In-depth Interview

An interview is also one practical medium for achieving some of the required research objectives. Commonly, the interview is also part of the qualitative method. Besides this, other tools could also help establish the data of this research. In this study, some of the interviews also provided data from the perspectives of researchers, academicians, project implementers, policy makers, and the general public as well.

All the questions were developed as a structured instrument and protocol. Interview sessions were conducted in strategic places and with ample free time. These interviews were recorded and analysed using transcription analysis. The transcribing of data was done manually followed by identifying the answers of the questions. Each of the answers was marked and highlighted based on the appropriate questions. The responses provided to the open-ended questions in both the questionnaire instrument and semi- structured interview were collated for qualitative data analysis. This view is reinforced by Patton (2002) who highlighted that the purpose of gathering responses to open-ended

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questions is to enable the researcher to understand and capture the points of view of other people. For collecting the data through interviewing people, there are steps and phases from the beginning until the end of analysing the raw data. Below are the phases for the steps;

I. Phase one: The information from literature review was conducted to choose the best methods to answer the particular research objective. After going through this process, the researcher then decided to start collecting data by selecting the exact person who are qualified and expert in their fields. During this phase, the potential people who are experts in their fields were identified. The identification of respondents was through seeking and searching information about them using a variety of methods. These methods included Internet access, reports, and books at library; meeting in conferences or discussion; recommendations from people who know them well; and reading a lot of article sources about them. The profile of respondents is stated in the appendix of this dissertation.

II. Phase II: After the identification of respondents was done, then researcher decided to select 10 persons who are experts and related to the topics of research. The next step involved the researcher sending appointment letters to meet them for interview sessions. The letter was sent by email and faxed. To ensure the letter reached them, follow-up calls were needed to get feedback. This phase was quite tricky because the respondents needed to really confirm about the time and date and commit to the interview. The researcher waited for a certain amount of time (cooling period) and then went to meet them after confirmation. Most respondents requested the set of questions to be asked in the interview to be sent beforehand.

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The purpose was to ensure that they would be ready with the required information and fulfil the requirements of all the interview questions. The researcher sent the questions in the form of a questionnaire.

III. Phase III: After confirming the date and suitable time, the researcher went to the agreed upon locations stated by the respondents, thus the interview session was performed in different places and at different times for each respondent. The sessions took between one to two hours each. In order to complete all the interview sessions for the 10 respondents, the researcher spent six months in this phase. The respondents lived in Kuala Lumpur and Selangor areas. Even when some locations of respondents were close, the time constraints of respondents had to be taken into consideration. In some instances when the date of interview was confirmed, at the very last minute, some respondents had to reschedule the interview as they were called for urgent meetings or other pertinent matters. These disruptions were unexpected and would not be avoided, so a different date and time re-confirmed. During the interview sessions, the researcher also asked respondents relating other questions which had come to mind. Then, these new questions and answers were also noted in the adding up of data.

IV. Phase IV: Then, the next step after completing all interview sessions, the data in the recorder were then duplicated. The raw data was transferred to a pen drive and external hard disk to ensure all data are safe. After that, the researcher started the transcribing of each interview data. The data transcription was saved in different files to avoid confused and redundant data. The data were saved in files which

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were easy for the researcher to identify them. This phase took six months to completely transcribe the interview data.

V. Phase V: The next step was writing up the analysis of data which is the analysing of data used thematic analysis. The detailed is in Chapter V, namely Results, Presentations, and Interpretations. In this chapter, the research objective was achieved through answering the research questions for this study.

The interview differs from the questionnaire in the nature of its questions and its manner of presentation. The questionnaire is useful for asking very specific questions concerning quantifiable information, such as age, income, and gender for converting general information into a closed form through rating or ranking (Rob, & Nicholas, 2000). Qualitative data analysis is largely an inductive, open-ended process that is not easily captured by a mechanical process of assembly-line steps (Lofland, 1995). A study done by Dey (1993) suggested that the core of qualitative analysis consists of the description of data, the classification of data, and seeing how concepts interconnect. While the following prescription has been written as if all the data were generated before any analysis starts, it can equally be used to start making sense of data as they are generated. Then, the researcher can begin to describe, classify, and connect the data before having a full data set.