3. Methodology
3.4 In-depth interview
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communication research Its advantages include reduced costs, less amount of time on gathering data, a dataset large enough to uncover small effect sizes, easily track down the long term development of an event (Thompson, 2014, p.1222). The naturally drawbacks are an inability to insure the data are gathered appropriately, measured effectively, and recorded accurately (ibid).
In this study, past research on public health service groups, volunteer tourism, and HIV/AIDS studies in African countries are collected to form better understanding of the appearance for laypeople voluntourism experiences. Furthermore, secondary data such as organization’s future planning, promotion documents, media outputs, and social media posts are inclusively gathered and analyzed alongside the in-depth interviews with informants from Love Binti, when in Kenya and Taiwan.
3.4 In-depth interviews
As Boyce& Neale (2006) mentioned that in-depth interviews involve conducting
“intensive individual interviews with a small number of respondents to explore their perspectives on a particular idea, program, or situation.”Advantages of this method include acquiring of more detailed information and making informants feel more comfortable in having open conversations on the program under the relaxed atmosphere. The key features summarized by Legard & Ward (2003) in doing in-depth interview are sufficiently flexible with structure, its interactive in nature, the researcher uses ranges of probes and other techniques to achieve answers in depth, its generative allows new knowledge or thoughts to be created, and almost always conducted face-to-face. Fieldworks needs interviews, and the better interview type is semi-directive that features its interests in the informant, while the interviewer or
“participant-as-observer” (Jorgensen, 1989) is “listening actively” during the conversations. Also, most of the time in fieldwork, the informant receives lower education than the interviewer, semi-directive interview not only allows them to
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their behaviors in their own way-leads to the interviewer not to be framed by trained scientific thinking logic. In all, the interviewees are contacted by the researcher through social application Line to agree on having the interview. An outline of the questions is scripted and based in the interview. However, flexible changes of order and questions are allowed. The interviews were recorded under interviewees’ consent as well.Informants
1. Four Love Binti voluntourists (two hours each, scheduled from May 13th to 31st, see Table 5) Table 5. Profile of informants: volunteer-tourists
2. Love Binti founder and co-organizer (scheduled from March to May, see Table 6) Gender Age Job&
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Table 6. Profile of informants-hosts of the organizationBesides from the listed informants, the researcher also scheduled an interview with Xing Zhong Lv( ) Organizer of Heart for Africa, Taiwan as mentioned in Chapter 1, for its similar profile functioning in African countries or organizing voluntourism activities. However, the main findings remained focusing on the voluntourists of Love Binti with only a few echoing responses from the research unit addressed.
Interview Questions Outline
The in-depth interview questions were framed on the basis of five domains that can effectively discovered the voluntourists and NGO key actors’ viewpoint and attitude toward voluntourism model. The questions were implemented to boost not only voluntourists’ personal experiences, but also orgnizational’s goals achievement.
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The domains included cross cultural communication, health communication promotion, volunteer-tourist, community-based public health planning, and organization’s inner communication& training.
Cross cultural communication
1. What do you think accounts for Africa’s special circumstances? What must be done?
2. What are the difficulties in communicating health messages with the Africans? (difficulties either from organizations’ staff or recruited Taiwanese volunteers) What are the reasons causing the problems? how are the problems solved in the end?
3. What are the things you appreciate working with locals (while promoting health)? What are not? Why?
Health communication promotion
4. How and who design the health messages? What are the channels and settings to promote the design? Which channel you find most effective and why?
5. Any facing difficulty for them in delivering health education or within the group? Solutions?
Volunteer-tourist
6. What are the voluntourists’ feedbacks about local workers for the org?
7. What are the voluntourists’ background (how do they come to know, why do they join)?
8. What does the voluntourists think about voluntourism? What are the impacts on the voluntourists (positive/ negative)?
9. Do you think you are volunteering or touring? How do you distinct yourself from regular tourists in communicating health in the
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communities?
10. Which part of LB’s propaganda attracts the voluntourists most?
Community-based public health planning
11. Are local community members involved& degree of their power to say?
12. Future planning/ ongoing project to improve beneficiaries’ health conditions?
13. Any collaboration with some grassroots organizations or IO, INGO, INPO in Africa? If yes, what are they and why?
Organization’s inner communication& training
14. Are the staff/ volunteers trained? Why do/ don’t you train them? How do you train them?
15. What are the health campaigns the voluntourists are being taught? The effectiveness?
16. What does the voluntourist perceive the health messages informed by the organization/ community?
Table 7 depicts the thematic research questions in this study into the interview questions to deliver thematic knowledge and allow readers easily follow the natural conversational flow. Each research question set can be examined through numbers of interview questions, hence obtaining varied and rich responses from different angles.
Correspondingly, one interview question can provide information echo with several research questions.
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Table 7. Research Questions and Interview Questions
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3.5 Research process and data collection