Method of Data Collection and Interview Guide Development

Data were collected through interviews, a primary qualitative approach to understanding others (Fontana and Frey, 2003). According to Patton (2002, p. 341), “Qualitative interviewing begins with the assumption that the perspective of others is meaningful, knowable, and able to be made explicit. We interview to find out what is in and on someone else’s mind, to gather their stories.” Thus, the interview allows us to understand subjective meanings (Flick, 1992) by taking seriously the notion that people are experts on their own experience and so best able to report how they experience a particular event or phenomenon (Darlington and Scott, 2002), by providing true and accurate pictures of themselves and their lives (Denzin and Lincoln, 2003).

As a consequence, interviews have the potential to provide rich and highly illuminating material (Robson, 2002). In addition, interviewing is a powerful data collection strategy as it uses one-to-one interaction between researchers and interviewees. This interaction gives the interviewer the opportunity to clarify topics or questions and ask for explanations of vague answers (through prompts) (Cohen et al., 2011).

Open-ended interviews, in particular, allow respondents to express their own understanding in their own terms, which may lead to a reconceptualization of the issues under study (Patton, 2002, Teddlie and Tashakkori, 2009). Among the three main approaches of data collection through open-ended interviews, the informal conversational interview (unstructured interview), the general interview guide approach (semi-structured), and the standardised interview (Patton, 2002; Denzin and Lincoln, 2003), the semi-structured interview was chosen. Taking into account the specific aspects of the current research, and acknowledging that each approach has strengths and weaknesses, the semi-structured interview was considered as the most appropriate choice. This decision was dictated by the following specific reasons:

a) The current research needed to combine the strength of both unstructured and structured interviews and thus making semi structured interviews appropriate : b) The researcher want to retain a form of structure that gives the questions a logical

sequence and also makes the process of interviewing more controllable and flexible for the interviewer, as the interviewer is guided by the schedule and not dictated by it as recommended by (Smith, 1995; Patton, 2002);

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c) The researcher is looking for rich data and it is only a flexible approach that would do that. This flexibility can provide rich data as it applies both to the researcher and the respondent. The researcher is free to follow up (probe) interesting topics that emerge during the interview, and the respondent is able to give a fuller picture (Smith, 1995; Kvale and Brinkmann, 2009; Cohen et al., 2011)

d) The cross sectional and mixed-methods character of the current research was incompatible with the use of an unstructured or a structured approach. The former would fit better in a pure qualitative study, and the latter in a study that had not already used another structured approach to data collection (survey).

On the other hand, as with every research tool, the interview has its disadvantages. For instance, it is not a neutral tool of data collection but an active interaction between people, which leads to negotiated results (Fontana and Frey, 2003), the researcher used his interviewing skills to being neutral as possible in order to avoid bias in the current research, and the interview guide helped this. The interview situation is influenced by the personal characteristics of the interviewer, including race, class, ethnicity, and gender (Denzin and Lincoln, 2003) and the researcher acknowledges these challenges as such a good brief about the research is done before the interview starts. Another disadvantage concerns the inconvenience it may cause respondents as it requires a considerable commitment of time on behalf of them, and often their willingness to talk and reflect on deeply personal experiences (Darlington and Scott, 2002) and the researcher avoided this by ensuring that appointments were done at least two weeks before the date of the interview to ensure that respondents plan their time well before the interview. In addition, the interview may not fully protect their anonymity (Cohen et al., 2011) as a result, such issues may be perceived from potential interviewees as disincentives to participate, especially when a research focuses on vulnerable populations and sensitive topics and the researcher avoided this by simply not taking down the respondents’ names.

With regard to the structure of individual research questions, each semi structured question had more than one part; the first was the main question, and the second included probes. The first part was linking conceptually each interview question to the research questions, and simultaneously was opening the discussion on the topic of each question in an easy way for the respondents, trying to keep a balance between too open and too closed questions.

Although too open questions may elicit long and rich narratives, and are significant in successful in-depth interviewing (Bernard and Ryan, 2010), this rather applies to respondents who are more talkative, and it can ‘block’ those who are not. For this reason a

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more gradual approach to interviewing was preferred. After opening the topic of each question, the second part of the question built upon the flexibility that the semi-structured interview gave the interviewer, which allowed for frequent use of descriptive probes. Probes are essential in shedding more light into aspects of the phenomena under study (Patton, 2002). In fact, descriptive probes were used as the means through which the phenomena under study are both explored and explained. As Darlington and Scott (2002, p. 57), among others, point out, “descriptive questions about what and how things happened are particularly useful in encouraging people to describe their experiences.” In addition, such questions give the freedom to the interviewee to express whatever they want to say without any restrictions (Patton, 2002). Depending on the richness of the answers given, second probes were used when necessary, asking the interviewees if there was anything else they wanted to add.

The interview-guide comprised of eight questions, including an opening and a closing question). The first and second question are introductory questions, aiming to open the conversation in an easy way for the interviewee and to establish rapport and understanding what consumers understand about sustainability of rural water supply. Interview questions 3 and 4, aim to identify any roles of the consumer and any additional roles that consumers feel could be vital for sustainability of rural water supplies. Question 5 aims at identifying the pillars of a sustainable water point and how their absence affects the feelings of the consumer. Questions 6 and 7 aim at identifying the root causes of problems that fail the sustainability pillars and proposals on how to manage the root cause problems. Question 8 aims at identifying the outcome of satisfaction on rural water supply sustainability.

The interview-guide was pre-tested on a face to face interaction in Chiwamba village in Lilongwe District, the rural area of the capital city of Malawi depending on what was more convenient for the participants, and resulted in a positive feedback suggesting minor changes with regard to the length and wording (ambiguity) of some questions. Such questions were simplified and tailored to the everyday language of the respondents (Kvale and Brinkmann, 2009; Cohen et al., 2011), leading to the final form of the interview-guide.