This chapter describes the research design and research methods used in this study.
It contains the research framework, method and instruments. It also discusses the research subjects, procedure and data analysis. The results of the study will be presented in the next chapter.
Research Framework
The current research aims at finding the effect of the university governance on the academic success of the female students. The figure below gives a picture of what the research intends to find out. It will also allow the reader to follow the course of actions taken by the researcher.
Academic governance
Administrative and financial governance Social governance
Female students’
academic success University
governance
Figure 3.1 Research framework
Research Method
As stated in the first chapter, the research method used in this study is the qualitative research approach. A qualitative method as opposed to quantitative method is a research procedure that produces descriptive data. It means that this methodology collects people’s own written or spoken words and observable behavior. According to Denzin and Lincoln (2000, p.3) “qualitative research involves the studied use and collection of a variety of empirical materials that describe routine and problematic moments and meanings in individuals’ lives”. This is done through interviews, observations, case studies, personal experiences, life stories, artifacts, etc. Interview is certainly one of the most widely used methods by students.
In this study, the researcher used a one-to-one type semi-structured interview via Skype to collect the data. Skype is software application which allows users to communicate with peers by voice using a microphone, video by using a webcam, and instant messaging over the Internet (Wikipedia, 2013)
A case study is “the study of the particularity and complexity of single case, coming to understand its activities within important circumstances’’ (Stake, 1995).
A semi-structure interview is “a process in which a researcher and participant engage in a conversation focused on questions related to a research study” (DeMarrais
& Lapan, 2004, p.55). There are mainly two types of interviews: one-to-one interview and group/focus interview, but the most commonly used is the first one. In addition, an interview can be structured where the questions and order in which they are asked are predetermined or unstructured in which nothing is set ahead. ‘’However the most widely used is the semi-structured interviews in which there are a set of questions are used but the order or wording is not preset’’ (Longhurst, 2003). Interview is used when it is difficult to observe the behavior, or for feelings or for past events. Since the purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between university governance and the female students’ academic success, the researcher thinks that semi-structured interview is the best method to be used in this case.
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Research Instrument
For this study, semi-structured interview were used as the main instrument for data collection however because the researcher resides far away from the research participants, the researcher has opted to conduct the interviews with the female students via Skype. Semi-structured interview as opposed to structured interview is a set of questions that help the interviewer (researcher in this case) to get information from the interviewees. Semi-structured interview is flexible and gives room for the interviewees to bring up some aspects that the interviewer overlooked. This instrument by being flexible allows the researcher to gain more information from the respondents. Then, the researcher designed the interview questions with the assistance of her advisor and translated the questions into French because the research participants don’t speak English, their official language is French. After the translation she sent the two versions (English and French) to an English teacher in Burkina Faso to ensure that the translation is correct.
Peer Review
After the design of semi-structured interview questions, they were reviewed and critiqued by professionals in the human resources management field, including the researcher thesis advisor and human resources management practitioners from Burkina Faso. Fundamental changes were not made in the questions, but both the researcher advisor and the professionals from Burkina Faso suggested reorder the list of questions.
For example the researcher advisor suggested her to move the question, what do you think on the actual university governance of Koudougou at the end because it is critical question of the research, in addition to that, the professionals from her country asked her to reorder the questions in accordance with the three dimensions of the university governance to conduct smoothly the interview by moving from dimension to dimension instead of the old version where questions were not sorted by dimension.
In this case, since the university governance takes into consideration all the aspects of student life on campus, several dimensions will be investigated such as the social governance, academic governance, financial and administrative governance. So, the researcher develops a list of seventeen (17) questions in accordance with the purpose and the research questions. The components of each interview included the following:
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Social Governance
The interviewer wants to investigate students’ dormitories, transportation system, the nature of their financial support, canteen system and their cultural activities so that she can evaluate their studies and living conditions.
Academic Governance
The interviewer wants to investigate the academic buildings (library and lecture rooms), the involvement of female student’s representatives in decision making and their relationship with the faculty members.
Administrative and Financial Governance
The interviewer wants to know the relationship between the students and the administrative staff and the availability of the administrative and financial document facilitating the functioning of the university.
Research Subject
This research intends to investigate the relationship between the university governance and female student academic success at the University of Koudougou in Burkina Faso, therefore female students and faculty members were the target of this study.
The researcher was able to interview fifteen female students from different department based on the following criteria:
1. The student has to be a female student at the University of Koudougou . 2. She has to be successful since the first year of study
3. The female student has to be at the university for at least one year.
Because of the busy scheduled of the faculty members of the University of Koudougou, three faculty members had been interviewed by a French professor
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teaching at the University of Koudougou and who is interested and involve in the research.
Concerning the faculty members three consecutive years of work at the University of Koudougou is a requirement.
The researcher believes that within that period of time, the students and those faculty members have already get into the campus environment and its practices and might have useful information which can help the researcher to gather enough information.
The Interviewees Information
Female Students
As mentioned above fifteen female students and three faculty members were interviewed.
The students are from three different departments (Department of Economic and Management Sciences, Department of French Literature and the Department of History and Geography). Five per department were interviewed, more precisely ten (10) female students are second year students and the last five are at their third year of studies. Their age is in the range of 20 to 35 and they have been successful since their first year meaning they have gotten the required grades to move from the lower class to upper ones. Refer to table 3.1 for the related issues.
Table 3.1
Female Students’ Information
Year of study Interviewee Department A 1
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3rd A 11
A 12 A 13 A 14 A 15
Economic and
Management Sciences
Faculty Members
Concerning the faculty members, one professor of History and Geography and two professors of French of the University of Koudougou had been interviewed.
These professors have been working at the University for a long time depending on their experience.
Refer to table 3.2 for the related issues.
Table 3.2
Faculty Members’ Information
Interviewees Function Seniority
B1 History and Geography professor 5 years
B2 French professor 4 years
B3 French professor 10 years
Data Collection and Analysis
Data Collection
The data was collect through semi-structured interview as mentioned above. The interview is comprised of a set of seventeen (17) questions on university governance.
However the researcher was opened to whatever additional information the interviewee was ready to provide. The interview time and date depended on the interviewee’s schedule and availability period. Interviewees were first sent the questionnaire before
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the interviews could take place. Each of the student interviews took about one hour (depending on the internet accessibility) and was recorded using a recorder. The same questions asked to the female students had been used to interview the faculty members, except some few changes made to fit their status focusing on what they think of the different aspect of the university governance. Thus, the interviews were then translated into English for the next step that is data coding.
Data Analysis
Qualitative research data analysis typically involves the analysis of the text from the interview (the transcript). The main goal of this process was to be able to clearly summarize the data and draw significant results. The different steps followed by the researcher for this research are as following:
Step 1
At this step the researcher carefully read the transcript content over and over to find out and underline important comments relevant to this research matter. These underlined pieces were shortened and coded in the column next to the original paragraph. This step is illustrated in the table 3.3 bellow.
Table 3.3
Outline and Shorten Key Sentences
Code Keys sentences Manuscript A1-01-01 Difficulty to get a room at
university dorm
R: est-il facile d’obtenir une chambre en cite universitaire?
I: il est très difficile d’avoir une chambre en cite universitaire car il y’a beaucoup d’examen médicaux à faire à l’avance et demande aussi beaucoup de frais
A1-03-03 university restaurant: universitaire (qualité des plats, les heures d’ouverture ?) est-ce que les dispositions vous permettent d suivre normalement vos cours ?
I: je pense qu’au RU les plats servis ne sont pas de bonne qualité et est insuffisant pour nous, concernant les heures d’ouvertures et de fermeture, elles
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A1-11-11 Staff available for students but slow treatment of students affairs
sont a revoir car elles ne nous permettent pas de suivre normalement nos cours.
R: que pensez-vous du personnel de l’université: sont-ils disponibles pour les étudiants? Est-ce que les doléances des étudiants sont gérés rapidement ?
I: ils sont disponibles mais les affaires des étudiants ne sont pas traites rapidement à cause du processus hiérarchiques qui retardent le traitement des dossiers.
Note. R: researcher, I: interviewee
In table 3.3, the code A1-01-01 can be interpreted as following:
A1: refers to the first interviewee of the research
01: the first 01 refers to the first page of her interview manuscript
01: the second 01 represents the first key sentence in the whole manuscript.
Such way of coding allowed the researcher to trace the original information in the manuscripts easily.
Step 2:
The next step was to put keys sentences in all manuscripts which have the same meaning all together and formed an abstract concept. Table 3.4 in below illustrates this step.
Table 3.4
University Dorm Acquisition
Concept Code Key sentences
A1-01-01 Not easy to get a dorm due the medical examinations and fees
University dorm acquisition
A3-01-01 Difficult to get because of the limited numbers of bed and required a lot of money
A4-05-08 The acquisition of the room is difficult because of bad rumors of girls behavior
A5-04-04 Many females cannot get a dorm because the demand is higher than the bed availability,
The dorm environment is noisy
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Step 3:
Afterwards, combined those concepts representing the same meaning all together and formed a category. Such category was given a more abstract name than ideas to embrace the latter. This depicted by table 3.5
Table 3.5
University Dorm
Step 4
The last step was to combine categories based on the research subject matter as table 3.6 shows
Table 3.6
Social Governance
Topic Category Concept
1-1-1difficult to get 1. Social governance 1-1 University dorm
1-1-2 noisy environment
Research Procedure
In accordance with the research purposes, the procedure of the research covers the following steps:
Category Concept Code 1-1-1Difficult to get A1-01-01
A2-02-01 A6-10-05 1-1 University dorm
1-1-2 Noisy environment A7-02-02 A8-03-05 A10-05-02
Research Background and Purpose
This step starts with the choice of the research topic. This is done by the researcher in accordance with the research supervisor. It takes into account the researcher domain of interest. After finding the research topic, the researcher wrote the first chapter that includes the research background and purposes.
Literature Review Study
This step begins with reading the major studies related to the topic. After getting a grasp of what the body of scholars says about the topic, the research then began to write the summary of these readings into the second chapter of the thesis.
Research Framework
After reviewing the literature, the researcher can now give a direction to the overall research by defining the research framework.
Research and Sample Design
At this stage the researcher chose the research method to be used as well as the sampling criteria.
Data Collection
After reviewing the literature the researcher now has an idea of the types of questions to be asked in order to get the information needed. The researcher played the role of interviewer to get the information from the target groups.
Data Analysis
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Using various coding techniques under the guidance of the thesis advisor, the researcher used coding and categorizing to analyze the data. With this step began the write-up of the fourth chapter of the thesis.
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Generalization and Interpretation
After analyzing the data, the researcher incorporated the different themes into the thesis. This step involved the interpretation of the responses gathered by the researcher.
Findings, Conclusions and Recommendations Write-ups
This last step consisted of writing the findings derived from the previous step into the final chapter of the thesis. In addition, the researcher was able to draw the necessary conclusions and make suggestions to the policy makers, the University of Koudougou, the female students and the future researcher.
The figure 3.2 below shows the process of the research.
Research Background and Purpose
Literature Review
Research Framework
Research and Sample Design
Data Collection
Data Analysis
Generalization and Interpretation
Findings, Conclusions and Suggestions Write-ups
Figure 3.2 Research procedure
Reliability and Validity of the Study
In qualitative research, the criteria of determining the reliability and validity generally correspond to the four criteria developed by Lincoln and Guba (1985).
Instead of using the terms frequently used in quantitative studies such as internal validity, external validity, reliability and objectivity, they replaced them with notions as credibility, transferability, dependability and confirmability.
Credibility
Credibility can be viewed as internal validity in quantitative research. It refers to the degree to which the findings make sense. Usually to ensure credibility, researchers are advised to use the method of member checks, i.e. that participants are presented with their interview transcripts and the research reports so they can agree/disagree with the researcher’s findings.
To ensure credibility all of the interviewees were later contacted by the researcher to find out if they agree or not with the transcripts and findings. All of them agreed with their transcripts and sent it back.
Transferability
Transferability replaces the concept of external validity in quantitative research.
The aim of transferability is to provide sufficient information for readers to judge whether or not the findings of the study can be applied to other settings. Therefore, it is recommended that qualitative researchers provide a detailed description of the setting in which the research is conducted. The detailed description of the setting is provided in Chapter 1 on the background of the study and in chapter 2 on the University of Koudoudou.
Dependability
This notion can be seen as that of reliability. Researchers are encouraged to provide an audit trail, i.e. the documentation of data, methods and decisions about the research, etc. in order to ensure external scrutiny.
To ensure dependability, the researcher shows the data coding results with the actual transcripts as Appendix B.
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Confirmability
Confirmability is about objectivity. Its aim is to show quality. For example, the researcher can offer a self-critically reflexive analysis of the methodology used in the research or use techniques such as triangulation (of data, researcher, context). To fulfill the requirement of confirmability, researcher triangulation was used. Indeed, the researcher, her thesis advisor and two other professors were involved in the design of the questionnaires, and also in the analysis of the collected data.