Stage I: The Convergent Interview

The convergent interview was developed as a means of studying organisational change and development processes in various types of organisation in Australia, and it combines various features of structured and unstructured interviews, and uses a systematic process to refine the information collected (Dick, 1998). Convergent interview has many uses, but it is a technique that can be used to gather valuable information especially when there are some doubts about the information, which is to be collected and in fact very useful in under-researched areas marked by little or no availability of established theoretical and methodological frameworks (Creswell, 2007). It has also been argued that convergent interview can help researchers to take meaningful decisions on the types of questions they may want to ask if they want to collect information through surveying techniques (Creswell, 2004).

The investigation of barriers to compliance with international HACCP regulation in the fishery businesses in Sierra Leone is compatible with the requirements of convergent interview, because it has never been investigated in the country and there are little or no data available in this field for Sierra Leone. Similarly, the methodological and theoretical underpinnings for HACCP study in Sierra Leone, their food safety policy, regulation and standard are not extensive yet.

The convergent interview is ironical because it applies an unstructured interviewing process, which gradually becomes more and more structured as it goes on. In other words, it is a process of progressive and systematic structuring, unstructured data. That means several interviews are conducted up to the time significant results on the final theoretical construct is ready and strong

enough for advancement into further investigation. In this scenario, the first interview is carried out to obtain data and the data is advanced to produce the foundation for the second interview, and subsequently, the third and so on until the interview is closed.

One advantage of convergent interview is that it does not require pre-existing theory for its application, despite the fact that it is indirectly informed by the literature review undertaken before the commencement of the interview. It is also flexible in the sense that it provides room for the interviewees to articulate their thoughts, ideas and opinions and through the iterative process to purify these thoughts, ideas and opinions into clear and precise groups or categories of benefit for the investigation in question. The fact is that each interview develops the thoughts, ideas, opinions and categories further until a point is reached where no more interview could be relevant or all the potential questions and answers are no longer entertained. This point is called “theoretical saturation” where no more questions and answers are possible for a phenomenon under investigation.

This is similar to the term in chemistry known as “saturated solution”. In chemistry, specific amount of sugar or salt would start to dissolve in specific amount of water until it reaches a point known as “saturated solution” where no more sugar or salt can dissolve in that specific amount of water. The continuation of the interviews through acceptance or rejection of first interviewee’s thoughts, ideas and opinions enables the groups or categories of benefits to emerge in an unbiased, clear, systematic, structured manner.

The convergent interview is not an ordinary interview because it takes the form of an iterative process of joint searching and investigation with the interviewee and the interviewer as a means of in quest of clarification and correct interpretation and understanding of the thoughts, ideas, and opinions of the interviewee. According to Creswell (2007), it is an “iterative clinical technique” to derive explanation and interpretation of a phenomena following discussion between two people in a progressive and systematic questioning and answering. Conversely, the process of convergent interview takes a more “realistic” view in this study than the simple approach of Schein (1993). The reason is that the approach in this study carries meanings forward between interviews in order to organize, shape and structure not only the individual

interpretation and understandings of the HACCP barriers, but to come to a consensus and general thoughts, ideas, and opinions among individuals of relevant stakeholders on what the HACCP barriers might be to Sierra Leone’s fishery businesses, towards safety and competitiveness of fishery products which are the main focus of these interviews.

3.9.1 Design of Categories and Questions for the Convergent Interviews

The author realized that there is no easy access to someone’s personal opinions especially on matters that have legal implications such as national policy or regulatory system, degrees of enforcement, non-compliance, codes of practice, to name but a few. The writer therefore embarked on the application of convergent interviewing methodology to gather and structure such information to avoid or reduce to an acceptable level biasness of the interviewer, to assure the development of potential list of categories of barriers for further questioning in Stage II and Stage III.

The essence of this triangulation technique was to unveil the perceptions of the interviewees on the barriers to compliance with international HACCP regulations governing the trading of food across international borders that exist within the food safety regulatory, enforcement and commercial operations of the fishery business in Sierra Leone. This stage of triangulation involved the development of a temporal list of potential categories of HACCP barriers, single and then broad based questions, tables 7 to 20 below, for the Convergent Interviews to serve as the backbones for further questioning of relevant stakeholders on HACCP barriers during the case interviews and focus group workshop.

Table 7: Questions on Fishery Products Legislation (Developed for this study)

Category 1 : Fishery Product Legislation

Questions:

 Is there a national fishery safety and quality assurance legislation compliance with Codex Alimentarius and EU legislation (with commitment from government regulatory authorities, based on risk analysis i.e. risk assessment, risk management and risk communication)?

 Is there a national coordination body for food safety control activities?

 What is the legal framework for national food control?

 Is the national food control based on one national law or several different laws?

 What fishery laws are currently in force and when were they enacted, repealed or amended?

Table 8: Questions on Fishery Regulations and Standards Developed for this study) (Developed for this study)