3.1.2 Interviews
As the researcher had from the literature review a focus on the broad aspects to be covered in order to get input for building the questionnaires, semi-structured interviews were conducted, “so that the more specific issues can be addressed”
(Bryman, 2012, p. 472).
The interviews were interviewer-administered, two conducted via Skype, recorded through the software Call Recorder – Demo Version; and one personally, recorded
through the application Voice Recorder on a smartphone LG E-610. The interviews lasted between 37 and 54 minutes. After the interviews were conducted and recorded, they were transcribed in typed format for the analysis, and then the transcriptions were checked for accuracy. The interviews transcripts are available for consultation in Appendix B.
3.1.2 Sample description
A purposive sample consisting of three university instructors was adopted. As the interviews served the main purpose of getting input to inform the process of constructing the survey questionnaire, it was aimed to sample university instructors, which is the unit of interest defined by the research question, but that differed from each other in characteristics such as area of studies, years of experience in teaching and nationality (Bryman, 2012). Therefore, with the results, it was aimed to expand the topics obtained by the literature review, rather than getting definitive results for the study discussion or conclusion drawing.
Three interviews were conducted during February 2014 with university instructors, all females, two from Brazil and one from Germany. Two of them belong to Social Science and one from Natural Science. Two have in average five years of experience in teaching and one has over 30 years. The profiles of the interviewees are displayed on Table 2.
Table 2: Overview of interviewed cases.
Country Area of studies Teaching
experience Generation Interviewee 1 Brazil Social Sciences 5 years Net Generation Interviewee 2 Germany Social Sciences 4 years Net Generation Interviewee 3 Brazil Natural Sciences 31 years Baby Boomers
3.1.3 Interview guideline
The interview guideline consisted of five main points. Firstly, an introduction explained the interviewee the purpose of the interview, gave information about the procedures of the study, clarified the concept of media use and multitasking in classrooms, and elucidated about topics of anonymity of source, as suggested by Berger (2011).
Afterwards, a set of questions about the personal and professional profiles of the instructors were asked, followed by questions about their personal media use habits.
These questions aimed to explore the personal and professional characteristics that could be potential explanations for the nature of instructors’ attitudes towards media use and multitasking in class.
In the sequence, in line with Rosenberg and Hovland’s (1960) three component view of attitudes, three blocks of questions followed, asking firstly about instructors’ ideas and opinions regarding students’ media use habits in class – cognitive component;
secondly about their feelings towards the mentioned situation – affective component;
and finally about their actions in the referred scenario – behavioral component.
Especially the questions about attitudes were exposed in a way that attempted to give freedom to the informants, so that they could bring up new topics to their answers that could generate questions that were not previewed in the guideline. However, the framework with main and follow up questions was followed in order to ensure that the same predetermined areas of interest were covered in all interviews. The interview guideline is available for consultation in Appendix A.
3.1.4 Method of analysis
As the main function of the interviews was to provide resources to inform the construction of the survey questionnaire, the data collected needed to be classified and categorized; therefore the strategy of thematic analysis (Bryman, 2012) was employed.
The interviews were coded by themes that were predetermined by emerging points of the literature review, namely cognitive attitudes, affective attitudes, behavioral attitudes and personal characteristics. After conducting, transcribing and reading through the interviews, another theme was added: impacted aspects in the educational environment. The coded data were represented in a matrix, displaying the themes, the case, i.e. the interview, and the fragment of the interview that classifies under each theme, indicating the line number to which the fragment belongs, in order to locate it in the transcript.
3.1.5 Reliability and validity
Even though, as aforementioned, the results of the qualitative procedures were used for instrument development of the second phase of the research and did not aim to draw conclusive findings, measurements to guarantee quality in the procedures were taken into consideration. Lincoln and Guba (1985, as cited in Glogowska, 2011) consider a series of aspects to be more suitable for qualitative studies as criteria in order to seek trustworthiness:
• credibility - the findings make sense and are acceptable to be believed;
• dependability - the findings would be repeated in a similar context;
• confirmability/transparency - it is clear how the research was conducted;
• transferability - the findings would be relevant to another setting.
In order to ensure credibility, the procedures were documented (recorded audios of interviews, transcriptions, and coded data), allowing constant comparison and consultation. Besides this, the audios were crosschecked several times with the transcripts, and small corrections were made, so that the material for the analysis would have enough fidelity to what was collected. In order to obtain transparency, the researcher sought to specify every step of the procedures conducted and convey the findings in a thick description, as well on how they were employed to construct the survey questionnaire.
Considering that the sample was very small and served merely to get an impression of the attitudes of instructors and collect further ideas concerning media use and multitasking in classrooms, the validation of the procedures in terms of dependability
and transferability are more likely to be verified in the last phase of the study.
According to what Creswel (2009) suggests for mixed methods studies aiming instrument development, the first qualitative parts obtains themes and specific statements from participants, the following phase adopts the specific statements, items and themes for scales composing the survey questionnaire, and the final phase validates the instrument with a larger sample.