PARTICIPANTS .1 Sample

A total of 12 participants were selected. Six of them were black Zambians living in Monze, a small town 200 kilometres south of Lusaka, the capital city of Zambia. Since no eligible whites lived in Monze, six white Western migrants living in Lusaka were selected to make up the rest of the discussion group. They were recruited through mutual acquaintances and had to be transported to Monze.

Although the researcher intended to have an equal number of men and women in the group, no white men were available for inclusion in the group. So the white participants consisted of women only. As for the Zambian participants, only one woman was willing to participate, and she was joined by five men. The demographic details of the participants are given below.

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Table 2: Demographic Information of Participants

Number Sex Age Culture Education

1 Female 37 White (American) Master’s degree

2 Female 26 White (Canadian) Bachelor’s degree

3 Female 19 White (Danish) High school

4 Female 19 White (Danish) High school

5 Female 19 White (Danish) High school

6 Female 22 White (American) Bachelor’s degree

7 Male 36 Zambian Diploma

8 Male 37 Zambian Certificate

9 Female 26 Zambian Diploma

10 Male 27 Zambian Diploma

11 Male 38 Zambian Diploma

12 Male 42 Zambian Master’s degree

The sum of the ages of the participants was 348, with the mean age being 29, and the mode being 19. All the participants had at least a high school certificate, which was required from the outset so as to ensure understanding of particular conceptual metaphors to be used during the discussion.

5.4.2 Sampling Design

Convenience sampling was used to select the participants. This involved sampling

participants who were readily available (Cooper & Schindler 2008:701) or most conveniently available (Zikmund 1994:368). Hence the sample was probably biased and the findings could not be generalised to the larger population.

5.5 PROCEDURE

The services of a university lecturer were used to act as moderator. At the age of 44, he had lectured for close to 10 years at university level in Zambia. He demonstrated knowledge of social processes although his field of specialisation was in the Agricultural Sciences. On that basis, he was requested by this researcher to assist lead the discussions. He stimulated discussion and ensured the discussion remained focussed and on topic.

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The focus group discussions were held in the staff lounge of the Health Help International (HHI), a local Non-Government Organisation (NGO) in Monze. The discussions were held on the afternoon of 10 June 2008.

An acquaintance of the researcher arranged for the convenient selection of the white Western participants. They were given the date for the discussion and informed about the transport logistics. On the day of the discussion, a vehicle was allocated to pick up the white participant from Lusaka and bring them back to Lusaka after the discussions.

The black participants were also conveniently sampled, although not from Lusaka, but from within the Monze community. Even though it has been stated in the earlier section that Monze is a small town, it has a relatively large population, which however is predominantly rural. This placed a challenge on the researcher as it was rather relatively difficult to obtain records from the local authority in order to randomly select participants as most rural people may not appear in the registers at the municipality offices. The rural people instead appear in the records of their local village headmen. Besides, the records at the municipal offices are not accurate often as they are not updated regularly.

Therefore, the black Zambian respondents were selected conveniently as they were known to the researcher. Furthermore, they had their own means of transport to get to the meeting venue, a virtue that greatly assisted as the researcher had already been strained financially transporting the white respondents all the way from Lusaka and back, a distance of close to 600 kilometres. Additionally, the sampled black Zambian respondents were of a certain level of education, at least high school and above, who definitely had the ability to articulate issues in one way or the other, particularly as far as discussing their experiences in interacting white Western migrants is concerned.

The white respondents were not initially known to the researcher. They were conveniently sampled through an acquaintance to the researcher, who had worked with these people in various community projects around Zambia. These respondents were relatively young people, as revealed in table 2, in the age column, who were in Zambia from various Western

countries working in a variety of Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) as volunteers.

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The white respondents were conveniently sampled due to the challenges of locating white Western respondents in the little town of Monze. There were no white people to be sampled from Monze at the time of conducting this study. Therefore, through an acquaintance to the researcher, six white Western respondents were identified in Lusaka.

The participants were divided into two discussion groups of six people each according to their culture. A third discussion group consisted of all 12 participants. In doing so, the

researchers could investigate both intracultural processes in the separate groups for Zambians and Westerners, as well as intercultural processes in the mixed group. Before commencing the discussions, but with the video camera already turned on, each participant was asked to provide his or her demographic data. These are shown in Table 2. As the whites were to return to Lusaka on the same day and were unavailable for another discussion on a later date, all three discussions were held that afternoon.

The participants of the two cultural groups were required to express their experiences to and interact with members of the other culture freely. In addition, they could ask questions to seek clarification from the other participants as well as clarify their own thoughts.