Methods

programme in special needs education and I decided also to interview her as she knows the school from several years.

Access. Gaining access to the selected informants is an important step in the data collection process. I needed permission from the Capacity Building Office of the Subcity to conduct a research at the school which I forwarded to the administration of the school. The principal of the school introduced me to those teachers who were going to be my contact teachers throughout my research work. These teachers helped me to get access to those teachers whom I selected for the focus group discussion, to the two selected classes and to the selected student informants as well as their parents.

After having selected the informants I needed their acceptance to take part in the study. I gathered the students for a meeting where I described the central purpose of the study and the procedures to be used in the data collection. I informed that I was going to use a tape recorder and that they had the right to withdraw from the study at any time. I made it clear that the information they would give would be treated confidentially. This same information was also given to all the other participants in the research. As I visited the school rather frequently it was easy to reach the students as well as the teachers and the principal. Access to the parents and acceptance from them to participate in the study was secured partly by visiting them before the

interview took place, partly through communication with their son/daughter who was among the selected students. This was also how I made appointments with the parents as the school has no register with the names, addresses or phone numbers.

there were 119 students in the two classes so with this high number of students a questionnaire would suit this purpose. In addition to this the information from the answers of the questionnaire was used as bases when selecting the students for the in-depth interviews. As the students do not know English the questionnaire needed to be translated into Amharic, which is the mother tongue of the students. The

questionnaire has a mixture of close-ended and open-ended questions within six different areas, which are already mentioned.

A pilot study was conducted to try out the questionnaire. The main purpose was to test the understanding of the questions and hence give the opportunity to revise the questionnaire before the main study. In this study it would not be necessary with too many respondents. What I considered as important was that the pilot study should be conducted in a similar environment as the main study. Hence a primary school was selected which is situated in the neighbour area and has a similar socio-economic background. I had a meeting with the principal in order to get access, to give information about the study and to make necessary appointments. One eight grade class was selected randomly among all the classes at this level. The principal of the school gave me access to the class for one period, which is forty minutes, for the students to answer the questions. The translator and I were present in the class. It was particularly necessary for the translator to be present as I considered it important to give the students the opportunity to ask questions about things being ambiguous. This we experienced as very useful and resulted in some of the questions being modified or changed.

Interview. Interview is the main method of data collection in this study. A

consequence of the chosen perspective is that the informants are asked to describe their experiences and express their perceptions and therefore interview became the method. Tangen (1998) refers to this as an interview where the interviewee gives a report of its own experiences (Selvrapportering gjennom intervju). This is commonly used within phenomenological research and is assumed to give the most useful

information to answer the research questions/objectives. For this purpose interview

guides were designed (Appendix No 6, 7 and 8) for the students, the parents and the principals. The type of guides suiting this purpose is a standardized open-ended interview (Gall et al., 2003). This involves a predetermined sequence and wording of the same set of questions for the informants representing the same group, in this study being the students, the parents, and the principals. This will minimize the possibility of bias. However, when in the interview situation the open-form questions give the opportunity also to get additional information if necessary by probing more deeply. I have chosen to have six interviews with students and six with parents and consider that to be a reasonable size. All these interviews were one-to-one in-depth interviews.

As experience and perception are main areas of focus in this research this is reflected in the interview guide. I have asked my interviewees to describe their experiences and then express their perception related to the different topics. I wanted them to express this through what they liked/disliked or was satisfied or not satisfied with which are the criteria I have chosen for developing the concept school life quality. The

interview guide for the students has three main aspects: school, work and parents.

The questions concentrate on life at work and life at school. The interview guide for the parents also focuses on school and work. I wanted to get information on the parents’ perception of the school life and the working life of their sons/daughters as well as their perception of how work influence on the school life of their daughter or son. The interview guide for the principals was structured in the same way with the main topics being work and school.

For the teachers I chose to have a focus group discussion. This was chosen for several reasons. To get good information from the teachers it would be necessary to

interview more than one. The interviewees are similar and the interaction among them would likely yield better information than individual interviews. The focus group technique is supposed to work well when the members of the group are on equal bases. I consider the teachers to be such a group. Lastly, the time available to collect the information was also limited so therefore this would save a lot of time. An interview guide was developed for this purpose (Appendix No 9). This interview

guide also focused on description and perception within the aspects of work, school and parents, but presenting a set of topics to be explored and where the wording of the questions are not predetermined. They can be decided by the interviewer as the situation evolves.

All the interviews, except those with the parents, were conducted at the school. I tried to find a place that was quiet and free from distractions. That was not easy as there is rather much noise, especially in the breaks and the rooms are not well isolated. The one-to-one interviews became good and the recording was of acceptable quality. It was, however, more difficult with the focus group discussion as the acoustic in the room was not satisfying. Therefore I decided to do two follow up interviews.

The interviews with the students and the parents were conducted in the native

language of the informants, which is Amharic so it was necessary to have a translator.

He read through the interviews in advance which I had written in English. He joined me during the interviews and translated on the spot. The teachers and the principals know English so I was able to conduct the interviews without the translator.

I planned to conduct the focus group discussion in English as the teachers all said they mastered English. I was, however, given false expectations as I experienced that some did not understand English so well and this I assume prevented some from giving good information. I also experienced that it was difficult to get everyone involved in the discussion. The males were more active than the females. I am aware that this is related to culture, so I mentioned this in my introduction of the interview in order to encourage the females to participate. Due to these reasons as well as to the bad acoustic conditions previous mentioned I was not satisfied with this discussion so I decided to have follow-up interviews with the males and females separately.

I used a tape recorder when conducting the interviews and later I transcribed them. I had planned to do so immediately after every interview. This was not possible due to lack of time. The turbulent political situation mentioned in chapter 1 led to a delay in

my planned schedule. Therefore I have transcribed almost all of the interviews after my return to Norway. That means I was not able to do any follow-up interviews.