The Process of Field Study

The object of the field study was to interview 15 respondents to enable validation of the initial research model and formulation of questionnaire items. Data were transcribed to be subjected to content analysis.

4.2.1 The Interview Guide Development

As described in Section 3.4.2.1.2, the interview questionnaire was developed based on constructs and theories from the previous literature and studies. The complete interview questionnaire is presented in Appendix A. A fluent bilingual speaker of Bahasa Indonesia and English translated the English version of the semi-structured questions into Bahasa Indonesia. The complete interview questionnaire in the Bahasa

 Part of this chapter was presented at a conference via the following paper:

Urumsah, D., M. Quaddus, and J. Galbreath. 2010. Factors Influencing the Adoption of e-Services in Indonesian Airlines: A Field Study Approach. In The 15^th International Business

Information Management Association (IBIMA) Conference, Cairo, Egypt, 6-7 November.

67 Indonesia version is presented in Appendix B. The questionnaire was administered to the research respondents to obtain the research data. Data collection, data analysis, and results and interpretation are reported below.

4.2.2 Sample

In accordance with the topic of this study, the research subjects were Indonesian

consumers of the airline industry in Indonesia who already had adopted the e-Services. In terms of the airline company being included in the study, e-Services

must have been provided for consumers, encompassing online flight schedule information, booking and purchasing facilities. These requirements became the basis for choosing the respondents. As mentioned in Section 3.4.2.1.1, a combination of convenient, purposive and snowball sampling techniques was used to collect the data. Moreover, the researcher conducted a preliminary investigation to discover whether a respondent had already adopted e-Services or not. All participants took part in this study on a voluntary basis. The resulting participants, fifteen persons, were quite different demographically and demonstrated a range of experience, gender and age.

Table 4.1 Background Information of Participants Consumers Occupation Gender Age

group

68 As can be seen in Table 4.1 on the previous page, there were 8 males and 7 females with 7 persons (47%) between 31 and 40 years old, 6 persons (40%) between 21 and 30 years old, and 2 persons (13%) between 40 and 50 years old. Of the 15 participants, 3 persons (20%) were holders of doctoral degrees, 3 persons (20%) were holders of Master degrees, 6 persons (40%) were holders of Bachelor degrees, and 3 persons (20%) were holders of diploma degrees. The interviewees’

occupations were varied: university lecturers (4), university students (2), general staff (4), managers (2), business owners (2) and IT programmer (1). All of the respondents had been using computers at a medium level (33%) or a high level (67%). Therefore, it can be assumed that all of the respondents were quite familiar with computers and the Internet. In terms of domiciles, 5 persons lived in Yogyakarta (city of the study), 4 persons lived in Jakarta (about 600 kms from Yogyakarta), 4 persons lived in Bandung (400 kms from Yogyakarta), 2 persons lived in Surabaya (370 kms from Yogyakarta) and 2 persons lived in Solo (70 kms from Yogyakarta) which represented wide-ranging examples of Internet infrastructures in Java, Indonesia.

4.2.3 Data Collection

As mentioned in Section 3.4.2.1.2, this study used a semi-structured interview to

collect the research data. The interview guide was proofread by a colleague, a customer of a big Indonesian airline and holder of a doctoral degree, who also

became the first respondent of the interview. Minor corrections were identified based on the constructive feedback from the proofreading and interview.

The participants were 15 people, seven consumers of public Indonesian airlines and eight consumers of private Indonesian airlines. The interviews were recorded using audio tapes and supplemented with handwritten records. The recorded audio sessions were saved as mp3 files. The recorded interviews were replayed and transcribed.

Transcription was conducted carefully by listening to the tapes as many times as needed to avoid errors. The interview transcripts were then translated into English. A sample of an interview transcript is provided in Appendix C (Indonesian Version) and Appendix D (English Version).

69 4.2.4 Transcription Process

As most of the interviews were conducted in the Indonesian language, transcriptions underwent the following steps to achieve optimum outputs. Firstly, the researcher selected three research associates (RAs) who had bilingual competence (Indonesian-English). Secondly, the researcher made an example of interview transcript from a respondent. Thirdly, one of the RAs was asked to translate the transcripts into English.

The following steps were followed by the research associates (RAs):

1. RAs were instructed to listen to the audio recording for each interview at least three times. In between, they wrote down the first drafts of their transcriptions.

While listening to the audio materials, they made revisions of their transcriptions by looking at the similarities and dissimilarities between their transcriptions and the audio materials.

2. RAs were instructed to produce the Indonesian transcripts individually. This step was conducted based on the first step above. In this case, they finalised their transcriptions by improving the Indonesian used in the interviews.

3. RAs were instructed to translate the final transcriptions into English. Translation was expected to be more communicative rather than a word-to-word literal translation. For specific terms and concepts, RAs resourced to the researcher for consistency among the translations.

4. One of the RAs was asked to crosscheck the three individual transcriptions and translations to note consistencies and inconsistencies among these scripts. The other RAs were, then, required to revise their transcriptions and translations as needed.

5. Finally, all RAs were asked to submit all transcriptions and translations to the researcher, including the raw materials they had written since the beginning of the process.

Transcriptions and translations took place over approximately three months. At the completion of the RAs’ work, verification was conducted by the researcher. The following steps took place:

70 1. All transcriptions and translations were checked manually to look for any

inconsistencies in the texts. The researcher read the texts carefully to ascertain that terms and concepts in the texts were congruent with those in the research contexts.

2. The researcher listened to the audio recordings while reading the transcriptions to verify whether RAs had included all relevant information in the interview transcripts. Necessary information that the RAs may have missed was then captured.

3. The researcher checked and rechecked to be sure that all constructs and items had been extracted from the interviews into the relevant transcriptions and translations. During this process, one new construct was found from the interviews.

4. Finally, the researcher revised the transcriptions and translations for further use in data analysis.