Semi-structure interview

4.11.1 Reason for using semi-structured interviews

The reason that interviews were undertaken as one of the approaches in this study was because this method provided rich information, in-depth details, and new insights directly from the interviewees (Seaton and Bennett 1996). This approach allows further questions to be explored apart from those prepared originally that could offer a clear understanding of the topic (Rubin and Rubin 1995; Seaton and Bennett 1996), thereby, providing a greater clarity to the findings of this research (Foddy 1993).

Having hill tribe people interact with the researcher in the focus groups, not only helped the researcher modify her interviewing and questions to make them compatible with the respondents‟ own terminology, but also helped overcome their reluctance to engage with the researcher, resulting in creating a comfortable atmosphere and building confidence to talk with the researcher on a one-to-one basis. At this stage of the research, individual semi-structured interviews were deemed the most appropriate approach rather than other interviewing techniques. For example, structured interviews were not appropriate because the researcher

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might accidentally allow a priori assumptions about responses to get in the way of the research.

A survey was also inappropriate for the same reason, even though open-ended questions could have been employed, most answers from open-ended questions tend to be unclear or vague (Bernard 2000; Mason 2002). This happens because most people will not have that much patience to carefully write down how they really feel or answer it in great detail. These techniques only aim to get information that can be related to the prepared checklist without allowing any more of the possibilities to be added (Fontana and Frey 1994). Therefore, it is important that researcher should not yet produce a rigid interview structure in advance (Mason 2002) as the role of this tool at this stage is to explore and gain further insights from participants to use for developing a questionnaire in the second stage. Mason (2002) supports the reason for choosing a semi-structured interview over an unstructured interview by explaining that it is not possible to gather data in a purely unstructured interview as the decisions and judgments of the researcher will somehow affect the form of the structure and aim of the data generation process.

Another reason for choosing semi-structured interviews over other types of interviews is because semi-structured interviews are more conversational, while still controlled and structured (Foddy 1993). Questions developed from existing literature as well as from the analysis of the focus groups were asked according to an interview schedule (Appendix 4) prepared ahead of time. Mason (2002) argues that this schedule acts as a checklist to help the researcher focus and guide their ontological and epistemological positions.

Therefore, the use of semi-structured interviews gave an understanding of the perceptions of participants without a priori assumptions. In addition, the relatively small number of potential interviewees made semi-structured interviews possible and allowed the exploration of issues that were raised earlier in the process and used later to guide the development of the questionnaire. Nevertheless, the interview approach has limitations including higher costs and time demands. Moreover, the interviewer has to try to be objective and competent and recognise that they may be biased and that the information obtained may be too bulky or too complicated to transcribe or reduce (Brunt 1997). However, these limitations were recognised, and partially resolved by piloting the interview with the supervisory team in order to make sure the interview questions made sense and were easy to understand. Furthermore, taping and video recording, with the participants‟ verbal consent, were used during this process to reduce these challenges and extract all essential information from the interview.

4.11.2 Respondents for the semi-structured interviews

A series of semi-structured interviews were conducted with participants from the focus groups.

Purposive sampling was employed to select respondents from the two tribes for semi-structured interviews. The reason for applying purposive sampling with this group was due to a lack of

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information on the actual number of hill tribe employees working for ETAs in the area.

Purposive sampling includes judgmental sampling, since it allows the researcher to make a decision on sample size, sample representative and what issues will be involved in the research (Veal 1997; Jennings 2001). In this regard, the saturation point is reached when responses get repeated and respondents barely contribute any more new issues; the researcher usually knows when enough participants have been sampled (Jennings 2001). In this case informants for the interviews were chosen from the focus groups, based on their knowledge about tourism in Doi Inthanon and the impacts from ETAs, their abilities and willingness to talk to the researcher, and those with a wide range of viewpoints. These criteria for choosing interviewees are supported by Rubin and Rubin (1995). People who fitted the criteria were approached and invited to participate in the semi-structured interviews, on a one-to-one basis after each focus group was finished. Twenty interviews in total were done with ten respondents selected from each tribe. Tables 4.3 and 4.4 below provide details of the interviews informants and the village headmen from each tribe were also invited to participate in an interview.

Table 4.3 Karen interview informants

Name Gender Age Occupation Selected from:

Ying Female 18 a waitress ETA job-related focus group

participant

Rongroj Male 23 a guest house manager „‟

Mam Female 27 a resort manager „‟

Tong Male 42 a homestay manager/trekking guide

„‟

Wa Female 20 a farmer/ hair dresser Non ETA job-related focus group participant

Pongsak Male 33 a village headman/homestay manager/farmer

Did not participate in any focus groups but willing to complete the interview Table 4.4 Hmong interview informants

Name Gender Age Occupation Selected from:

Pee Male 24 a camp ground supervisor ETA job-related focus group participant

Sae-Ya Male 25 a singer „‟

129 4.11.3 Interview design

The interview topics were based on the information derived from the focus group discussions.

The purpose was to scrutinise the participants‟ perceptions in more details. Therefore, the interview protocol (Appendix 4) was similar to the issues being explored in the focus groups:

Topics for those who work with ETAs:

 Reasons for working and not working with ETAs

 Perceived conflicts from working with ETAs

 Proposed solutions for conflicts

 Perceived impacts from working with ETAs Topics for both working and non working groups:

 Perceived socio-cultural impacts that have affected them personally from the arrival of ETAs

 Perceived changes in their community after the arrival of ETAs

4.11.4 Interview process

A process similar to the one developed for the focus group was applied to the interviews by maintaining a conversational manner. However, the researcher‟s parents were invited to keep the researcher a company during the interviews due to personal safety.

4.11.5 Limitations of the interviews

Several obstacles were encountered in carrying out the interviews. Not only were the locations of the interview sites in the rural mountainous area, but inclement weather made it even more difficult to travel and arrive at the interview sites, especially when it rained all day. Moreover, the research was conducted when Cyclone Nargis raged, the worst disaster in Burma history and the second deadliest storm of all recorded history (Wikipedia 2009). Because the semi-structured interviews were mostly conducted in the respondents‟ homes, when it rained, the researcher had to postpone many meetings due to difficult access to their home wasting much time during this stage. However, it did not reduce the number of interviews undertaken.

Another limitation was the bias from the sampling process as according to Rubin and Rubin (1995) it is important to keep a balanced choice of respondents to represent the perceptions of the whole region. In this study, numbers and choices of research participants were limited,

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especially regarding those working in tourism businesses. The limited number of respondents relates in part to the fact that most of the target group had to go to work during the daytime, the time chosen to conduct the research for reasons relating to personal safety of the researcher and her team. Another limitation regarding the sample was that it may not have been representative as the people recruited for the research were those willing to participate and were by necessity, the only ones the researcher had access to.

4.12 Data analysis

As with the focus groups content analysis was adopted to analyse the interviews.

4.13 Stage two: Data collection