Having described the research purpose, context and questions in Chapter One and the Literature Review in Chapter Two, the purpose of this chapter is to explain the research methods.
The chapter explores, identifies, and describes the research framework procedure and the research sample which will be used to help in answering the research questions. Additionally, data collection and data analysis methods are introduced.
Research Approaches
When it comes to research studies, two approaches are most often used i.e., qualitative and quantitative methods. It is pointed out that the difference between the two is in the information used in the analysis (Blumberg & Cooper 2008). When using quantitative approaches, the researcher describes behaviors and collects data, which is usually numerical in nature. On the other hand, qualitative methods studies information that is usually theoretical in nature; it is based on words, sentences and narratives and the analysis is on concrete cases in their temporal and local particularity (Dobrovolny & Fuentes 2008; Flick 2006). Merriam (2002, p. 6) wrote, ―All qualitative research is characterized by the search for meaning and understanding, the researcher as the primary instrument of data collection and analysis, an inductive investigative strategy, and a richly descriptive end product‖.
Merriam (2002) stated various traits of a qualitative researcher. First of all, a qualitative researcher stresses the importance that individuals, who socially interact with the world around them, construct meaning. Unlike quantitative researchers, qualitative researchers see the world around them as a reality of various intricate, constructions that are constantly changing and evolving. As outlined by Merriam (2002), a qualitative approach is most appropriate when the goal of the researcher is to ―understand a phenomenon, uncover the meaning a situation has for those involved, or delineate a process‖ (Miriam, 2002, p. 11).This study outlines a qualitative approach. The reason behind such an approach is because the research intends to contribute to previous qualitative studies that have been conducted concerning intercultural communication as
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well as to uncover the meaning behind the intercultural communication between local Taiwanese and international students.
The present study aimed to explore the extent of the interaction between local Taiwanese students and international students. To reach this purpose, Contact theory, Espoused theory, and Theory in use were selected as the theoretical framework.
Theoretical Framework
The 1930‘s and 40‘s marked the beginning of the study of intergroup contact by social psychologists. This interest ignited from the focus on intergroup relations and interaction between people within a social context. Constant observations of racial tension attracted researchers‘ interest in the study of contact. During one of the worst riots, of the United States history, in the 1940‘s it was observed that while Black and Whites fought in the streets, Black and Whites, who knew each other avoid fighting, but helped each other instead (Lee & Humprey, 1968). Following these observations, it was concluded that the more time Black and Whites spent bonding together, in different situations, the more positive their racial attitudes became (Brophy, 1946). Similary, Allport & Kramer (1946) discovered that prejudiced attitudes towards minorities of White students at Dartmouth College and Harvard University diminished overtime as the dominant group had more and more equal-status contact with the white minorities.
However, there seems to have been glitches in these early researches. These studies might have run into problems with selective effects and casual direction. The problem of causal direction must always be examined, when evaluating the results of intergroup contact.
Correlation does not always mean causation. It must be questioned if reduced prejudiced occurred as a result of the contact or if it was not just the case that the more tolerant people engaged in contact (Binder et al., 2009).
In 1954, Allport released his work, ―The Nature of Prejudice‖. He spoke about the opposite effects of intergroup contact theory. Allport explained his findings using ―positive factors‖ approach. He assumed that reduced prejudice will occur when four positive features of
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the contact situation are present namely, equal status of the groups in the situation, common goals, intergroup cooperation, and the support of authorities, law or custom (Allport, 1954). In its early years, the contact theory was met with conflicting reviews regarding its effects. On one hand, numerous amounts of people generally supported the theory, but on the other hand, a vast amount also refuted it. Some critics argued that the theory reduces intergroup prejudice (Cook, 1984; Harrington & Miller, 1992). However, others held that the theory had the potential to reduce prejudice, but the complexity involved was just too enormous (Stephan, 1987). Years after its introduction, Allport‘s intergroup contact theory is still being questioned. There is still the concern of whether or not the contact theory typically reduces prejudice.
In summary, after reviewing the literature on intercultural communication, intercultural communication of students, ways of improving intercultural communication, and the role of contact theory, it shows that all of the above has a potential effect on the interaction process of individuals from different cultures, especially students. However, this case is unique, as there is no prior study in Taiwan involving all these elements to examine the interaction process of local Taiwanese and international students. The government, various universities, and several scholarship donors have made tremendous investment in hosting international students in Taiwan in an effort to internationalize university programs and build positive intercultural relations. Thus, it is imperative that these investments are rewarding. Therefore, it is important for both local Taiwanese and international students to begin to work alongside each other, because this will only help them and give them a head start to positively cope in a globalized world.
In this study, the contact theory was used to assess the intercultural communication of international and Taiwanese students studying together in the classroom. Several components were looked at to determine if intergroup contact improves intercultural communication between the two groups.
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Research Participants
The sample population for this study was international students, who are Taiwan ICDF scholarship recipients, studying in Taiwan as well as local Taiwanese students. A number of 21 participants were chosen to take part in the process, whereby Purposive, Convenient, and Snowball Sampling were used. In the current study, purposeful sampling was used because the case is an information-rich case, and it allowed the researcher to study it on an in-depth level in order to obtain information-rich cases (Merriam, 2002). The researcher deliberately selected participants, so that the phenomenon under study is described and revealed by participants, who are knowledgeable within the area of investigation and are willing to participate.
Foreign participants of the study had to be international ICDF students, who have studied or have been studying in Taiwan for at least 8 months. Eight months was used as the criteria because according to the U Curve Theory (UCT) of cross cultural adjustment, after eight months of relocation, expatriate spouses and children are able to move into the adjustment stage (Black
& Mendenhall, 1991). In this case, international students were expected to have already passed the first stage of the UCT, which is the initial culture shock faced when they enter a foreign country. ICDF was chosen as the body of international students to investigate, because the foundation has a number of 253 scholarship recipients, from various parts of the world, who are currently studying in Taiwan (www.icdf.org.tw).
Local participants had to be Taiwanese students or host country nationals, who have taken classes with or are currently taking classes with international students studying at a Taiwanese University. This criterion was chosen, for Taiwanese students, because they must have been in a university environment in which intercultural communication is expected to take place, over a long term period of time.
The Following tables provide a summary of the participant‘s information.
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Belizean Master‘s Intl. Trade Mng.
Belizean Master‘s Intl. Human Res. Dev Admin = Healthcare Administration; Intl. Trade Mng = International Trade Management; Intl.
Human Res. Dev = International Human Resource Development; Marine Sc. And Res. Mng = Marine Science and Management; Tech. Mng = Technology Management
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The 11 international participants (ages 20-40) were all ICDF scholarships recipients who are studying in Taiwan or have studied in Taiwan. Each of them had been in Taiwan, for a period of eight months or longer, three had lived in other countries before studying in Taiwan. The time, the international students lived in foreign countries, ranged from two years to four. All had studied Chinese, for a period of 6 months to three years, while living in Taiwan. Their Chinese ability ranged from poor to good-poor being the lowest and very good being the highest. Their English ability was very good.
37 Note. Foreign life exp = Foreign life experience
Intl. Business = International Business Mass Comm. = Mass Communication
Tech. Management = Technology Management Intl. Trade = International Trade
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The 10 local interviewees (ages 20-30) were all Taiwanese students, who are studying with international students or who have studied with international students. Three had lived in other countries, before studying in Taiwan. The time the local students lived in other countries ranged from a year to sixteen years. All, except one, had very good Chinese ability. Hers was good, while the others were very good. Their English ability ranged from average to good-poor being the lowest and very good being the highest.
For the purpose of this thesis, participants were recruited through different channels.
Personal contacts of the researcher were contacted. Other participants were recruited through a notice, which was posted, on the campus, of the university the researcher attends. The notice described the research project and provided the researcher‘s contact information (See appendix A). Since the researcher planned to use participants, who would have responded to the notice as a part of the study convenience sampling must be acknowledged as another type of sampling which was used in the study. Convenience sampling simply means that the participants in a particular study are selected because of their ready availability (Henry, 1990; Patton, 2002). As with many cases, when convenient sampling is employed the researcher will acknowledge the limitations of the sample and will not generalize results beyond the scope of the given population.
The researcher also used snowball sampling, as the researcher depended on the first few participants to recommend others to take part in the study. With snowball sampling, the researcher begins the investigation with key informants, who then recommend other participants, who are deemed to be knowledgeable about the study in question to the researcher. In order to obtain a diverse sample and allow for rich, in-depth data, it was the aim of the researcher to gather a variation in the age, nationality, and length of stay in Taiwan of participants of the study.
In order to ensure that participants met the participation criteria, potential participants were screened through the use of a phone call or email. If the participants met the participation criteria, a date and time for the interview was established. The interviewees were promised anonymity and asked for their permission to tape record the interview.
The demographic data reported in this study were in terms of gender, age group, degree being pursued or pursued, program of study, duration of stay in Taiwan, English and Chinese
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ability, and the amount of years the participants have studied Chinese. In order to ensure confidentiality and anonymity, participant pseudonyms were selected, Participants‘ quotations were also edited for ease of reading.
Data Collection
When conducting a qualitative research, several methods can be applied, such as interviews, ethnographic studies or focus groups. To achieve the purposes of the present study, the researcher used a qualitative approach, by means of semi-structured interviews for data collection. At first, face-to-face interviews seemed an appropriate method for this research, because they allowed for the research to ask open ended questions and explore individual experience regarding the research. However, due to certain time and geographical constraints, the researcher encountered several difficulties obtaining local participants to interview. Thus, the researcher opted to obtain information, from four of the local participants via the means of a questionnaire with open-ended questions. Both the interview questions and the questions on the questionnaire focused on obtaining information that examined the intercultural communication experience of international and Taiwanese students as well as the difficulties and strategies of students studying in a culturally diverse environment. In fact the interview questions were changed to a questionnaire form to collect the necessary information from the participants, who were not interviewed. The questionnaire also consisted of open ended questions. In terms of the interviews, each of the remaining participants was interviewed for 50 minutes to an hour. Of the 11 international participants interviewed, 7 were face-to-face interviews and 4 other interviews were conducted via skype. Of the 10 local Taiwanese participants, 4 face-to-face and 2 interviews were conducted via skype. The remaining 4 participants provided information to the study by the means of a questionnaire.
The document review process was also used to collect data for the study. A review of data coming from mainly books, articles and websites was used to gather information about internationalization and intercultural communication. A review of these documents was used in the research.
This section explains how the data was collected. The data analysis process is also outlined in this section.
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In regards to data collection, the following steps were taken: developing interview questions, peer review process, conducting pilot interviews and finalizing the interview questions.
1. Developing interview questions: The questions were developed using previous studies on intercultural communication. The researcher checked with the thesis advisor to see if any adjustments needed to be made before the interviews are carried out. (See appendix B for interview questions)
2. Peer & Expert Review: Possible interview questions underwent a rigorous peer and expert review process, whereby inconsistencies, particularly regarding questions 4, 5, and 7, were cited and remedied as well as areas that need to be improved. Peers consisted of foreign and local Taiwanese students, who have personal background in the field of international human resource. Experts consisted of two university lecturers, both of whom taught Human Resource classes.
3. Pilot Interview: Pilot interviews were conducted to ensure the information gathered achieved the goals of the interview. After the pilot interviews were conducted, the researcher cited areas of improvement, especially in regards to interview time. Thus, the time for the real interviews was amended.
4. The study aimed to target 8-10 international and 8-10 local Taiwanese students. However, 11 international students were interviewed instead and 10 Taiwanese.
After participants were recruited, each participant, who would be interviewed face-to-face, met with the researcher for an individual, open-ended interview. Prior to participating in the interview, participants who would take part in the face-to-face interview were asked to sign a consent form indicating that they had been informed of the purpose and procedures of the study, and their rights, including the right to withdraw at any time. Interviewees, who were not interviewed face-to-face, did not undergo this process. All the interviews were audiotaped and transcribed verbatim, and the researcher completed a summary, based on the interview.
Following the interview, the participants were verbally debriefed and thanked for their participation.
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Data Analysis
After conducting the interviews, the interviews were then transcribed, in order to process them for subsequent analysis. A suitable method for this analysis seemed to be thematic analysis.
Thematic analysis is ―A qualitative analytic method for: ‗identifying, analyzing and reporting patterns (themes) within data. It minimally organizes and describes your data set in (rich) detail.
However, frequently it goes further than this, and interprets various aspects of the research topic‖
(Braun & Clarke, 2006, p.79). Most kinds of qualitative analysis are actually ‗thematic‘ in some sense. According to Arson, ―Thematic Analysis is an approach to dealing with data that involves the creation and application of ‗codes‘ to data (Arson, 1994, p.1). Arson points out that the data being interpreted might take several different forms including an interview transcript, field notes, policy documents, photographs, and video footage (Arson, 1994). Coding is often used in thematic analysis. Arson states, ―Coding‘ refers to the creation of categories in relation to data;
the grouping together of different instances of datum under an umbrella term that can enable them to be regarded as ‗of the same type‖ (Arson, 1994, p.1).
After interviews were conducted, the researcher grouped all the participants‘ responses together, under each question that was asked. Thereafter, the researcher identified a limited number of emergent themes or recurring domains of meaning, which adequately reflected the textual data. As with all qualitative analysis, it is vitally important that the researcher is extremely familiar with the data if the analysis is to be expedited and insightful. After the researcher became acquainted with the data, the information was coded. That is, brief descriptions were applied to the pieces of data. Coding involves breaking down the data and grouping it into different categories (Dey, 1993). Codes or categories generally refer to tags or labels given to the descriptive or inferential information compiled during a study. Codes are often times used to describe clumps of several amounts of words, phrases, sentences or whole paragraphs, connected or unconnected to a specific setting (Miles & Huberman, 1994). In this study, participants name were coded using letters of the alphabet, i.e participant A, B, C. The
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responses were also coded and divided into several general groups, reflecting the main idea gained from each question, i.e experience, difficulty, strategy.
This data was constantly modified as new ideas were developed. Based on the codings, the researcher then identified specific themes, which integrated substantial sets of these codings.
The researcher then identified examples of each theme to illustrate what the analysis achieved.
Research Procedure
This section describes the procedure of the study. Figure 3.1 shows the procedure. Each step is explained below as follows:
1. Identifying the research subject: Based on reading about intercultural communication, the research topic was decided by the researcher and the thesis advisor.
2. Discussing the literature review: Literature Review provides a researcher with the necessary information needed to review important points of current knowledge. Pertinent findings, as well as theoretical and methodological contributions to a specific topic in order to aid in his/her own research, were looked at.
3. Establishing research questions: Based on the research purposes, research questions were addressed. Thereafter, a conceptual framework was established.
4. Designing the research methods: A qualitative approach was chosen in order to answer the research questions.
5. Developing the interview questions: The interview questions were developed based on the research purposes and questions. The interviewer checked with the thesis advisor, peers and experts with a background in Human Resource to see if any adjustments needed to be made before the interviews were carried out.
6. Collecting the data: The participants were selected, using purposive sampling. A schedule was established to conduct the interviews. A number of semi-structured interview
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sessions were conducted and a few questionnaires were handed out, in order to collect the information needed for the study.
7. Analyzing the data: The analysis of the data was conducted using thematic analysis, whereby semi-structured interview questions were coded and grouped into major themes.
8. Establishing research findings: Through data analysis, the researcher of this study
8. Establishing research findings: Through data analysis, the researcher of this study