Refining my research questions

In 1.5, I presented the research questions to which this thesis offers responses. In this section, I show how I arrived at those questions. I have elected to make this the first substantive section of this chapter since my research questions are at the heart of this enquiry, and they informed all the philosophical and methodological decisions I took.

Research questions pin down what the researcher wants to say, and ensure that the enquiry is manageable. They are the “big questions that both generate and are generated by all the smaller questions” (Pryor, 2010:162), and are of interest not only to the researcher but also to others who have a vested interest in the field, such as colleagues, supervisors, practitioners, policy makers – and of course, other researchers. It is crucial to articulate research questions accurately, since their phrasing informs the approach to the research itself, although they should “guide not dictate” the research (Brown, 2010:175): in my case, having different research questions would have led me to a different theoretical framework. Andrews (2003) argues that effective research questions need to be answerable, so ensuring they are clear and precise is crucial in assisting the researcher in making methodological decisions which will generate relevant and appropriate data. The research questions I eventually settled on shaped – and were shaped by – the responses I gleaned from participants, and therefore provide a prism through which I have viewed their lifeworlds (Newby, 2014:67).

Settling on suitable research questions is an iterative process (O’Leary, 2005), and much fine- tuning occurred as my project developed. The research questions which I respond to in this thesis are significantly different from those I articulated at the start of my doctoral journey. In my research proposal, I was interested in exploring the psychological effect that studying in the UK might have on Chinese post-graduate students. The questions which I drew up at that point were, in retrospect, unfocussed and unmanageably vast. I had seven (!) questions,

viz.:

1. What issues affect international students? How are these the same as, or different from, those which affect the student body as a whole?

2. To whom do international students turn to when in need of support?

3. To what extent is support provided on a peer or national community level? For instance, do Chinese students seek out support from co-nationals when in crisis?

4. Do different nationalities / communities attend to problems in the same way, and, by extension, is the problem particularly prevalent amongst one community, such as Confucian-heritage students?

5. Do international native speakers of English (students for the US, Ireland, Australasia, for instance) encounter similar issues?

6. How do home students deal with problems?

7. In what ways can current HE welfare provision be adapted to ensure that international students are adequately catered for?

Silverman (2015:35) points out that it is “common for novice researchers to take on what turns out to be an impossibly large research problem”, which requires modification before it can be addressed by a single-handed researcher, and by

the time I got to my reconnaissance study at the end of my first year of study (see 3.9.1), I had already refined these research questions. This was in the light of reading more about the field and similar studies: it became apparent that each of the original seven questions could feasibly be a thesis in its own right, and that, for instance, Questions 4, 5 and 6 would call for number-driven methods, and access to large numbers of respondents. In addition to insights from my reading, discussion with my colleagues and supervisors helped me pare down the

scope of the questions [3.6], and my reconnaissance

study had the following research questions:

1. What issues affect international students? How are these the same as, or different from, those which affect the student body as a whole?

2. To whom do international students turn to when in need of support?

3. To what extent is support provided on a peer or national community level? For instance, do Chinese students seek out support from co-nationals when in crisis? 4. In what ways can current HE welfare provision be adapted to ensure that international

students are adequately catered for?

[3.6_{] Initially, modifying the focus}

of my enquiry felt fraudulent, somehow, as if I was not delivering what I had promised. However, discussions with colleagues and supervisors, as well as my

engagement with the literature (e.g. Thomson & Walker, 2010), clarified that this kind of recalibration is a common feature of doctoral research: it is unlikely (and imprudent?) to have the same focus at the end of the enquiry as was proposed at the outset. Indeed, Taylor & Bogdan (1998:8) state that “… we begin our studies with only vaguely formulated research questions”. I would argue,

therefore, that my re-focussing was an indication of burgeoning knowledge which allowed me to make my enquiry more directed and powerful.

However, the reconnaissance study revealed that this iteration of my research questions was still problematic. Questions 1 and 2 focused too broadly on all international students, and Question 4 was more akin to a conclusion than a question. Andrews (2003) reassures the researcher that it can take a long time to fine-tune their research questions to a point where they make for a manageable project, as part of a process of “gradual transformation” (ibid., p60), and after my reconnaissance study I reflected in depth on precisely what I was interested in finding out. I thought about the lessons I had learned in the field, discussed at length with others and engaged further with the methodological literature. This resulted in the development of these research questions which I used in my pilot study:

1. How do Chinese post-graduate students make sense of their social and academic acculturation to UK HEIs?

2. What are the perceptions of Chinese post-graduate students of factors which confound and facilitate their social and academic acculturation in UK HE?

In due course, when I embarked on the main phase of the project, I recognised that the questions needed yet another modification if they were to reflect the themes which were emerging from my interviews. As a result, the questions were recast one final time, resulting in the two questions which I set out in 1.5, and to which I respond in Chapter 4,

viz.:

1. How do Chinese post-graduate students describe their academic and social acculturation in higher education in the UK?

2. What do Chinese post-graduate students perceive to be the factors which confound and facilitate their academic and social acculturation to higher education in the UK?

These two research questions are related, but are also epistemologically and

methodologically distinct. Question 1 has a research-driven goal, and focuses on my participants’ experience and understanding of their academic and social acculturation in higher education in the UK, as well as their “personal meaning and sense-making […] in their world” (Smith et al., 2009:46). Research-driven goals such as this can feasibly be explored with little or no a priori knowledge of the field of enquiry. However, they do not necessarily carry any practical implications, and since this thesis is a professional doctorate, it is incumbent upon me to speak to practice. Therefore, Question 2 has a

theory-driven goal, and, since it develops “an explanatory level account of factors,

impacts and influences” (ibid., p45, emphasis in original), and the findings which emerged from this question led to the suggestions for practice that I tender in Chapter 5.

I am aware that my research questions, in a number of ways, introduced positions of power into the relationships I had with my participants. This is because the questions reflected my interests in their experience of being a Chinese post-graduate student in the UK. It may be that what they wanted to talk about did not marry up with the thrust of my enquiry: what if some of the participants wanted to use the interviews as a forum to criticise provision, for instance? That said, Gillham (2001), Kvale (2007) and Smith et al. (2009) – among others – all argue that, whilst qualitative interviewers should respect the direction the participants wish to take during an interview, there is also a pragmatic need for the researcher to be able to maintain some level of control over the subject matter. Indeed, Rapley (2004: 26, in Silverman, 2015:168) argues that “interviewing is never just ‘a conversation’: the interview ‘may be conversational, but you as the interviewer […] decide which bit of talk to follow-up, [and] when to open and close various topics’.” As a result, I endeavoured to provide a space in which the participants could talk about what was important to them (see 3.11), as well as focussing on the aspects of their experience which I wished to explore.