Common use of Qualitative Data Clause in Contracts

Qualitative Data. To collect qualitative data for my study, I contacted the principals of the schools and told them about the research I was doing. I haven’t worked for any of the principals before, but the fact that all three principals knew me both professionally and personally helped me establish relationships and trust from the start. After I explained the purpose of the study, all the benefits and risks, the principals expressed their interest in the research and willingness to help. Next, I sent the consent forms to the principals and agreed on the date and time of the interviews. Each school provided a separate room for the interview and the principals made sure the interviews were not interrupted and the participants’ responses could not be overheard by other staff members. To select the teacher for the interview, I briefly explained what kind of teachers I needed so that maximum variation sampling was ensured. The principals showed me the list of teachers who were available for the interview and we offered the potential participants to take part in the study on a voluntary basis. Before starting the interview I spent a few minutes getting to know the participants, telling them about myself, what I do and why I was sitting in front of them. I explained the purpose of my study and how our conversation with them would contribute to the research. I also told them about all the benefits and risks, and offered to sign the consent forms. Interestingly enough, some participants seemed to feel more relaxed until I mentioned the consent forms. I asked each participant to record the interview and explained why I was doing it. Despite my expectations that asking permission to use an audio recorder during interviews might cause some discomfort, all participants had no objections to being recorded. The interviews were conducted in the native languages of the participants: Kazakh and Russian. The questions followed the interview protocol that was approved by the Ethics Review Committee. In order not to lose focus, I did not take any notes during the interviews since all interviews were recorded on a digital audio recorder. Each interview took from 15 to 30 minutes. The quantitative part of my research was done via an online survey. First, I used some questions from a study done by ▇▇▇▇▇▇▇ and ▇▇▇▇▇▇ (2006) and adapted them to the purpose of my research. This study was aimed to quantify teacher autonomy and the resulting scale was called Teacher Autonomy Scale (TAS). I used the questions from their study as the basis for my survey. The questions were translated into Kazakh and Russian and compiled into an online questionnaire. All questions were converted into Likert-scale type questions. I compiled the survey using Google Forms, an online tool for surveys, questionnaires, application forms and quizzes. I preferred Google Forms to other tools such as Surveymonkey or Qualtrics because I am more familiar with the tool and the user interface is more friendly for the respondents. Among the advantages of Google Forms are: modular structure, which makes it easier to add questions and organize them into topics; cloud storage of the results in a separate spreadsheet; unlimited number of questions and surveys (▇▇▇▇▇▇ & ▇▇▇▇▇▇▇, 2014). I contacted the principals of the three participating schools and asked for permission to conduct the online survey with their teachers. After getting permission from the principals, I created three separate identical surveys for each school (a) in order to protect the confidentiality of each school as an institution and (b) so that the results do not get mixed up by mistake. Each survey was shared as a short URL link with each principal and the principals were asked to share the link with their teachers. The teachers answered the questions using their mobile phones and personal computers. Each participant spent 5- 10 minutes to answer all questions. Google Forms also allowed me to see the timestamp of each participant’s submission. After completing the survey, each participant was shown a short text thanking them for participation. In order to eliminate duplicate submissions, I included authorization by email, but the email addresses were not collected for the sake of privacy and confidentiality.