The choice of this approach as the initial framework for the thesis was informed by theoretical, methodological and practical considerations. First owing to the fact that the research problem concerned women in a conceivably typical patriarchal society such as Ghana (Eyango, 2001), meant that one had to open the research up for the possibility of
discovering novel or unanticipated findings and the possibility of altering plans in response to such serendipitous occurrences (Glaser and Strauss,1967). This is because the research was to be conducted among a coterie of largely educated women and men in Ghana. So it was important to test theories such as the higher status hypothesis, family boundary theory, work- family interference, work-family enhancement and social
support. And since qualitative research is conceived to be fluid both in its nature and application, it was deemed as appropriate, especially since one had to be sure that any
subsequent survey questionnaire to be used later in the thesis captured the peculiar Ghanaian linguistic and cultural nuances related to the research problem.
Specifically for example, the use of the face-to-face interviews allowed for asking of further questions to gain a deeper
understanding of participants‟ perceptions, feelings and rationale for choices of particular behaviours in dealing with issues such as WRS and WFI. This supports Barton and Lazarsfeld‟s (1969) assertion that „like the nests of deep sea explorers, qualitative studies may pull up unexpected and striking things for us to gaze on‟ (p.166). Since the feelings, perceptions and rationale for behaviour cannot always be subsumed within numerical classification (Bryman, 1992, 2004; Burns, 2000), it is argued that the choice of qualitative approach was quite crucial for this thesis. Indeed the use of the qualitative approach is not only a preliminary step towards a more quantitative approach later on in this study
(Akyeampong 1997), but it has also been used for both theory building and theory testing within this thesis.
Additionally to have used an adopted Western survey
questionnaire en bloc, would probably not have allowed for the detection of any cultural and linguistic differences that may exist between Ghanaian professional women and their Western counterparts, as well as any sensitive items in Western models that may impinge on the WFI paradigm in Ghana. Finally the views, perspectives, opinions and embedded understandings of Ghanaian women vis ´a vis WFI that emerged from the qualitative study were juxtaposed with existing literature, as
well as opinions from their spouses via a semi-structure questionnaire so as to develop suitable models for the Ghanaian situation. Consequently the qualitative approach was used in two main ways. First, to facilitate the design of subsequent quantitative research, and, second to compliment the information that was gathered through the quantitative approach using the face-to-face interviews.
The choice of face-to-face interviews as a qualitative technique in this thesis instead of a technique like telephone interview was predicated on several reasons. First, initial informal
investigation (by researcher) prior to embarking on this thesis had shown that most Ghanaian women in higher status
positions were more amenable to speaking about issues
pertaining to the research problem since they thought they will be in the position to ask pertinent questions about the
research as well as make suggestions if need be. Second, even though the feelings of participants may not be quantified in this thesis, the face-to-face interviews allowed one to take advantage of social cues such as voice, intonation and body language to get extra information to compliment participants‟ verbal responses (Opdenakker, 2006). The interviews dealt with issues such as the lack of attention on work-related stress at the work place, which was a sensitive topic to participants.
Consequently these social cues, it is argued, allowed one to gauge for example the severity of Ghanaian professional women‟s experience of work-related stress and work-family interference. This may not have been possible using
telephone interviewing.
Again, the synchronous communication associated with face- to-face interviewing meant that the spontaneous responses of participants could be captured in real time, thus reducing the possible introduction of social desirability response bias
associated with extended reflection when using telephone interviewing. Finally even though the use of telephone interviewing is known to be cost effective when doing large surveys over vast geographical distances in western societies (Holbrook, et al., 2003), the same could not be said for Ghana where the study took place. The costs of telephone
interviewing would have been expensive in the Ghanaian context, bearing in mind that the average length of the interviews was 1 hour. And the fact that even using even fixed line is prohibitive in Ghana, it was not practically and financially feasible to use this technique.
Documentary analysis was used to get the basic information that informed the selection of the research problem.
Consequently documentary analysis provided evidence on the rise of the female population into the upper echelons of the Ghanaian work force, the fundamental issues of women, work and family, the level of awareness of WFI among policy
makers and the existence of any laws or advocacy in bringing WFI to the fore of Ghanaian labour issues.
3.3.1 Rationale and choice of analytical strategy for qualitative study
The main qualitative technique used in analysing the interview transcripts was inductive and theoretical thematic analysis. A combination of these techniques was opted for because in qualitative analysis no theme can be said to be entirely
inductive or data driven, since the researcher‟s knowledge or preconceptions will inevitably influence the identification of these themes (Braun and Clarke, 2006). Inductive thematic is the „bottom up‟ approach (Frith and Gleeson, 2004), in which themes identified are strongly linked to the data. In
conducting the qualitative data analysis it was important to ensure that the themes reflected the data as much as possible especially since the qualitative study was being used among others, to test the appropriateness of existing theories and methods in the Ghanaian setting. So it was important to
analyse the data without trying to fit it into a pre-existing coding frame, or the researcher‟s analytic preconceptions. At the same time however it was also important to ensure the themes that emerged were not overly out of tune with the aims of the study. Hence theoretical thematic analysis, which is driven by a researcher‟s interest, in this case to ascertain the presence and severity of women‟s experience of work-
related stress and work-family interference, was also adopted.
The choice of coding methods was also informed by both theoretical and methodological considerations. It was
important to ensure that the coding regime also reflected the type of analysis chosen. Thus in order to generate descriptive codes with low levels of abstraction to help highlight themes from the interview data (Neuman, 2000), open coding was utilised at the beginning. This was to ensure that these codes were directly and strongly linked to the data set. Additionally to organise these lower level themes in a more coherent manner and align similar ideas into corresponding themes, axial coding was chosen. This is because using axial coding ensured the clustering of emerging ideas into a coherent unit, allowing the themes to stand out. This, it is argued,
3.4 Exploring emerging issues from qualitative study