Establish Access To, Making Contact With, and Selecting Participants A Sharon A Jamie

THE PERILS OF EASY ACCESS ___________________________________ ★ Beginning interviewers  Easies path to the goal  The most difficult to the interview

Interviewing People Whom You Supervise Choose your supervise  Conflict interest of existing Hierarchy  May not talk openly Interviewing Your Students Be respected  Hardly be open to his or her teacher

Interviewing Acquaintances Unpredictable  Limit the full potential interview Follow up and distort  Relationship broken Interviewing Friends ★ Easy access  Friendship  Assume understand already  Seldom to develop merit

Taking oneself just seriously enough ★ Not take themselves seriously as researchers  Find easy access  Establish by uncritical attitude  Doing research as an elite occupation

Less practice  Frustration  Hard to find interest, status, method and usefulness instead of finish a requirement Purpose  Establish equity in the interviewing relationship

ACCESS THROUGH FORMAL GATEKEEPERS ____________________________________ Gatekeepers  Control access to the potential participants  Range from legitimate to self- declared

Gatekeepers  Parents, guardians, teachers, principals, superintendents  to be respected Key point  Face to the person who has responsibility for the operation of the site and gain the access

★ Research an experience or a process that takes place in a lot of sites  Don’t need to seek access through an authority Ex. One teacher who teaches in many cram schools Key point  The more adult the potential participants, the more likely that access can be direct.

INFORMAL GATEKEEPERS ___________________________________ ★ Persons who are widely respected, but hold moral suasion without having formal authority  seeking access without using formal way, but to gain their participation as a sign of respect  help researchers gain access to others

★ Self-appointed gatekeepers  Must be informed  Must try to control everything

ACCESS AND HIERARCHY __________________________________ ★ Difference between research and evaluation or policy studies  The latter are often sponsored by an agency  Affects the equity of the relationship between interviewer and participant  Interviewers appear higher instead outside

Key point  Establish access through peers rather than through people “above” or “below” them

MAKING CONTACT ___________________________________ ★ Do it yourself.  Don’t rely on third parties  Have not internalized in it  Do not have investment in it  Seldom answer questions naturally might arise

★ Contact visit  Select participants  build a foundation for interview relationship

MAKE A CONTACT VISIT IN PERSON _______________________________ Telephoning is the first step  Avoid asking yes or no questions Major purpose  To set up a time that the interviewer can meet participants in person to discuss the study.

★ Contact visit Most important purpose  To build a basically interactive relationship with participants Group contact visit :  Save time  Explain the project to whole group once  Effect the attitude of others in the group

Second important purpose  Decide whether the potential participant is interested Allow interviewers  Familiar with participants live and work  Try to keep interviewing appointment  Building mutual respect  Explain the nature of interview study

Participants understand:  The nature of the study  How he or she fits into it  The purpose of the three-interview sequence

Building the Participant Pool Choose the right participants  subject related to participants’ experience Keep record of suitable participants’ key characteristic  make a pool of suitable participants

Some Logistical Consideration Develop a data base of participants  Facilitate communication  To inform final choice  Follow-up after interview Participants’ information  Home, address, phone number and when to contact or not to contact with them

Pay attention to the details of communication  avoiding missed or confused appointment Contact visit  decide time, place and date  be flexible to accommodate participants’ choice Thank cards or letters

Selecting Participants Randomly selecting participants  experimental & quasi-experimental In-depth interview studies  No randomness selection  Need participants’ agreement

Purposeful Sampling Maximum variation  the most effective basic strategy  maximum range of sites and people ex : Students’ oral reading fluency would influence their reading comprehension  determine the range of school sites  determine the range of students’ age

Negative cases  select participants outside the range  check researchers’ studies not to draw an easy conclusion

Snare to Avoid in the Selecting Process Participants don’t want to participate  interviewer too easily accepting rejection  interviewer too enthusiastic trying to convince reluctant participants Participants too eager to participate

How many participants are enough? Sufficiency  enough number to reflect the range of participants and sites ex: Students’ age, girls, boys, their background and experience of oral reading

Saturation of information  the information is nothing new at all The number of participants is different for each study and each researchers  time, money and other resources Not learning anything decided new + the process becoming laborious  ENOUGH!!