Interviews

In this second phase data collection, face-to-face interview method was adopted with open-ended questions. Kvale (1983) defines the qualitative research interview as "an interview, whose purpose was to gather descriptions of the life-world of the interviewee

with respect to interpretation of the meaning of the described phenomena". The data collected from early years practitioners and managers through these interviews contributed to answer the four research questions.

5.1.1.1. Tool choice

The perspective of early years practitioners and managers with regard to nutrition education and their practices were captured through face-to-face interviews in the second phase that might help in developing concepts along with the first phase data. The advantages of face-to-face interview method were that answers would be spontaneous, and the communication would be synchronous between the interviewer and interviewee (Opdenakker, 2006). As the interviews were organised on one to one basis without any external influence or intrusion, the views shared reflected the individuals’ contemplations. The semi-structured interviews structure provided the flexibility to vary the sequence of questions and structure of the question which aided in making it a more personalised approach than the structured interviews question and answer section. This approach also provided an opportunity to nudge further into an answer to get a clearer understanding about the situation.

All the questions included in the interview were open-ended questions as they added valuable outlook in this research; unlike close-ended questions, open-ended questions provided the freedom to the respondents to express in their own words. This way of expression provided an opportunity to include examples from their experiences which added an extra level to understand the situation. The following section explains what was included in the questionnaire and why.

5.1.1.2. Interview questions development

An Office for standards in education (Ofsted) (2004) report stated that settings varied considerably in the effectiveness with which they implemented their food policies; a number of factors impeded settings from making good progress in providing effective nutrition education. The factors impeding early years settings in implementing nutrition education and how they vary between the settings were important for this research and to capture this information interviews with early years practitioners were conducted using open-ended questions with the help of an interview outline. Ofsted (2004) also mentioned of the early years settings and schools visited, the minority that were the most successful in developing and embedding children’s understanding of food and nutrition were those where the senior managers had a clear strategy for fitting it into the curriculum. The 10-minute interviews targeted at the managerial staff was to understand the institute’s policy regarding nutrition education and the support and encouragement they gave to the staff to implement the topic. In single staff settings like childminders this interview was conducted using the early years practitioner interview format.

As emphasised earlier online survey data analysis served as a guide to the topics to be included in the interviews. Although both the semi-structured interview outlines were developed as fully structured questions as seen in Appendices 2 and 3 Interview templates of managers and practitioners, these were used only as a guide and were not used in an exact format in the interviews. Most of the questions included in both managerial staff interviews and early years practitioners’ interviews were similar. The similarity in the topics was maintained as it would aid in analysing the topics and establishing the relationship between the staff. There were 10 questions in the

managers’ interview and the only questions which differed with the practitioners’ interview outlines were asking managers about their involvement in planning the nutrition education activities, and topics managers thought were important in children’s nutrition education. The other questions included were similar to some of the practitioners’ interview, so they were explained along with those.

There were 14 questions included in practitioners’ interview the topics for the questions along with the reason for inclusion are mentioned here:

Responsibility for nutrition education- this was included to understand the attitude of practitioners, this was included as many of the online participants mentioned parents or family as hindering factors, so wanted to understand if they took the responsibility or thought it was not their responsibility.

Nutrition education – enquiring if nutrition education was a part of the curriculum was a scene setting question to know the practitioners’ thoughts and also included questions such as if they knew it was a part of EYFS, if not in EYFS what and if they made nutrition-related observations. As the study was based on nutrition education, which is also one of the Early Learning Goals of the EYFS framework the practitioners and managers were asked about it. And as observations were a part of assessment in early years settings managers and practitioners were enquired about them and also the online data indicated there was inconsistency in recording observations.

Factors-The questions regarding institutes’ policy, training and resources were also included, as the online data indicated that there was lack of support in terms of resources, training and also staff collaboration. The answers might not only provide an insight into the beliefs of the practitioners but also the actuality by triangulation of both the interviews with online survey data.

Ideal age to start nutrition education was included in both the interviews as this determines the professionals’ approach towards early years nutrition education, although the online data indicated most of them agree early years was correct age, the practice of the vocalised view could be understood through interviews.

The other questions were framed around the implementation of nutrition education. The managers were asked about the topics and their involvement directly whereas for practitioners the questions were about learning experiences, teaching techniques, opportunities and memorable experiences. As the topics were suggested by practitioners in the online survey, the indirect questions might not only provide the way the topics were implemented but also to compare to that mentioned. Memorable incidents were asked in an attempt to capture the real-time experiences dealing with the nutrition education.

The interviews of both the managers and practitioners were ended by enquiring if there were any hindering factors to implement nutrition education and also if there was any more information they want to add regarding the topic.

The data collection during interviews was done through making notes of the key points and also audio recordings. Mock interviews were conducted with friends to establish the flow of interview and also understand the time frame to be expected for each interview. These interview templates might help in understanding the implementation of nutrition education but to understand its influence nutrition knowledge recall test was needed. The tool development is explained in next section.