The pilot study of the project

In accordance with the methodological decisions, the research procedure and the data collection instruments were piloted at ASTU to examine their applicability. Individual interviews and focus group interviews were conducted. The researcher used his spare time during the period to arrange interviews. In order to minimise the observer effect on the observed, observations were concealed from the participants and were only carried out after the focus group interviews had been conducted and the researcher had become acquainted and familiarised himself with the participants (Gall et al. 2003: 264). Participants agreed to this arrangement. Summaries of the observations were shown to the participants to confirm their accuracy. The confidentiality of the data was guaranteed.

In the research proposal, it was planned to communicate to the participants with the help of the Office of the Dean of Students and Student Union of the selected universities. During the pilot study the individual interview participants were identified and accessed with the help of the Office of the Dean of Students of ASTU. Accordingly, the interviews were conducted with the Public Relations officer and the Student Affairs officer. However, it was challenging to organise Student Service participants and the students and lecturers for the focus group interviews. Thus, the researcher was assisted by one of the Student Service office focus group participants to access and organise Student Service and student focus groups, and a lecturer

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acquaintance to access and organise the lecturer focus group. The researcher decided to employ assistants for administrative arrangements of the empirical research.

Another challenge during the pilot study was related to the second level student focus group interviews. While the first level focus group interviews were arranged with participants from the same ethnic background for the Amhara, Oromo, Tigray student groups and a heterogeneous non-dominant group, the second level focus group interviews were arranged by selecting individuals from all first level student focus group interview participants to form a new heterogeneous group. Whilst the first level interviews were conducted successfully, the latter was not very successful. For instance, when an issue pertaining to differing opinions arising from the first level interviews was tabled for discussion, such as the reasons for students from different ethnic groups being suspicious of an out-group or the equal and unequal treatment of students by lecturers in terms of ethnic, linguistic and religious differences, most of the participants kept silent. At times they nodded indifferently.

The researcher consulted with the Public Relations officer to obtain information on the reasons for student participants being indifferent during heterogeneous focus group interviews. The officer pointed out that grouping students from different ethnic backgrounds together for discussions on sensitive issues such as ethnic and religious issues would be counterproductive and might instigate hostility. He advised discussions based on homogeneous ethnicity. Some students who were selected for the interview informally told the researcher that they did not feel at ease to openly express their opinions in the presence of participants from another ethnic background. Hence, the second level focus group interviews were dropped from the study procedure because organising participants according to homogenous ethnicity would be more feasible to obtain reliable data than grouping participants into heterogeneous groups since they would refrain or withdraw from participating when they become suspicious of participants from other ethnic backgrounds (cf. Dornyei 2007: 131). Hence, instead of the second level focus group interviews, informal focus group

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interviews were conducted with three participants at each study site during the actual research which followed the pilot study to verify data and to clarify pertinent differing opinions.

A third challenge was related to the use of a camera. Firstly, using a video camera was challenging for the researcher. Secondly, the use of a video camera would keep participants from airing their opinions on sensitive issues relating to ethnic and religious matters. Thus, the use of a camera was dropped. In addition, the envisaged procedure to consult with and organise participant groups through the office of the Dean of Students was challenging because the staff were preoccupied with office duties. This procedure was thus dropped. Instead participants were consulted and organised with the help of the Student Union office of each university in collaboration with research assistants recruited from offices at the study sites. Yet another challenge was that it was difficult to conduct the observation per the initial plan because inter-group scenarios varied in nature and were found to be difficult to manage, and the process was reformed to use three scenarios in which any of the student participants were found to be engaged. Thus, observations were conducted according to separate schedules after the researcher had established good rapport and friendship with conveniently selected voluntary student participants (see Appendix II-D).

5.3 SUMMARY

The major objective of this chapter was to outline the design of the research based on methodological insights obtained from the contextual review, as well as the global literature review and the theoretical and conceptual frameworks presented in Chapters 2, 3 and 4 respectively. Chapter 5 discussed the rationale for the selection of a case study approach and qualitative methods. It highlighted the instrumentality of the selected data collection strategies in terms of selecting study sites, participants and data collection instruments. It described the analytical strategies used to collate, code and interpret the collected data.

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