Data Collection

Perceptual, demographic, and contextual data were collected from the participants. “Perceptual”

refers to the participant’s perception of the factors contributing to their long-term service at this

university. The bulk of the information collected was perceptual.

Two other kinds of information were collected. They were contextual information that referred to

the setting where the participants worked or lived and demographic information which described the

participants in the study. This information was obtained from interviews, human resources data at AIU,

and researcher observation. Both types of information were necessary because of their potential to

influence a person’s perception, and as such, they could contribute to the explanation of shared beliefs

and divergent perspectives (Bloomberg & Volpe, 2012).

Interview Procedure

Because the interview was the primary method for generating data in this study, perceptual

information was critical (Bloomberg & Volpe, 2012). Qualitative researchers can interview to discover

abstract and intangible entities such as worldview, feelings, values, and perception. One way to find

these intangibles is by engaging people in conversation about them. Researchers depend on their

dialogues to understand them. In short, “the purpose of interviewing, then, is to allow us to enter into the

other person’s perspective” However, it must be remembered that perceptions are perceptions and do not

necessarily reveal facts. These perceptions are often deeply embedded in the interviewee’s sustained

assumptions and worldview. Even though their perspectives are neither right nor wrong, they tell the

story of what participants believe to be true (Bloomberg & Volpe, 2012). As such, they tremendously

influence people’s behavior and decision-making.

Before conducting the interview, the researcher obtained permission to collect data from the

Institutional Review Board of Andrews University and the administration of Asia-Pacific International

University to interview its employees. The researcher contacted pre-identified employees who met the
criteria and made an appointment to interview employees who indicated a willingness to participate in the

study in their consent forms.

The researcher and participant met at a pre-arranged location on the interview day. The

questions were from semi-structured interview questions developed based on the reviewed literature. The

first question was demographic, aiming at knowing the participant’s demographic background.

Subsequent questions encouraged the participants to talk about their work experience. The researcher

prompted responses based on pre-planned questions, which were worded per the objectives of the

research question. (See Appendix A for the list of questions.) Follow-up questions were asked,

especially when the researcher required more explanation. The pre-planned questions involved

participants in lengthy, in-depth conversations regarding their service at AIU. The interview was

recorded using a recording function of the researcher’s mobile phone. Each file was secured in a

password-protected file backed up online in password-protected storage.

Data Analysis

The data analysis took place in four steps. The first step was for the researcher to become

familiar with the raw data by transcribing the interviews. The long and tedious process of transcribing

the interview allowed the researcher to become familiar with each participant’s narratives. This was done

using the column strategy recommended by Liamputtong and Ezzy (2005) as cited by Saldana (2013).

This strategy involved analyzing the data in three stages segregated by three columns. The first column

was for the raw data in the first stage.

The researcher coded the data in the second step by identifying critical segments and assigning

code labels. A code, according to Saldana (2013), is “… a word or short phrases that symbolically

assigns a summative, salient, essence-capturing, and/or evocative attribute for a portion of language-based

or visual data” (p. 3). As such, the process of coding “… involves aggregating the text or visual data into

small categories of information,” then the researcher sought “evidence for the code from different

databases being used in the study and then assigning a label to the code” (Creswell, 2013, p. 184). In
other words, coding is a process of organizing the data by identifying the primary themes. The researcher

coded by highlighting relevant words, phrases, and sentences based on what the researcher thought could

potentially answer the research question. While literature helped recognize relevant information, the

researcher strove to be open to other information that may not have been discovered before.

In the third step, the researcher created categories by combining several codes. In the last step,

categories or themes were labeled. This method was helpful because it encouraged the researcher to do

the analysis step by step—first the raw data, then the preliminary codes, and then the final codes or

themes. The step-by-step structure of the process minimized ambiguity.