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Research Methods
This chapter explains the different methods and research philosophies used when working on this thesis. It also describes the quality criteria and ethical considerations.
Research approach
A qualitative research design was selected for this research, since it gives more freedom in the data collection phase as well as the opportunity to gain more in-depth knowledge about the subject (Kvale & Brinkmann, 2009). The fact that the topic is more complex and the answers to the interview questions could not be predicted beforehand is also a good reason to use the qualitative design. Finally, this also gives more room when choosing the source where the data is collected, which enables a broader look at the topic from several different viewpoints. However, these findings are limited, due to that the sample size can’t include every susceptible candidate, but only a limited amount (Patton, 1999). It is therefore not guaranteed that the results will cover the influences and opinions of all cases from all over the world and all time. It is also worth mentioning that qualitative is not a synonym for interpretive. This depends on the philosophical assumptions of the researcher (Myers, 1997).
All research projects are based on a set of philosophical assumptions about how the world is and how knowledge about the world could be obtained (Meyers, 2008). These philosophical assumptions work as the base, or foundation of our work in this thesis. The next thing to decide was how to do our investigations. The thesis is carried out with a constructivist philosophy in order to leave room for context and interpretations as part of the research. Constructivism is based on the idea that reflections and personal experiences form understanding (Andrew et al., 2011). In this case it is necessary to take on a constructivist approach, since it was not clear from the start if a single solution was to be found for this problem. Easterby-Smith, Thorpe & Jackson (2015) say that constructivism emphasise the practical consequences of the research and that this is the most important part of a research. A main part of constructivism is also that it assumes that data is collected in interaction with participants, rather than being discovered on its own. As opposed to this, a positivist approach is more often used in order to test a specific theory, in order to gain increased understanding of the specific area by using quantifiable variables from a sample group in a certain population (Meyers, 2008).
The constructivist approach used in this thesis was selected in order to enable the broad perspective that is required by the problem. This gave us an opportunity to look at the problem from several different angles, which was a necessity since we had no clear theme from the start. However most importantly, the constructivist approach was adopted in order to keep all data within its context and while interpretations and assumptions can be made, they are not guaranteed to work in another context. This is an important aspect of our thesis because of the very unique situation we decided to investigate, and while we give certain suggestions in the end, they can’t be guaranteed to work in other situations. A positivist philosophy was therefore never considered for this thesis, since this specific research don’t benefit from assuming a specific theory from the start, nor could we assume that there is a certain set solutions for this problem, regardless of context.
Research design
The topic for this thesis was chosen due to both authors having an interest for it, and with it being a new product that’s been around for about twenty years, but still not seen a massive increase in use yet, there was a unique opportunity to look at a product that have a potential to become popular very fast in the near future. The work then started on framing what aspects to actually look at. From the start it was mostly marketing in general and an interest in finding out why the product haven’t seen a massive growth yet. This was the focus when framing the research questions. The literature study helped with explaining how new products could be marketed and gave some insight in what could potentially answer some of the questions we had. To gather data we decided to use an interview study. This was decided from the very beginning, even though we had a suspicion that it would be hard to find willing respondents. For the interviews, a questionnaire was designed in order to have a guide for the interview conversations and for the respondents to be able to prepare some answers beforehand. Half of the interviews were conducted on the phone due to long distances between the researchers and the respondents, and the other half which was closer were conducted face-to-face. Once the interviews were completed, a summary was written to serve as our interpretation of what was being said and to transfer the answers and conversations into a flowing text. The interviews were then coded based on what was being said. Some codes showed up in several interviews, but none of the interviews contained exactly the same set of codes as another. These codes were then categorized in the analysis. These categories were then put into three different themes to be able to distinguish the main topics that was needed in order to answer the research questions. A conclusion was then drawn from the analysis to summarize our answers to the research questions.
Figure 3.1 below shows the pathway progress from the methods point of view. The starting point is our constructivist philosophical assumptions. The research techniques includes the techniques we use and what kind of method we use to collect the data, in this case the interview study. The data collection method itself is how we decided to gather the empirical material which is the semi-structured interviews that we conducted. Once data was gathered, we used a grounded analysis approach in order to analyse it. The final record of our studies is then the thesis itself.
Data collection
This thesis is done as an interview study, where different themes form the base of the following data analysis. Since this study focus mainly about people’s perception of a product and there is a need to form a deeper understanding of the problem, we believe that a qualitative interview study based on semi-structured interviews is as suitable way to conduct this study. That will enable us to gain a deeper insight into the relation between the product itself and people’s perception about it (Kvale & Brinkmann, 2009). The results and conclusions in this thesis are mainly based on the data gathered from primary sources. Primary sources are unpublished data that is gathered directly from people and organizations, as opposed to secondary sources that is mainly gathered from previously published materials (Myers, 2011). To answer our research questions, interviews with several companies within the construction industry was held. An interview questionnaire was designed to help with answering the main research questions above.
The empirical data gathered in this report were collected from semi-structured interviews with six candidates. The candidates were selected on the basis that they either have previous experience of working with CLT in projects, or have heard and discussed about it, but have yet to adopt it in practice. This method was selected to give a wider insight to how the industry as a whole is reacting to the evolutions in wooden high-rise construction. It also gave the opportunity of talking to a producer of the product itself to hear how they see the changes and what demand there is for the new product. The interviews were done in an open, semi-structured format. This means that the interview had open questions where follow-up questions are based on the previous ones. The researcher are also supposed to start with trying to find out about the interest for the topic by the candidate (Lantz, 2009).
The semi-structured interview gives us the possibility of working with a set questionnaire while still leaving room for interventions and follow-up questions relating to the original set (Meyers, 2008). This means, according to Meyers (2008) that we can get developed, deeper answers to our questions while still making sure that the candidates answers the same question in order to have comparable answers. This also links back to the qualitative research model since it enables us to collect rich data from people in different situations (Meyers 2008), and leads to a greater insight of the problem to be able to better answer the research questions (Easterby-Smith et al., 2015)
We started by researching the potential interview candidates to see which companies would be interesting to contact. The contacted companies are both ones with previous CLT experience and companies that know of it, but still have yet to adopt it to get a good sense of how the product is perceived in the industry. These companies were sorted by first asking the question; do you have any previous experience from working with CLT? Depending on their answer, two different questionnaires were used. A producer of the product itself was also contacted in order to hear what they have to say about the development and how they view the future of wooden construction. The questions in the questionnaire varies a bit depending on if the company in question have had any previous experience working with CLT. The answer from the initial question; do you have any previous experience from working with CLT? Determines what questionnaire is used. For those that answered yes, the questionnaire looked like this:
1. Why did you choose CLT?
2. What difficulties do you see in switching to CLT instead of steel and concrete?
3. What advantages do you see as the most important for the material?
4. Where is the main decision of which materials used made? Who has the main influence?
5. What conditions (standardization, prefab, costs, connectors/detail solutions, energy, time etc.) do a new material have to fulfill in order to be used regularly by you company?
6. What do you think is the main reason that CLT is now such a hot topic in construction?
7. What do you think is the main reason that part of the public is still skeptical to CLT? And for those that answered no, it looked like this:
1. Why have you not used CLT yet?
2. Are you aware of the possibilities of building with wood?
3. What difficulties do you see in switching to CLT instead of steel and concrete?
4. Where is the main decision of which materials used made? Who has the main influence?
5. What conditions (standardization, prefab, costs, connectors/detail solutions, energy, time etc.) do a new material have to fulfill in order to be used regularly by you company?
6. What do you think is the main reason that CLT is now such a hot topic in construction?
7. What do you think is the main reason that part of the public is still skeptical to CLT?
In order to see if the topic is actually interesting to these respondents. When the different companies where selected, they were contacted either by phone calls or e-mail. Personal interviews with the candidates were preferred, but if they did not have the time for a personal meeting or were away travelling or simply located too far away, the interview was done either by Skype or over the phone. We always took notes during the interview, as well as an audio recording, when the respondents allowed for it in order to be able to go back to, reflect on and summarize the interview later.
When deciding on this topic for the thesis, we already had a feeling that finding good candidates for the interviews would be one of the harder tasks of this work. Our fears were partially justified, since it was very hard actually finding any projects that had been made with the material. The initial search only brought us further because of recommendations from family and friends knowing about projects or companies that worked with CLT. From these starting candidates we were then given further recommendations and contacts to help us reach our final results. It was difficult finding and getting hold of these candidates, but once we actually found someone working with CLT, it was not hard to explain them our purpose and getting them to agree to an interview. However, with the people that hadn’t worked with the product, there was basically no interest at all, even if they knew what it was. This indicates that the people that use this material is probably the “front runners” that want to stay ahead of the rest and market themselves in this way. As expected, there were also not many sceptical respondents in the sample size. We only found one, and as mentioned in the results chapter, he would not have chosen CLT, were it not for the political policies governing the area of the project.
Data analysis
The data was analysed using a grounded analysis approach. Grounded analysis derives from the traditional way of working with grounded theory and in this study the analysis variant was considered to be more beneficial. The main reason for basing the work in a variant of grounded theory is that it is useful in developing context-based explanations (Myers, 1997). The way to achieve solid results then is therefore ensuring that the data gathered can be linked to, and used together with the theoretical framework (Locke, 2001). However, since the traditional way of using grounded theory contain some minor flaws for the purpose that we intend to use it for the research in this work, the selected method is instead called grounded analysis. Although it still shares many aspects with the grounded theory in the way of handling research.
Grounded analysis in this case means that rather than having the predetermined framework while analysing (coding) the data, we let the framework emerge during the coding itself. This means that rather than creating a reality and imput it to the data, the reality will be created through the data itself. This is a method that Jeong (2009) calls phenomenologist grounded theory analysis. It will hopefully give a better chance of finding explanations and understandings of the problem within the data itself and not just based on theory. This means that we might find new problems or underlying contexts that are not found in the theoretical framework.
In this thesis the grounded analysis is conducted in a “along the way” approach, meaning that as data is gathered, codes are found before all of the interviews are conducted. Once all of the interviews were conducted, all of the codes were reviewed again before applying them to certain categories. These categories were reviewed by both authors to ensure that the codes were not misplaced into the wrong categories and that none of the codes or categories were unnecessary or irrelevant to the study. Finally, these categories were grouped into themes. After the process was done, all of the codes, categories and themes were reviewed in order to ensure that they all make sense and that the pattern could be followed without unclear paths through the process. These themes where then the basis of the analysis when trying to answer the main research questions.
Quality
Flick (2007) identifies four levels of asking the questions of quality. Since two of these relate to external funding and publishers, and this is a student thesis without any funding institutions or external publishers in mind, we focus more on the remaining two questions. The first is our own interest as researchers to know how good or bad our own research is. How can we find out if we did a good interview or how far we can trust our findings? This also includes thought about the concepts of originality and novelty. The second question is asked regarding the readers’ interest in what research they can rely on and what they can’t rely on. This means that the research must be seen as trustworthy and there should be a possibility to check the sources and gain access to the references. This is something the reader will want to do themselves, as they themselves want to check if the research is reliable for their own purposes.
These two questions can be linked back to Guba’s (1981) four criteria of credibility, transferability, dependability and confirmability. Descriptions of these criteria can be found under their respective headlines.
Credibility
Credibility is the “truth value”, meaning that the presented data needs credibility in order to be plausible. Some ways to increase credibility of a report include member-checks, triangulation and extensive investigation in order to really exhaust an area of information. The credibility in this report is increased by having both thesis partners participating in the data gathering as well as peer-reviews during the thesis process. However, difficulties to find suitable interview candidates and the short process time limit the credibility to some degree in this thesis.
Transferability
Transferability, or applicability, means that the results should be able to be transferred to use in another case or at least be relevant for other studies. If a certain condition can be met, the findings should have relevance in any context. In order increase transferability of our results we have decided to leave as much technical or constructional variables as possible out of the final results. This brings the problem back to marketing in general, which is a much wider perspective. However since the case is very unique and specific, there are still some limits regarding the transferability of this work.
Dependability
Dependability means that in order to produce a good thesis, the work needs to produce stable results, meaning the thesis need to be consistent. This implies that the study follows one path from start to finish with a clear route between objectives. It also means that the researcher actually study what they said they would set out to do and that the research questions are in some way answered. However dependability also means that if someone else do the same study with the same data and the same method, they should arrive at the same results. For this thesis, this is done by carefully describing the work process and gathering data from people with different experiences and perspectives. However the study is still limited to Sweden and results could fluctuate a bit if the study is conducted elsewhere.
Confirmability
Confirmability is the neutrality aspect of the thesis. It measures how neutral and objective the researcher have been when conducting the study. A high confirmability means that the research is done with impartiality and an unbiased view. This implies that if someone were to check the work, they would be able to find the references and data without considering the bias of the author. This also means that the research is open to public scrutiny and replicable. For this work, confirmability is increased by including both members in the data gathering as well as having peers review the work as it proceeds. Although the confirmability is still a bit limited due to some ethical considerations, such as privacy, anonymity and confidentiality.
Ethics
As research activity increase, there is also an increase in attention to ethics (Anastas, 2013). In business, ethical considerations are usually divided in two parts; the ones that protect the individual participants and the one protecting the integrity of the field (Easterby-Smith et al., 2015). Ethical relativism is also a discussed topic in which ethical subjectivism is gives a certain problem as it is a view where when considering whether an act is right or wrong in a given situation is determined by if the actor performing the act believes if the act is right or wrong (Whitbeck, 2011). This gives a moral problem which only considers our own views of what is right or wrong. We are therefore aware of that this limits the responses from interview candidates, as we can only assume that these are their own interpretations and thoughts. Gregory (2003) Discuss morality as part of ethics, the way that we as humans interact with each other and that morality acts as a constraint for us to do better than we otherwise might have. He states that morality gives us good reasons to things one way rather than another and that the way we should behave is often influenced by what morality requires. Honesty and transparency therefore needs to be considered in order to avoid misinterpretation (Easterby-Smith et al., 2015). However it also includes the principle of consent. This is probably the most commonly discussed topic within ethics, as this regard research involving human beings. This implies that although transparency is needed, it goes both ways, since the people involved in the research needs to be informed that they are taking part in a study, and how their participation will affect the study (Gregory, 2003). Covert research where the participants are not even aware of that they are being studied is therefore considered highly immoral. Consent also means that people have the right to decide for themselves if they want to take part in the research (Gregory, 2003). The principle of consent is adhered to when working on this thesis by first asking the participants if they are willing to participate and providing them with the full information on what the study is about and what is being investigated. When the thesis is concluded, the participants will also receive the final version of the paper, so that they can see their contribution and how their information was used.
Confidentiality is another important moral issue when conducting a study in co-operation with other people. However it is important to remember that someone might consent to the research regardless of whether they get confidentiality or not (Gregory, 2003). Confidentiality have to do with the privacy of the people taking part in the research. Some people may be happy to leave their name in the final thesis for the public to see, but many people prefer to stay anonymous (Gregory, 2003). In this thesis, the confidentiality and privacy of the participants is dealt with by assuming full confidentiality unless someone say otherwise and agree to leave their name in the final report.
As this thesis to some extent study engineering aspects, there are a few additional ethical standpoint that are usually covered in engineering ethics which need discussing. Whitbeck (2011) mention three different criteria that judges an act in engineering as right or wrong. These are the nature of the act (respect rights or fulfil duties), the circumstance surrounding the act and the motives for committing the act. An example of an ethical code in engineering is that you are not allowed to pay or accept bribes, which differs a bit from for example the codes for medicine, where such a code does not exist, even though some other payments are identified as improper (Whitbeck, 2011). It is important to differentiate these codes from general ethics however, as it is of course no more ethically acceptable for professionals within medicine than for engineers to accept bribes (Whitbeck, 2011). It is therefore good to remember that the ethical codes for different professions serve more as guidelines than actual ethical “law”. Since the society may fail to support the responsible actions of engineers, the general public have a high interest in fostering these kinds of guidelines with legal support (Whitbeck, 2011). For the work in this thesis, it means that the authors take into account the right of customers to, for example not follow an eventual advice on using CLT for construction as well as recognizing that the participating engineers are aware of that they alone are responsible for what they say. This second point is therefore very important when considering the confidential standpoints in ethics.
