Project topics and materials
Get Complete Project Material File(s) Now! »
Approaching the participants: Describing the sample
My research used a sample of Saudi academic women at Princess Nora Bint Abdul Rahman University, the biggest female university in the world38, located in Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia. My sample was a purposive sample as I utilised specific criteria to select doctoral educators39 who work at the university as both educators40 and researchers. Creswell (2007, p. 125) suggests that the researcher should select the participants purposefully rather than randomly, because the purposeful selection of participants will help the researcher to answer the research questions and understand the research problem. I wanted the participants to be women who had already obtained a Doctorate, so as to ensure that they perform highly as educators and have more experience than educators who hold only Masters degrees. Moreover, I wanted them to be actively involved in conducting research, so as to answer my research question.
Another criterion that I used for the selection of the participants was age. I wanted to collect data from two generations in academia. I wanted to interview the first generation of academic women to hold Doctorates in Saudi Arabia, and another generation (ten years younger) of academic women, in order to ensure different experiences and diversity in the data. The interviewees included women of different ages and different levels of experience (such as length of service). Those interviewed had different backgrounds, but they all share a similar role in their professional lives as women academics and researchers in higher education. Since case studies do not require large sample sizes, I choose to interview only four academic women: two ‘old’/‘established’ academic women and two ‘young’/‘new’ academic women. I wanted an equal number of ‘established’ and ‘new’ academic researchers, so I settled on four participants. A sample size of four allowed me to have in-depth discussions with them, as is required by a narrative case study.
After obtaining ethical clearance from the University of Pretoria, I began the process of selecting the sample for my interviews. I am a Saudi woman from Riyadh and I know many people working at Princess Nora University, both as educators and as administrators. Although I could reach some academic women personally, I wanted to reach them professionally. The University of Pretoria is one of the universities acknowledged by the Ministry of Higher Education in Saudi Arabia. I had a letter from the Ministry of Higher Education acknowledging that I am a PhD student at the University of Pretoria. This letter was sent to the principal of Princess Nora University with a request for permission to conduct my study at that institution. When I applied for permission from Princess Nora University to conduct the research study, I did not reveal the names of the academic researchers that I knew there. On 29 September 2011, after a long time of waiting, calling and sending many emails, I received a written letter of approval (Appendix J) from the principal of Princess Nora University that enabled me to conduct my study by interviewing academic researchers at the university. The principal sent a letter to all colleges stating that I should be allowed to collect data from them regarding the number of educators in each department and any other information that may help my study. I attached this approval letter to an email that I sent to the dean of scientific research at the university, asking them to provide me with the names of the researchers with PhDs in their colleges. They informed me that they were unable to reveal the names of the researchers, and I had to contact each college separately. I sent emails to all fourteen colleges that make up Princess Nora University asking them to send my protocol letter of invitation to participate in my study (Appendix H) to all doctoral researchers in their colleges. The protocol letter was in Arabic and in English. It explained the research project and contained all my contact details, so that researchers could contact me if they were willing to participate in the study. Each of Princess Nora University’s fourteen colleges provided me with the number of educators they have (Appendix G). Only eight academic researchers from the different colleges sent me emails saying that they were willing to participate in the study. One academic researcher sent me an SMS message on my cell phone saying that she was sorry, but she could not participate.
I received four further SMSs and two emails from academic researchers at the Science College because my friend, who is an educator in that college but not a researcher, encouraged her colleagues to participate in my study. Appendix G shows that there are 144 Saudi women with PhDs in the four departments in the Science College. I wanted to interview any two ‘new’ and any two ‘established’ academic researchers from this college, specifically because I thought that, being scientific researchers, they would have faced the most challenges and obstacles throughout their academic journey. This would be due to the need to conduct laboratory experiments and having to keep up to date with international scientific developments which are usually available only in English and not in Arabic. I chose four academic researchers from the Science College and tried to get to know them before starting the interviews, because “making initial contact with research participants is an important process in conducting qualitative research” (Egharevba, 2001, p. 229). I also sent an email to each one with a letter of informed consent (Appendix I) in both English and Arabic that outlined everything that she should know about the study. This included the length of the interviews, the type of data that they may like to share with me, and the potential venues for the interviews. I attached most of the questions that I intended to ask them during the interviews and clarified that they would remain anonymous. I assured them that all the information collected during the research would be stored safely, even after the research is completed and that they may withdraw from the research process at any stage without any reprisals. Potential participants had a week to consider the invitation, and when they agreed to participate, I set dates and locations to meet them, and gave them a consent form to sign, which outlined the aim of the study and what was expected of the participants.
Sampling, data collection and ethical considerations
I collected some documented information from the administration of Princess Nora University and the official website of the university that answered my first research sub-question. Salma, Asir, Najd and Hejaz, all academic researchers at Princess Nora University, were my interviewee group and the direct source of my data. I did not have an existing personal relationship with any of the selected participants and I did not interview any woman academic that I knew in any other capacity. These four women were completely willing to participate in the study and had time to consider the possible consequences of their participation.
The interview method is fundamental to qualitative research. A crucial part of a qualitative interview is to elicit the interviewee’s point of view, as the participant is the only source of data when using this method (Maree, 2007, p. 87). Moreover, the participant’s point of view must be from her own perspective; the researcher must avoid influencing the interview (Marshall & Rossman, 2011, p. 144) in order to “establish how participants make meaning of a specific phenomenon by analysing their perceptions, attitudes, understanding, knowledge, values, feelings and experiences in an attempt to approximate their construction of the phenomenon” (Maree, 2007, p. 99).
The participants were provided with consent letters that guaranteed that their rights, confidentiality and privacy would be protected. I also ensured that the participants were from different departments, thereby limiting the possibility of them knowing each other. Conducting interviews was the primary source of data collection. A series of semi-structured narrative interviews were conducted with the participants and the core interview questions can be found in Section 4. Three interviews were conducted with each of Salma, Asir and Najd, and two interviews with Hejaz. Interviews lasted for one to two hours and were typically followed up with additional phone calls and conversations via WhatsApp.
Chapter One: Introduction
Chapter Two: From illiteracy to university: Education in Saudi Arabia and the emergence of Princess Nora Bint Abdul Rahman University
Chapter Three: Narratives of academic women around the world: The literature review Conceptual framework
Chapter Four: From the shadow to the light: Research methodology
Chapter Five: Salma: A special woman
Chapter Six: Asir: Living my dream, no one else’s
Chapter Seven: Najd: The woman who found the needle in the Saudi haystack
Chapter Eight: Hejaz: Living in a different world
Chapter Nine: Living in a bubble: Being a Saudi woman academic
Appendices
References
