conversation could not be predicted;

however, some broad guiding themes were designed to provoke a discussion linked to the problem and sub-problem of the research. These topics and themes are listed here:

 Women‘s everyday routines

 The work–leisure balance

 The centrality and role of work and leisure respectively

 The nature of leisure and perceived constraints

 General, societal assumptions about leisure and work

 Perceptions about the ‗self‘, and perceptions about ‗others‘ in relation to leisure and work

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The reason for the preliminary development of the above-mentioned themes is to help focus the flow of the casual conversations in a direction relevant for the study, without being obtrusive. Table 3 presents the themes for discussion, the rationale for using them and their recognised contribution to the study problem and sub-problem is stated. All conversations were expected to be carried out in Bulgarian language and then translated and transcribed by the researcher in the convenience of her home, as soon as possible. No recording device was planned to be used for this method. The conversations were written down in the research‘s journal and were complemented by the researcher‘s reflexive accounts.

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Table 3: The relevance of casual conversation themes to the research study Casual

76 Developing semi-structured interviews

The semi-structured interview schedule consists of three main parts; each part corresponds to a research sub-problem. After the introductory Part One, Part Two focuses on the interrelationship between work and leisure and related issues of the positive and negative aspects of employment. It features questions mainly about women‘s leisure choices and practices and the centrality of leisure in their lives. Part Three puts the emphasis on women‘s perceptions of their roles within society and the ways they may manifest in and out of work settings. In Appendix 10, the semi-structured interview guide is exhibited. It presents the themes and specific questions the researcher discussed with the interviewees.

Process of writing authoethnography

The rationale for implementing the authoethnographic narrative in the feminist case study was already discussed in section 3.4. In this section, some related difficulties the researcher struggled to overcome are identified, as this method highly personalised and emotionally-charged narrative requires

…that we interrogate what we think and believe, and that we challenge our own assumptions, asking over and over if we have penetrated as many layers of our own defences, fears, and insecurities as our project requires. It asks that we rethink and revise our lives, making conscious decisions about who and how we want to be. And in the process, it seeks a story that is hopeful, where authors ultimately write themselves as survivors of the story they are living. (Custer, 2014:1)

Having in mind this difficult process, the researcher began the storytelling process from the very beginning of the investigation, by keeping a research journal in which she made daily entries not only for methodological purposes but for possible emic/etic dilemmas as well. The personal narrative is different from other forms of discourse because it represents a sequence/consequence storyline and timeline (Riessman, 1993, 2008). Events are chosen, organised, connected and evaluated and presented as meaningful by the researcher, whose memory is selective, Holloway and Wheeler (2002) warn.

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Chapter 5 is entirely dedicated to the researcher‘s reflexive and authoethnographic accounts, pre, during and post research. Additionally, Chapter 4 features some reflexive thoughts about the pilot study fieldwork carried out in Sofia.