Semi structured interview

A semi structured interview was an opportunity to understand the students’ behaviour while making food choices during grocery shopping. The method allowed the participant’s actions to be translated into the form of contextual data fitting the objective of this study. The interviews were also to capture in-depth explanation, personal experience, issues, and perception as well as to deepen the meaning of the student’s food choice practice in the new country. The most widely used form of interview is the semi structured, which consists of a mixture of open-ended and specific questions designed to elicit both expected and unexpected

114 information and evolves in situ (Fetterman, 1998). According to Kvale (1996:70), the qualitative interview is “a uniquely sensitive and powerful method for capturing the experiences and lived meanings of the subjects’ everyday world.”

An interview guideline was developed from the focus group discussion themes and accompanied shop observation to explore more on the usage of the food bought, consumption, meaning making of the food choice decision, and other food related experience.

The interview took place after the signed informed consent was returned and accompanied shop observation was conducted. The time frame of two to three days after the accompanied shop was to allow the participants to make use of what they have bought. The interview data provided contextual information for the behaviour recorded during the accompanied shop, as well as the data required following the purpose of this study. Yin (2013) listed the strength and weaknesses of interviews and observation as in Table 11.

Table 11: Observation and Interview (based on Yin, 2013) Source of data Strength Weakness Participant observation  Immediacy- covers actions in real time  Contextual- can cover the

study’s context  Insightful into

interpersonal behaviours and motives

 Time consuming

 Selectivity- broad coverage difficult without a team of observers.

 Reflexivity- actions may proceed differently because they are being watch

 Time consuming

 Bias due to participant- observer’s manipulation of events.

Interviews  Targeted- focus directly on

topics

 Insightful- provide explanations as well as personal views (e.g. perceptions, attitudes)

 Bias due to poorly articulated questions

 Response bias

 Inaccuracies due to poor recall  Interviewee only gives what

115 The interviews were transcribed by the researcher to enable a sense of closeness with the collected data throughout the main study. The interview data were transcribed verbatim by the researcher which enabled a sense of closeness with the collected data. The process of coding, sorting, categorising, and recoding of the data were constantly processed after all interviews.

Interview setting

The semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted after three to five days from the accompanied shop session. The reason was to allow the participants to make use of the food they purchased earlier and to make sense of how they managed their food choices. The interviews were mostly conducted at the researcher zone at the university’s library because the location provided a comfortable and quiet zone suitable for the participants and researcher. The room used was booked earlier at time slots agreed by both the participants and the researcher.

The interview began in October 2013 and ended in early March 2014. Each interview lasted between 60 to 90 minutes. The interview was recorded using a voice recorder and the researcher used notes to write some of the details (e.g., body language). The interviews began with the researcher explaining about the interview and asking permission to record the session. The participants were asked to fill in a demographic profile form which will be used to identify each of them. All the participants were given a pseudonym to protect their confidentiality.

All of the interviews were transcribed verbatim. There were altogether forty transcripts including twenty for phase one and twenty for phase two of the main data collection. The transcript was coded and analysed using thematic analysis.

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The main study structure

The main study was conducted in between two time frames, at the initial stage of arrival and three months after, which captured and allowed changes and trends of food provisioning practice, new food choice system, and acculturation strategy to develop. The three months gap was based on literature that found that the most crucial period of transition was during the first three months of living in the new country. Hechanova- Alampay et al.’s (2002) study found that the adjustment among international students was lower than domestic students upon entry and three months into the semester. The study provides a very significant view that international students’ difficulty in adjusting were at its peak during the initial transition. Berkey, Rockett, Gilman, Field, and Colditz (2013) study on skipping breakfast and weight change in adolescents and found that excessive body weight increases over time. The study enabled the exploration on how the pattern of food habit over time can produce more significant factor on weight change. In another study, Cemalcilar and Falbo (2008) examined the cross cultural transition of international students in the US and found that during the time interval of twenty-one weeks between pre-transition and post-transition, most of the students’ experienced significant decline in their psychological well-being.

Following the purpose of this study, two phases of observation and in-depth interviews were conducted at the first stage of arrival and three months after living in the UK that allowed food adjustment experience to be compared with overtime.

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5.18 Sampling Procedure for the Main Study