Semi-structured Interview

The design and application of semi-structured interview in this research

Semi-structured interview, a type of in-depth face to face interviewing method, is open, allowing new ideas to be brought up during the interview, as a result of what the interviewee says (Gomm, 2004; Miles and Gilbert, 2005; DiCicco-Bloom and Crabtree, 2006; Harrell and Bradley, 2009).

It is suggested for use in the research “where depth of meaning is important and the research is primarily focused in gaining insight and understanding” (Ritchie and Lewis, 2003, p. 138), while Bernard (1988) has suggested that it is best used when the interviewer won't get more than one chance to interview someone, and are often preceded by observation.

This qualitative data collection method is applied here for one purpose: to collect the data that can reveal the users’ in-depth thoughts, desires, and suggestions on their usage of Urban Square in Guangzhou. The data obtained here is the crucial supplement to the data obtained from on-site observations, to achieve research objective 2 stated above.

This data collection method is selected here, mainly for three reasons. Firstly, it allows the researcher to prepare relevant and meaningful questions in terms of the research objective ahead of time, which ensures that the interview can proceed effectively and in a controllable manner (DiCicco-Bloom and Crabtree, 2006). In addition, it can help to ensure that the data collected is more comparable (Harrell and Bradley, 2009). Secondly, it offers moderate flexibilities for both the interviewer and interviewee and it makes the exploration of the interested topics that emerge in the interview possible, which can reduce the limitation caused by the questions being set in advance (Denscombe, 2007). All these make the collected data more informative and reliable.

Thirdly, it offers the interviewee the freedom to express their views in their own terms, which makes the interviewee more relaxed and talkative, and this in turn can make the interview process run more smoothly and productively (Cohen and Crabtree, 2006).

To ensure the advantages of the semi-structured interview can be positively reflected in the data collection process of this research, the design of the semi-structured interview questions is structured with two principles. The first is a mixed use of close-ended and open-ended questions, which can strike a balance between the issue of the interview time and the informative richness of the data, while it also benefits towards reducing the bias caused by the researcher (Sommer and Sommer, 2002; Cohen and Crabtree, 2006). The second principle is to use a diverse question style which includes single-choice and multiple-choice, meanwhile some questions are posed with images, to make sure that the interview questions are more visualised and easier to be understood by the interviewees.

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In detail, to ensure that the semi-structured interviews are able to collect complete and consistent information that is received across the different interviews, the questions within it are structured and prepared in advance. The questions are conceived and structured according to four themes, to achieve research objective 2. These themes are established based on the research outcomes of the literature review and non-participant observations. The first theme is to investigate the users’

usage experiences, usage purposes, and satisfaction of urban squares in Guangzhou; the second theme is to investigate the users’ satisfactions, thoughts, and suggestions on recreation squares in Guangzhou; the third theme is to investigate the users’ usage features and suggestions on a particular recreation square in Guangzhou; and the final theme is to investigate the interviewees’

personal background and additional information.

In Theme One, ten questions are designed to investigate the users’ usage perceptions, usage purposes, and satisfaction of urban squares in Guangzhou. Here, the mixed use of single-choice and multiple-choice questions is applied to meet the research needs.

In Theme Two, five questions (from Q2.1 to Q2.5) are set to investigate the users’ satisfactions, thoughts, and suggestions on recreation squares in Guangzhou. Amongst these, Q2.4 applies images as the answer options to present the question in a more visualised manner. Q2.5 uses a five-point Likert scale (Vagias, 2006) to investigate the public’s thoughts and suggestions on the factors that could affect their usage decision and experience of recreation squares in Guangzhou.

In Theme Three, seven questions are designed to investigate the users’ usage features and suggestions on a particular recreation square in Guangzhou (either Hero square, Water Fountain Square, or Lighting Square). This theme is structured with factual questions and opinion questions, to firstly investigate the usage features of the different recreation squares, and to secondly discover the users’ thoughts and suggestions on that particular recreation square. All these inform the author of the reasons that create the different usage patterns in the different recreation squares.

This directly benefits the generation of the concept and criteria of socially beneficial urban squares in Guangzhou.

In Theme Four, four questions are included on the finalised questions sheet, which are set to investigate the interviewer’s gender, age, ethnicity and the availability to be interviewed further.

The structure of this theme aims to help the researcher in tracing the relationship between the users’ behaviour and their background.

Pilot study and amendments of interview questions

The pilot study was applied in this research in December 2012, to check the feasibility of carrying

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out questionnaires followed by interviews, to develop the questions to be asked, to test the response possibilities of the interviewees, and to investigate the required time to conduct a complete interview. In this research, the pilot study was carried out twice to ensure that the design of semi-structured interview is feasible and effective to achieve the research objective 2.

Based on the pilot studies, a number of amendments were made which included the adjustment of the structure of the interview questions, contents, and their expression, to make it more practical, logical, and straightforward. In detail, four issues are found in the pilot studies and are improved as follows:

 For the improvement of the structure, the author combined the questionnaire and interview to generate a “questionnaire” style semi-structured interview, which includes both open-ended and close-ended questions, to reveal the users’ inner-most thoughts more precisely, deeply, and time-efficiently.

 For the improvement of the contents and expression of the questions, four adjustments were made, as follows:

1. For the question: “How many different types of urban squares, categorised below, in Guangzhou have you used?”, images were added in the answer options to make it more visualised and easier to be understood.

2. For the question: “The following diagrams show different ways that people sometimes gather in a square. Can you please rank them according to the degree of attractiveness for you to join in, in the use of this square?”, it was deleted due to its complexity to be understood and then be answered instantly. In addition, the answer to this question can be found through the analysis of the observation data.

3. For the questions that use the Likert scale in the answer options, the Likert scale was restructured to make it more straightforward and concise.

4. For the question: “Do you have a favourite urban square in Guangzhou? And if yes, which one is it?”, it was decided to be added to the question list after the pilot study, because the relevant contents had been mentioned many times by the interviewees during the pilot study.

Selection of respondent samples and sample size

The main purpose of sampling is to reduce the need for empirical operations which entail labour and cost (Babbie, 1990). Sample size should be considered according to the needs and reality of a research (Baker and Edwards, 2012), and the validity and quality should be considered more than the quantity in the sampling (Babbie, 1990).

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It would appear that there is no formula to determine the appropriate size of a non-probability sample (Routio, 2005). In this research, both the selection and the size of the semi-structured interviews are determined based on research outcomes of the non-participant observations.

Finally, 39 semi-structured interviews are decided upon, and are carried out across the three sites.

Limitations of semi-structured interview

In applying semi-structured interview as a data collection method in this research, a number of limitations are identified and briefly outlined as follows:

 Bias of interviewer and interviewee

As Patton (1990, p. 279) stated: “The quality of the information obtained during an interview is largely dependent on the interviewer”, the data collected during interviews in this research should account for the limitations that are lead to by the interviewers’ and interviewees’ bias due to their education level, cognitive competence and personal preferences.

 Time and cultural issue

Due to the budgetary constraint, the researcher is unable to employ more interviewers to carry out parallel interviews. Meanwhile, people are more likely to reject the in-depth interview inquires in China, due to the social cultures. In the limited time, it is found that completing a large number of semi-structured interviews is a challenge. In this situation, carrying out the

“questionnaire” style semi-structured interview is determined because it is found that it could effectively reduce the limitations that caused by the time and cultural issue in the Chinese context.

 Validity

The researcher has no real way of knowing if the respondent is lying. The interviewee may not consciously lie, but may have an imperfect recollection of events, which may result in the limitation of the data’s validity. Therefore, the diverse nature of the questions is designed in order that they can corroborate each other to benefit towards reducing this limitation.

The compilation and analysis of data obtained from semi-structured interviews

In this research, the compilation and analysis of the data collected from the semi-structured interviews refers to McCracken (1988) 5-step analysis approach, which is appropriate for long interview’s analysis. In general, the analysis methods of constant comparison analysis, keywords-in-context, word count, theme analysis, qualitative comparative analysis, and narrative analysis have inspired and assisted the author in positively revealing the users’ innermost thoughts, desires, and suggestions on recreation squares in Guangzhou.

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In this research, the transcribing and analysis work of the semi-structured interviews is structured into four steps as follows. The computer support (Google Forms and NVivo software) runs throughout the whole transcribing and analysing process because Flick (2006) suggested that using computers as an aid can improve the efficiency and richness of the research outcome of semi-structured interview analysis.

In detail, the first step is to transcribe the interview’s answers from margin notes, into formal transcripts with Google Forms in Chinese, which is the interviewees’ native language, because Tools4dev (2014) has stated that it is wise to transcribe the contents in the original language before it is analysed. The memos which are derived from the field notes and subsequent thoughts that the researcher have had about the respondents, respondent’s answers, and interviews since the date of the interviews, are also input into Google Forms at this time. This step is conducted with the attitude that “the interviews have been transcribed with the required degree of accuracy”

(Flick et al., 2004, p. 254) to prepare the foundation for the following analysis steps.

The second step is to review the transcript of each respondent and use “open coding” (Berg, 2007, pp. 317-320) to manage them, with the assistance of the NVivo software. The reading and reviewing of each interview transcript is carried out twice; the first time, for content understanding; the second time, breaking down the long respondent’s long soliloquies into short bullet-points according to its main idea-meaning unit (Burnard, 1994). Then, the initial coding is conducted in a broad sense, according to the themes that were set when the author designed the interview questions. This process is conducted to “…consider whether the interviewees actually took in these terms, what the terms mean to them, which aspects they supplement, which they omit and what new topics, which were not foreseen in the guide, actually turn up in the collected data” (Flick et al., 2004, p. 254). Observations made at this stage are extended until the

“implications and possibilities are more fully played out” (McCracken, 1988, p. 45).

Sequent to this, in the third step, a list of analytical categories (Glaser and Strauss, 1967; Burnard, 1994) is surveyed by the author, based on the outcome of the open coding and the consideration of the research objective 2. Then these categories are grouped together to conduct the final analysis themes.

In the fourth step, according to the analysis themes set above, the responses of the close-ended questions and open-ended questions of all transcript files, which are respectively in the Google Forms and NVivo software, are organised together. This step produces an organised and logical data pattern for the final analysis.

Finally, the author begins to look at the data patterns obtained from step four and offers the

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explanations and discussions on these patterns, and translates the relevant contents from Chinese into English to finalise the solid research outcomes. The research outcomes that are obtained in this step directly contribute towards achieving the research objective 2, which is specified in Chapter 6.2.

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PART 2

URBAN SQUARE

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Chapter 3

Part 2

Chapter 3 Urban Squares in China and the West

3.1 The Evolving Pattern of Urban Squares and Squares’ Life in China

This chapter provides a historical review of the evolving pattern of urban squares, square life and the drivers of change in China. In general, the thousands of years of development of squares in China could be divided into three periods in terms of its feature in chronological order, based on the analysis of the literature review. The first period is the Ancient Square Period (170BC to 1840) which records the emergence and development of traditional squares (ancient squares) in China.

This covers the Slave Society and the Feudal Society. The second period is the Modern Square Period (1840 to 1949) which witnesses the transformation period from the traditional squares to the modern squares in China. The third period is the Contemporary Square Period (1949 to the present) which records the emergence and development period of the contemporary square in China.

The main informative sources of reference on the development of Chinese urban squares are available only in the original Chinese language. Consequently the content of this chapter is produced based on the author’s understanding of these and the interpretation of these to be expressed in English. The original Chinese characters are reproduced at intervals where there are

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specific references to relevant urban squares. The details are discussed and illustrated in chronological order as follows.

1. The Ancient Period-Traditional Square

Historically, the period before 1840 is treated as ancient times of China. During this period, China experienced the Primitive Society, Slave Society and the Feudal Society (Zhang, 1991), and the traditional squares in China experienced their periods of appearance, development and recession.

There is a lack of literature that directly illustrates the development of Chinese traditional squares, but a number of archaeological records and indirect records offer the author a foundation in the collection of information on the development of traditional squares in ancient China, and then tease out the evolving pattern of it as follows:

Before 170BC, China was in a Primitive Society, and at that time, the traditional squares began to sprout. This view is supported by the Jiangzhai ruins and the Banpo ruins in Shaanxi province, which are both typical and relatively intact ruins of the Yangshao Culture from the Neolithic period. The layouts of these (see figure 3.1 and 3.2) are similar, taking the form of a wide outdoor open space being surrounded by a few individual private buildings, and with a public building at its centre or at the edge (Shaanxi Local Records Institute, 1999). This wide open space served as the clan’s gathering place for discussing the clan’s important political affairs and for holding important religious activities, e.g. fetes (Wang, 1980). This is identified as the origin of Chinese traditional squares (Cao, 2005).

Figure 3.1 Layout of the Jianzhai Ruins (Shaanxi Local Records Institute, 1999, p. 319) (left) Figure 3.2 Layout of the Banpo Ruins (Shaanxi Local Records Institute, 1999, p. 320) (right)

From the narration above, it can be surmised that, Chinese traditional squares originated from the clan’s needs for gathering together to hold political or religious activities. At this time, square form appears to be fairly organic, and is normally located in the centre of the layout of a clan’s village. It would have a number of individual buildings coarsely surrounding it, and a public building placed at its centre, or at its edge. The square’s life at that time mainly involved collective activities for political and religious affairs, such as public meeting, fetes and so on.

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The Primitive Society in China lasted until the emergency of the Xia Dynasty. Subsequently, China progressed into the Slave Society, which covered the dynasties of Xia, Shang, Western Zhou, and the Spring and Autumn period. During this period, the Chinese traditional squares started to develop. This was marked by the appearance of the types of “Temple and Altar Square”

and “Palace Square”.

As one of main characteristics of the Slave Society, the emperor emerged as the imperator of the society. Ancestral Temple, which served as the place for the emperor to work and for the public to make sacrifices to the imperial ancestors and the deities (Xu, 2004), became the significant building form in this period. This building has been discussed and considered to be the inheritance and development from the clan’s public building, and it is speculated that the wide open space surrounded the Ancestral Temple is the development of the rudimentary squares which appeared in the Primitive Society (Cao, 2005).

Later, from the Spring and Autumn period, with the promotion of the imperial power, the building form of Ancestral Temple experienced a significant evolution and its functions also evolved.

Firstly, “Palace” appeared, to inherit the first function of the Ancestral Temple which was used as the specific work-place for the emperor; and secondly “Temple” and “Altar” appeared to inherit the second function of the Ancestral Temple which was used as the place for the public to make sacrifices to the imperial ancestors and the deities (Yang, 2003). Although, there is no literature which directly identifies the space around the “Palace” and the “Temple and Altar” as being called

“Palace Square” and “Temple and Altar Square” at that time, based on the understanding of the evolutionary pattern of Chinese traditional squares and the records from later generations, e.g.,

“Kao Gong Ji Yi Zhu (Kaogpngji annotation)” (Wen, 2008), “Han Shu (History of the Han Dynasty)” (Ban, n. d., cited in Ban, 2012), the author choses to identify that the types of “Temple and Altar Square” and “Palace Square” had appeared during this period (Slave Society). Although there are no ancient Chinese prose that formally record these two types of squares and the squares’

life during this time, in line with the functions of the building that dominated the squares, the author daringly infers that, at this time, the squares’ life was similar to that of the Primitive

life during this time, in line with the functions of the building that dominated the squares, the author daringly infers that, at this time, the squares’ life was similar to that of the Primitive