The interview protocol consisted of a series of open-ended, exploratory questions. To ensure proper attention to detail, a skeletal set of rudimentary questions was scripted (see Appendices 5 to 7) to act as a protocol cum checklist to confirm that all relevant
Figure 5: Participating Students Academic Profiles ID No. Previous Degree Previous Specialism Previous Degree obtained in This Degree This Specialism
1 BA Graphic Design PRC MA Graphic Design
2 BSc Product Design Taiwan MA Design Interaction
3 BA Animation PRC MA Animation
4 BA Fine Art PRC MA Illustration
5 BA Illustration Hong Kong MA Illustration 6 MA Graphic Design PRC MPhil Graphic Design
7 BA Animation PRC MA Animation
8 BSc Vehicle Design PRC MA Vehicle Design 9 BSc Industrial Design PRC MA Product Design
10 BA Animation PRC MA Animation
11 BA Textiles PRC MA Textiles
12 BA Communication Art Hong Kong MA Graphic Design 13 BA Graphic Design PRC MA Graphic Design
14 BA Textiles Taiwan MA Textiles
15 BA Animation PRC MA Animation
16 BA Graphic Design PRC MA Graphic Design
17 BA Illustration PRC MA Illustration
18 BA Animation PRC MA Animation
19 BSc Textiles Taiwan MA Textiles
20 BA Animation PRC MA Animation
21 BA Illustration PRC MA Illustration
22 BSc Product Design PRC MA Product Design 23 BSc Vehicle Design PRC MA Vehicle Design
24 BA Illustration PRC MA Illustration
25 MA Graphic Design PRC MPhil Graphic Design 26 BSc Vehicle Design PRC MA Vehicle Design
27 BA Animation Hong Kong MA Animation
28 BA Fine Art Taiwan MA Illustration
29 BA Textiles PRC MA Textiles
30 BSc Product Design PRC MA Product Design
topics of interest were being covered, and in a consistent manner. The preparation of this checklist of questions was to prove particularly useful for ensuring that no areas of importance were overlooked, whilst also allowing specific in-depth probing to be undertaken whenever the situation dictated it. Additionally the checklist acted as an anchor to keep the dialogue within the necessary boundaries so that appropriate comparisons could be made between all of the students’ comments through all three sets of interviews.
The questions used were intended to ensure gentle inquisitive probing so as to slowly access the information required for this research project. The researcher was sensitive to the students reaction to this questioning and took great care not to offend or upset their sensitivities. It was necessary to be aware that these students were young, vulnerable individuals in a completely unfamiliar environment. The questions themselves were dealing with personal experiences and concerns of these students, so it was necessary to be aware that at any time one of the questions might arouse a students innermost feelings.
The first set of interviews were undertaken three months after the start of the first term, around December 2009, thereby allowing the participating students sufficient time for issues and concerns to emerge since their arrival in the UK. The questioning encompassed any concerns that they had felt or any experiences or challenges that they had faced in their first three months in the UK; and how these concerns, experiences and challenges had been handled. Subsequently during the Intermediate interviews in September 2010, and particularly during the Final interviews in May 2011 (by which time the students had been exposed to the UK educational environment for almost two years) there were further extensive discussions about their experiences and concerns. Their main issues seemed to centre upon language problems, academic differences and social difficulties, and how these had changed over the two-year duration of their courses.
All of the questioning was done in an open-ended manner to allow them to speak freely upon their experiences in as open and complete a way as possible. The students were reminded that they could say anything that they wanted to, and whatever they did say would remain confidential and anonymous. They were
repeatedly asked if they had any questions that they would like to ask of the researcher or if there was anything else that they would like to add ‘for the record’. The few that did respond to this mainly asked what was the researchers opinion of the discussions that they had just had, or what opinion did the researcher have of the Chinese students themselves?
The interviews were conducted in the neutral location of a seminar room, where there was minimal chance of any disturbance, where both interviewer and interviewee would be equally at ease with neither gaining any ‘benefit’ from the location. The environment was purposefully kept basic, with just an iPod (as the audio-recording apparatus) along with paper and pens for field notes (see Figure 6, page 77). The student’s permissions to allow the recording of their interviews were obtained before the recording apparatus was employed. The choice of an iPod as the recording device was a conscious decision as it is an item that most students are very familiar with and would therefore lessen any possible anxieties caused by the process of recording with any larger or more complicated pieces of equipment.
The interview room was quiet, warm and comfortable; all designed to achieve a relaxing atmosphere. Sufficient time was allocated for each of the interviews (on average approx. 45 minutes) to allow for full and complete discussions with no urgency and no distractions allowed to impair the environmental ambience. This allowed the students to speak openly, without reservation; the interviewer assisted the free-flow of conversation, where necessary, by paraphrasing techniques such as simplifying, clarifying and summarising. Minimal verbal responses from the interviewer further aided the continuity of dialogue from the student to the researcher throughout the interviews.
The interviews were later transcribed verbatim by an independent qualified transcription service, thereby aiding both rigour and trustworthiness due to the transcribers impartiality, neutrality of association and their professionalism. Each student was then given a copy of their own transcribed interview and asked to verify the accuracy of its contents. It is a testament to the quality of the verbatim transcription service that all of the students accepted the veracity of their transcripts without requiring any alterations. However, simply transferring words from a
recording device to paper, even via high quality transcription, is not in itself sufficient. When people are in conversation, only a proportion of their message is communicated in the actual words that they use (Cruttenden 1997). A variable amount can be transmitted via the way that people speak, with tone and inflection being good indicators of a whole range of feelings and meanings that do not always readily transfer to standard transcription (Wells 2006). These and other non-verbal communications, such as body language and facial expressions, were noted by the researcher in field notes, which when used together with the verbatim texts helped to give a fuller picture of the context, as well as the content, of the interviews (Grabe 2004).
The field notes were employed, alongside the transcripts, to recollect the mood and character of the interviews and to thereby place the whole thing into context. These notes covered two main areas: descriptive information and reflective information, that augmented the researcher’s memory of the session and thereby supplemented the conventional transcripted data. The notes provided a coherent description that fostered self-reflection and aided in the recollection of the context of the interview to produce meaning and understanding of the overarching social situation of the phenomenon being studied.
The interview procedures determined that the same person undertook all of the interviews, thus ensuring minimal variation in interviewing style or practice, and also ensuring that the overall management and control of the research procedure was constant throughout. Due to the interpretative nature of this research project, all interactive investigations were undertaken by means of audio-recorded, semi- structured, interviews with written field notes of observations of the students throughout the questioning process. By such means, a greater depth of insight and reliability was added to the investigative process.
Throughout the interviews, the interviewer used bracketing (the act of suspending judgement) to gently explore the depths of the ‘lived experiences’ (Heidegger 1998) of the respondents regarding their involvement within the unfamiliar landscape of UK education. The relaxed atmosphere allowed the interviewees the freedom to be reflective, while the interviewer took advantage of any opportunity to explore more
deeply any issues of interest that emerged naturally. The interviews continued until the data was saturated, as demonstrated by repeated duplication of responses and frequent silences. The interviewer wrote basic field notes immediately upon the conclusion of each interview (see Figure 6, page 77), these were based upon observations during each specific session. These field notes incorporated the interviewer's clarifications and reflections and chronicled any procedural matters outside of the ordinary. The notes were later employed as complementary information during the analysis of each students’ interview.
Subsequently, all of the audio-recorded interviews were professionally transcribed in a verbatim manner; because correct analysis depended upon the examination of precise interview data, and complete immersion within that data was the best way to fully engage with, and properly comprehend, the students’ experiences and concerns.
Initial set of interviews
(January 2010)The initial interviews, averaged thirty minutes duration, started with preparatory questions concerning the participants’ personal and academic backgrounds and whether they had access to any support structures (relatives or contacts) within the UK. This being our opening discussion it was taken rather slowly at first to put the students at their ease. After this deliberate start the interview was broadened to explore their experiences of the university, tutors, fellow students and the UK in general. As their UK experiences had only consisted of around three months at this point, it was probably unreasonable to expect too much profundity. However, the concerns and experiences that they had gained were discussed in as much detail as possible. Nonetheless, all student concerns were fully recorded and any that were of significance were noted as requiring follow-up questioning in the next set of interviews, where further details could be obtained and expanded upon in an appropriate longitudinal manner.