Interview guidelines used

The objective was to carry out approximately 75 structured interviews to collect data. The interview tool may be used to describe attitudes and behaviours, to explain relationships that test hypotheses and challenge theories, or to evaluate institutions or programmes (Baker, 1994:38). All participants signed a consent letter to participate in the research (see Appendix F). Four separate interview tools were designed and conducted, with care being taken to plan and accurately word the interview questions (Leedy, 1993:192). All interviews contained structured, open-ended questions because open-ended questions are particularly useful in exploratory research and are most effective at the beginning of a questionnaire (Zikmund, 2002:361). These questions often elicit feelings from the interviewees and can add substance to fixed response questions. By this time, the researcher had conducted preliminary discussions and had piloted the interviews on respondents, thus allowing him to categorise responses. Reviews of the draft questionnaires were scrutinized together with the researcher’s supervisor with many years of field experienced and then the 4 interview guidelines were finalised.

In the employee and non-employee community interviews, large sections of the interview tool were limited to fixed responses. This was purposefully included to allow for easy analysis and interpretation of data, and to simplify the respondents’ understanding of the questions. Some

Stakeholder Grouping Appendix Interview

Guideline Used Sample Size

andBeyond Senior Management A 1 5

Africa Foundation employees A 1 3

andBeyond Ngala lodge managers A 1 2

Guests of andBeyond Ngala Private Game Reserve B 2 10

Employees of andBeyond Ngala residing in Welverdiend C 3 6

Employees of andBeyond Ngala residing in Hluvukani C 3 12

Non-employees of andBeyond Ngala residing in Welverdiend E 4 23

Non-employees of andBeyond Ngala residing in Hluvukani E 4 15

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language barriers existed, so a translator was used to overcome this limitation. Some prompting was also used in order to derive more precise and accurate information.

Interview Guideline 1 (see Appendix A) was designed for senior management of andBeyond and lodge managers at andBeyond Ngala Private Game Reserve, as well as for employees of the Africa Foundation. Questions within this interview are conceptual and intellectual, specifically targeting an individual’s understanding of business strategy, their perceptions of achievements of the benefits realised in local communities, and some concerns and recommendations with regard to partnerships going forward. Each interview lasted between 30-60 minutes. In most cases, the interviewee was asked if he/she minded if the conversation was voice-recorded, so that the researcher could go back to the recording to verify responses if necessary.

Interview Guideline 2 (see Appendix B) was designed for guests of andBeyond Private Game Reserve. Questions within this guideline addressed the guests’ understanding of the work that andBeyond and the Africa Foundation currently performs in the local communities. The questions also touched on their reasons for deciding to travel with andBeyond. These interviews were included to provide an additional, objective viewpoint to assess the importance of the relationship between a protected area and local communities. Interviewing guests of a particular company trialled an interesting aspect of understanding the relationship between a company and local communities. This requires more attention in future studies. Interviews lasted approximately five minutes.

Interview Guideline 3 (see Appendix C) was designed for employees of andBeyond Ngala living in either of the two communities. Employees were not asked to specify their job title, in order to strengthen the likelihood of honest answers. Questions were broken up into two sections. In the first section, open-ended questions addressed the nature of the relationship between andBeyond and the community. Some questions revolved around identifying the benefits received by the community as a result of their relationship with andBeyond, if any. Interviews lasted approximately 5-15 minutes. Managers at the various lodges were extremely accommodating and had informed their staff of this research.

The second section of 20 questions asked respondents to rank their attitudes and feelings towards a specific construct. These questions were developed predominantly from the content analysis performed after the first round of interviews with senior management. A specific focus

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here was to include questions around the perceived benefits that were identified by senior management to see if these same benefits were actually realised by the communities living adjacent to a protected area. This section of the interview used a 5-point Likert rating scale. The researcher read the respondents two opposite statements respondents had to point to one of the five attitudes and feelings that they felt were most appropriate. These attitudes and feelings were translated into Shangaan and accompanied with facial expressions for ease of understanding (see Table 2). These faces and translations were given to the respondents on a piece of paper and they were asked to point to their appropriate response (see Appendix D). These interviews lasted approximately 10-20 minutes.

Table 2: Translations for Interview Guidelines 3 and 4

With the help of an independent translator, ‘back translation’ was used to ensure that these translations were correct (Zikmund, 2002:361).

Interview Guideline 4 (see Appendix E) was designed for people who are non-employees of andBeyond Ngala and living in either of the two communities. Questions were identical to that of Interview Guideline 3, but respondents were asked their job title, and the question “I am (am not) proud to work at Ngala?” was omitted. This interview was designed to question community members about benefits received from and attitudes towards a pre-determined protected area close to their community, and to gauge their perceptions and depth of understand of this relationship. Names, ages, and sexes of respondents were not significantly beneficial to the outcomes of this research and were therefore omitted. The attitudes of residents within Welverdiend and Hluvukani who were not employed by andBeyond produced some intriguing results.

Facial Expressions Shangaan/Tsonga English

JJ Ni tsake ngopfu swinene Very happy

J Ni tsakile Happy

K A ni switivi I don’t know

L Ni kwatile Angry

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