35 procedure in data collection as a result of the

3.5 Procedure in data collection
As a result of the study utilizing unstructured interviews, the researcher did not prepare the
questions prior to conducting the interviews. Bogdan and Biklen (1992:2) state that, even
though “people conducting qualitative research may deve lop a focus as they collect data,
they do not approach the research with specific questions to answer or hypotheses to test.
They … are concerned with understanding behavior from the subjects’ frame of reference.”
Only one question, followed by relevant probes was presented to the respondents. The
question asked was:
What do you think of Development Studies as a school subject?
Basically, the interviews were aimed at eliciting individual opinions and perceptions about
all the facets of the subject (Shongwe 1996:52). Eight Development Studies teachers and
one curriculum designer were interviewed. The same question presented to Development
Studies teachers, was presented to the curriculum designer.
Nine respondents in total participated in the interviews. All the interviews were recorded on
tape in order to preserve the information and to help reduce the researcher’s biases (Borg &
Gall 1989:455 & 456). Borg and Gall (1989) state that recording interview data for research,
among other things, helps the researcher to reduce an unconscious selection of data favoring
his or her biases. Interview tapes can also be used to validate the data (Shongwe 1996:55).
3.6 Data analysis
Analysis entails working with data, organizing them into manageable units, synthesizing
them, searching for patterns, discovering what is important and what should be learnt as well
as deciding what the researcher would tell others (Bogdan & Biklen 1992:153). In qualitative
research, data analysis is an ongoing process. In this study some analysis was done during
data collection and without this analysis, the data collection would have no direction. This
research employed inductive analysis. Shongwe (1996:60) states that if patterns, themes and

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categories develop from the data and are not determined before data collection and analysis,
such analysis is inductive. For the purpose of this study, the categories were generated from
the comments of the interviewed respondents that is the Development Studies teachers and
the curriculum designer. For the purpose of the interviews conducted in English, the data
were first analyzed in that language.
This study followed Tesch’s (Poggenpoel 1998:343 -344) approach to data analysis. This
approach, which entails the following eight steps, was followed with the data collected.
 The researcher reads through all the transcripts in order to make sense out of them.
 The researcher jots down ideas as they emerge.
 The researcher picks one transcript: the most interesting, the shortest or the transcript
at the top of the pile.