Interviews as the data collection method

Participants were invited to an interview, during which they were asked a range of open ended questions related to the research question. In undertaking grounded theory research it is important to ensure that the data collection method is responsive to the emergence of concepts and categories in the data, to ensure that eventual theory is grounded with some degree of reliability in the data itself. Charmaz (2014) described intensive interviewing as an approach that is well suited to grounded theory, due to its open-ended approach in which the interviewee is someone with significant experience (incorporating either length or nature of experience) in the field being researched. Intensive interviewing commences with an interview guide with indicative questions, but then allows the researcher to follow the direction of the data elicited in the interview, allowing for an in-depth exploration of the experiences of the participant. Questions in an intensive interview are open-ended and make use of follow-up questions to clarify or expand on any unanticipated information elicited. Conversely more structured interviews have fixed questions, asked of each participant in the same way each time and requires prior knowledge of exactly what questions to ask (Charmaz, 2014). In my research field, little was known about the preceptor experiences, with the predominant literature focussing on the student experiences of the clinical learning environment as discussed in Section 2.4. Therefore, more structured interviews with fixed questions would not have allowed me sufficient flexibility to follow the data, in turn compromising the capacity within the data for saturation.

To accommodate the flexibility of questions in intensive interviewing, the ethics application included a set of indicative questions, which were approved, with the recognition that questions would necessarily evolve during the process of data collection. Throughout the interviews, in line with the style of intensive interviews, additional focussing questions were asked to extract meaning from the participant,

58 examples of these additional focusing questions can be found in Table 4.3. In a practical sense, this involved an interview by interview variation in questions that reflected the need to explore the direction of the participant’s responses where needed. It also required a longitudinal variation in the questions where either; the participants described something that the researcher needed to explore further with future participants, or where the sequence of the questions needed to be refined to elicit greater clarity in responses. Longitudinal change occurred in the interview questions in response to the need to add additional focussing questions that followed the

emergence of categories in earlier interviews (Appendix 5); the changed set of questions reflecting these additional focussing questions are provided in Appendix 6.

The original research plan intended that interviews were to be undertaken on a face to face basis, with the researcher and participant meeting in person at a venue of mutual convenience. To achieve this, given a proportion of the participants were in New South Wales, it was necessary to travel from Hobart to Sydney and surrounding regions for data collection. Therefore sampling of participants was conducted to some degree in blocks early in the research, and evolved across the data collection period to more targeted individual interviews as the project progressed. Interviews began in August 2013 and concluded in March 2015, with a total of 19 interviews conducted over the data collection period. This initial face to face model of interviewing was amended toward the end of the interview schedule due to difficulties in accessing participants, as a result the later interviews were conducted by telephone. This change in interview procedure is discussed in more detail in Section 4.3.5. In total 16 interviews were conducted face to face, with the final three being via telephone.

59 Table 4.3. Example of using unscripted focussing questions in intensive interviews.

Participant Question Commentary

Richard What can you tell me about your experiences with performing the role of a preceptor?

This initial scripted question elicited answers from Richard that were highly student centred, which gave rich data on how the student impacted his experience, however he did not extend beyond the student-centric answer initially.

…that's experiences with the actual student. What other experiences in performing the role?

By asking this additional

unscripted question I was able to obtain additional data associated with how he experienced the role, what support he had experienced in the role and what aspects of his experience

motivated him in the role.

Each interview lasted between 28 and 89 minutes. The interviews were audio recorded for future transcription, enabling me to listen to the recordings between each interview and make notes of those elements in the data that needed to be coded, along with allowing me to memo points for future exploration. This in effect became a preliminary coding process (see Section 4.3.3) that allowed me to work with the data whilst also conducting interviews in a confined period of time. Interview transcripts were then

60 generated following the initial process described, through the use of a third party transcription service, to allow for a second more detailed approach to initial coding.