Interviewee sampling and recruitment

Morse (1994, p. 228, cited by Andrade, 2009) defined the good interview participant as the “one who has the knowledge and experience the researcher requires, has the ability to reflect, is articulate, has the time to be interviewed, and is willing to participate in the study”. The precision and rigour of a qualitative research sample is assessed by “its ability to represent salient

characteristics which enable detailed exploration of the central themes and questions which the researcher wishes to study” (Ritchie, Lewis, Elam, Tennant, & Rahim, 2014, p. 113).

In Trusts T1 and T3, potential representatives of the key staff groups specified in Section 3.3 above were identified initially via recommendations or suggestions from a senior librarian; in some cases the librarian actually contacted such potentially suitable participants on the researcher’s behalf and ascertained provisionally their agreement to participate. (The librarians’ offers to contact potential participants on the researcher’s behalf in their respective Trusts were accepted on account of the difficulties anticipated or experienced in recruiting participants; the researcher felt that potential participants would be more likely to accede to a request to participate in the research project if mediated via a Trust manager.) The research office at T1 was not able to assist the researcher in identifying potential participants. In T3, two participants within community nursing services were initially identified and contacted by the research manager at the researcher’s request; he also contacted a clinical psychologist, who was unwilling to participate. In Trust T4, the research manager

insisted that potential participants be selected by a junior member of the R&D support staff. In all three Trusts, efforts were made by the researcher herself also to identify potential participants via the respective intranets or websites. In T1, however, this was unsuccessful, as the staff information on the T1 intranet (to which she had been given access via the library staff) was not up to date.

The potential for bias in referring along a line of contacts who may give similar information is acknowledged (Erickson, 1979); however, the use of insider contacts and knowledge was needed here to supplement the researcher’s initial selection of potential participants, as otherwise it would have been difficult for her to determine among the individuals listed within the available information sources the most appropriate people to interview (Bryman, 2012; Noy, 2008). It was appropriate particularly with IT staff, since, as Botta and his fellow researchers have indicated (Botta, Werlinger, Beznosov, et al., 2007; Botta, Werlinger, Gagné, et al., 2007), not only can they be difficult to recruit, as was the researcher’s experience in T1, but also roles within information security can be widely distributed among staff members in a manner that cannot be readily ascertained other than via referrals or recommendations. According to Streeton, Cooke, and Campbell (2004, p. 38), “… this weakness [of depending on referrals] may be balanced by the benefits of providing contacts in otherwise researcher-inaccessible areas. Insider knowledge gained through this type of contact is of particular use in finding the best person to approach in an organisation, irrespective of their job title”.

The initial contacts via the librarians in some instances meant that recruitment processes were not fully standardised. It could possibly have led participants to frame their understanding of the research topic primarily in terms of information services managed by the library, which was not the researcher’s intention. In terms of identifying suitable potential participants, librarians may have been more likely to approach staff who were in regular contact with library services; however, the clinical participants sought were already likely to have been in regular contact by nature of their staff development responsibilities, and members of non-clinical staff groups via their specific work roles.

Also, the highly stratified nature of the sample sought meant that the pool of potential participants available to the librarians was, in any case, limited. Ten participants in all were recruited through referrals from intermediaries: three in T1 (two via the librarian T1-01, another via the HR manager T1-03), six in T3 (all via the librarian T3-01), and two (one, T4-07, via the librarian T4-6, and the other T4-19, via the nurse educator T4-05) in T4.

Individuals identified initially were contacted by the researcher via email or letter with information about the study and an invitation to take part. In some instances, where participants asked for

specific information regarding the scope and nature of the questions, the relevant version of the interview guide was provided to participants in advance.

It was apparent from the literature review, from one of the pilot interviews, and from initial contacts with potential research participants that problems of access to online published information are a

“site of silence”, that is, they are known about, but not paid attention to or discussed (Clarke, 2003;

Sen & Spring, 2013). Some prospective and actual research participants (e.g T2-02) seemed to have difficulty understanding the nature of the enquiry. Several published studies (e.g., Hughes, Joshi, Lemonde, & Wareham, 2009) referred only briefly to technology- or policy-related barriers to information seeking and use, and did not attempt to describe or analyse them in any detail. To address the difficulty that participants might have in recalling, conceptualising or paying attention to the phenomena of interest, and to focus their reflections on them in advance of the interview, those who agreed to participate were sent two brief research reports: Prince, Cass, & Klaber (2010) and Technical Design Authority Group (2009), referred to subsequently as the “TDAG survey”. It was felt by the researcher that the TDAG survey could provide a useful checklist of information access problems; also that provision of this material could serve as a “trigger”, engaging the attention and interest of participants, and stimulating their recall and reflection in relation to their own

circumstances, far more effectively than could her initial email invitation and information sheet alone. Trigger material is commonly used in problem-based learning as a means of engaging

students (e.g. Murray & Savin-Baden, 2000). The perceived advantages of providing participants with this material were felt at the time to outweigh substantially the possible risk that the conclusions of Prince et al. (2010), in particular, might unduly influence their views. The TDAG survey report, being just a summary statistical report without comments or conclusions, was not thought to present a risk. However, it could be argued that this strategy could have been avoided; other approaches to addressing the perceived site of silence, such as developing possible probes within the interview guides to follow up on questions in more detail, or providing participants with a simple checklist to prompt recall of barrier phenomena, could have been adopted instead (cf. den Outer, Handley, &

Price, 2012).

For clinical staff, LIS staff and T&D staff, the TDAG survey was used as a checklist. The interview guide for clinical staff included an invitation to comment on both articles, although this was intended as a subsidiary question, and frequently not pursued.

Only one participant (T4-10) offered any comment specifically on their content. The Trust-based participants' comments relating to information access problems, as described within the results

chapters, were all detailed and specific, avoiding generalisations. They also varied widely according to individual circumstances, and by Trust. Contrary to Prince et al.’s claims of robustness of

infrastructure, they indicated a variety of IT infrastructure problems in addition to policy issues.

Since the terms of the latter’s analysis and conclusions (relating to risk management policy and platforms for delivery of e-resources) did not appear to be reflected within the results, it is suggested that the overall impact of sending participants the two articles is likely to have been limited.

Interviews were sought and conducted with key informants in selected external organisations whose importance was apparent from background information or indicated by participants: the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), the local medical school, and a secure web gateway (SWG) vendor with a sizeable NHS market share. This particular SWG (identified within the results as SWG3) was in use within both T3 and the specialist acute trust where one of the pilot interviewees, P2, worked. To provide a broader perspective on issues in the NHS in England as a whole, it had originally been planned to conduct semi-structured interviews also with publishers of e-resources. In the event, however, all the researcher’s attempts to contact publishers proved fruitless. The researcher’s attempts to recruit a participant at the outsourced IT provider S3 were also unsuccessful.