Probing the Minds of Female Engineers: The

Richness of Qualitative Research

Contributors: Najib A. Mozahem

Pub. Date: 2019
Product: SAGE Research Methods Cases in Business and Management
Methods: Quantitative data collection, Doing research, Literature review
Disciplines: Business and Management
Access Date: December 1, 2021
Academic Level: Advanced Undergraduate
Publishing Company: SAGE Publications Ltd
City: London
Online ISBN: 9781526472458
DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781526472458
© 2019 SAGE Publications Ltd All Rights Reserved.
This PDF has been generated from SAGE Research Methods Cases.
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Abstract
This case is a reflection on my first experience using interviews in a research project. Although I believe in
the power and elegance of quantitative methods, qualitative methods allow for research that is richer, deeper,
and in many instances a better read. The article describes how I chose the research topic and what led me
to use interviews even though I had originally planned to use regression. The article then goes on to describe
how my colleagues and I conducted the interviews. Finally, I highlight the main learning points that I came out
with from this research project.

Learning Outcomes

By the end of this case, students should be able to

• Understand the importance of using qualitative research methods as opposed to quantitative ones in
certain cases
• Recognize that conducting a literature review before designing the interviews is essential to ensuring
that the relevant data are extracted from the participants
• Appreciate the importance of choosing a research topic with which the participants strongly identify
and one that the researchers themselves are genuinely interested in

Project Overview and Context

One year after I had started teaching at university level, I was asked by the university if I would be willing to
give a business course that was specifically tailored for engineering students. The President of the university
specifically wanted a course that would walk the students of engineering through the process of taking a
project that they have worked on in one of their engineering courses, and turning it into a commercial product
or a service. In other words, the course was about entrepreneurship but for engineers. Given that I had
a bachelor’s degree in computer and communication engineering and a PhD in business, the university
believed that I was the person for the job. From my part, I found the idea interesting partly because I missed
engineering. This would give me the chance to once again interact with engineers.

When I walked into the first session of the course, I was struck by something. There were very few females
in class. This was not what I was accustomed to in the business school, where usually half the students are
females. As the semester went on, I was again struck by something else. These few female students were
outperforming their male colleagues. This pattern was to repeat itself the second time that I gave the course.
Perhaps this was unique to the university where I was working. I was intrigued enough to do some research
about it. What I found was that females are grossly underrepresented in engineering (Master, Cheryan,
Moscatelli, & Meltzoff, 2017; Sáinz & Eccles, 2012; Schuster & Martiny, 2017). Perhaps females weren’t good
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at math. Again, a scan of the literature showed that this was not the case. Females do as well as males on
math (Else-Quest, Hyde, and Linn, 2010; Hyde & Linn, 2006; Hyde, Lindberg, Linn, Ellis, & Williams, 2008).
The more I read, the more I was intrigued. Eventually I decided that this was an interesting topic for a potential
research paper.

Research Design

I am what you would call a “numbers guy.” Maybe it was because I originally studied engineering, maybe it
was because my PhD dissertation topic required the use of advanced statistical techniques. I have always
believed in the relative objectivity of numbers and in the beauty of using mathematical equations to describe
social phenomena. Therefore, my initial response was to look at the topic through the lens of statistics.
Perhaps I could use regression, where the independent variables could be the socioeconomic status of these
female students, the number of siblings they had, their grades, the number of male teachers in school, and so
on. I could then see which variables were significant. Fortunately for me, something unexpected happened in
one of my other courses that convinced me that this was the wrong approach.

I give the course organizational behavior, in which I request that students write a journal. The purpose of this
journal is for students to reflect on the material using their personal experiences. One of the topics covered in
the journal is gender differences (as part of the chapter about diversity in organizations). One of the students
was reflecting on why we don’t see many female managers or CEOs. She argued that females are always
underestimated, and she used an example from her personal life. She had originally enrolled in the college of
engineering because as a high school student she liked math and physics. When her male classmates knew
of her decision, they cast doubt on her ability to be an engineer. How can she go to the construction site (she
wanted to study civil engineering)? How can she tell hundreds of workers what to do? She was initially not
fazed by these comments, but as time went on, she said that she began to be convinced by what they were
saying. Eventually, she reached a point where she decided that she actually doesn’t like math and physics,
and ended up enrolling in the business school.

How could this experience be captured by numbers? How could I quantify what she had gone through? I
realized that it was not possible. Numbers are excellent at summarizing. However, this also means that when
we use numbers, important details get lost. The only way to do justice to this topic was to tackle it using
qualitative tools. To truly understand the challenges and experiences faced by an individual in any situation,
we need to use a tool that would not gloss over the details but a tool that would allow for the richness of
the topic to emerge. Therefore, I decided that my research paper should consist of interviews with female
engineering students. I wanted to know why they chose engineering, and what were the challenges that they
faced.

The question was now to decide on the structure of the interviews. What questions should I ask? To find
the answer to this question, I went back to the literature because I didn’t want to reinvent the wheel. While
conducting the literature review, I came across Social Cognitive Theory (SCT), which aims at describing how

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people’s perception of their self-efficacy develops (Bandura, 1977, 1982, 1989; Bussey & Bandura, 1999).
SCT argues that people avoid activities that they believe, whether rightly or wrongly, exceed their capabilities,
and they undertake activities that they believe lie within their capabilities. Therefore, the important element is
not people’s actual efficacies, instead it is their perceived self-efficacies. This self-perception emerges from
the interaction of personal factors, behavioral patterns, and environmental events as shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1 Bandura’s triadic reciprocal causation model.

SCT does not take the view that people are in complete control of their destiny nor does it argue that people
are mechanical products of their environments. Instead, it argues that an individual’s perception of his or her
self-efficacy in a certain domain emerges through the bi-directional interaction of the three components. For
example, SCT argues that although the environment can limit the options available to an individual, humans
have the ability to determine which part of the potential environment will actually be experienced (Zimmerman,
1990). This means that people, up to a certain extent, can select or even create their own environments.

The more I read about SCT, the more I believed that it was a suitable framework for my research. I decided
that the questions should deal with all three elements presented in Figure 1. The questions should also
address the issue of whether the relationship between the elements was actually bi-directional, or was a
certain element particularly more powerful than the other two? However, it was essential that I did not dictate
the structure of the answers. The purpose of the research was not to lend support or to cast doubt on SCT.
My primary goal was for the participants to tell their stories. All I wanted from SCT were the themes of the
questions that I would ask. Therefore, SCT was going to be the framework that I would use.

Research Practicalities
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The next step was to find participants who were willing to share their stories. I made the decision that all
participants needed to be currently enrolled students because I wanted their experiences to be recent. In
addition, I did not want the participants’ answers to be influenced by generational differences. Next, I had
to decide on the number of participants. I needed the number to be large enough so as to establish the
generalizability of the results. However, the number cannot be too large. Interviews provide researchers
with rich and detailed information. Gathering this information and going through it takes a lot of time. I
needed to make sure that I gave each participant the time that she deserved and needed to tell her story. I
eventually decided to conduct 30 interviews. I also decided that the participants needed to come from several
universities. As the number of female engineering students is small in each university, there was a very high
chance that students from the same university were friends. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but friends
tend to think alike, and as I said, the generalizability of the results was an important issue for me.

Although not a huge number, conducting 30 interviews, and then transcribing the interviews, is a daunting
task, so I decided that I needed help on this research project. Fortunately, I knew the right people, and they
were Carla Ghanem, Farida Hamieh, and Reem Shoujaa, three undergraduate business students all of whom
had previously taken courses with me, and in the case of Carla, co-authored an article with me. To convey
to them the purpose of the research, I wrote the literature review and methodology sections of the article and
handed it to them. After they read the document, we had several meetings in which we discussed the content
of the document in addition to the future steps that were to be taken. One of the things that we agreed on at
this stage was that the participants should be able to answer in either English or Arabic. This decision was
made for two reasons. First, we wanted to make sure that the participants were able to convey their thoughts
as accurately as possible. Second, we wanted the participants to use the language that they were comfortable
with the most. In addition, to increase their sense of comfort, and to increase their cooperation, we decided to
allow the participants to choose the location of the interview.

As we all wanted to conduct interviews, because we were interested in the topic, I decided that it would be
best if I conducted five interviews and then gave the voice recording of these interviews to my colleagues
to listen to. Once they listened to the interviews, we had another series of meetings in which we discussed
several issues, and in which I answered some questions that they had.

There were also important ethical considerations that we needed to take into account. Many of the questions
that were going to be asked were personal in nature, so it was extremely important for us to be careful with the
data. A nice solution was to inform all the participants before conducting the interview, that after the interview
was over, each of them will be given a copy of the voice recording of her interview. The participant then could
listen to the recording, and if she decided that she does not want some parts of the interview to be used,
she could request that we not include these parts in the research. We also told them that they could request
that we not use the entire interview if the participant changed her mind after listening to the voice recording.
However, we made it clear that this should be done before we submitted our research to any journal.

Method in Action
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I had initially feared that we might have difficulties in finding participants, especially given the fact that our
research will be probing personal issues related to relationships with parents, friends, peers, and instructors.
I wasn’t sure whether we would be able to find 30 individuals who were interested in sharing their stories
with us. Fortunately, I was very wrong. I was surprised at how willing many of the female students were to
share their experiences. I was also surprised by their openness. The participants eagerly talked about their
relationships with their parents and about how they were raised. They reflected on certain events in their
childhood that they believed led them to make the decisions that they had made.

What struck me the most was how emotional many of the participants got when talking about certain issues.
I could see their excitement when they talked about why they chose engineering. Their hand gestures and
body language all indicated that they were talking about something that they were passionate about. They
were also visibly agitated when they talked about how people in their social circle questioned their choice of
engineering as a major. Many of them heard statements such as “Why study so hard when eventually you will
have to take care of your children?” or “Why don’t you become a teacher. This way your working hours will
coincide with your children’s school hours, and you will be able to be at home during the summer vacation.”
Many of the participants even thanked us for tackling this topic. One of them remarked, “Finally someone is
showing interest in ambitious females.” By the end of the interviews, not a single participant asked to remove
any part of her interview.

In a couple of cases, we had to disregard the interviews because the participants, although showing interest
in the topic, did not provide us with a rich enough account of their experiences. The answers provided by
these participants were too short, and unlike the other participants, we had to explicitly ask them about certain
aspects. In all the other cases, all we had to do was to ask a general question, like “Why did you choose
engineering,” and the participant would talk for several minutes about many different aspects of her life that
led to her making this decision.

Something interesting that I noticed after I had conducted the first three interviews was the impact that the
father had on the participants. Although I had planned to ask about the parents, I noticed that the participants
would always mention their fathers even if the question was not about him. I also noticed that when it came to
the mother, I had to explicitly mention the parents in order for the participant to talk about her mother. In some
cases, asking about the parents would result in an answer that included the father but not the mother, so I
found myself having to ask explicitly about the mother. Based on this finding, after these first three interviews,
I had a meeting with Carla, Farida, and Reem in which I told them that, at least in the initial phase of the
interview, we should avoid mentioning the parents. The point was to see whether the participants themselves
brought their parents into the picture. More specifically, I expected that most participants would mention their
father but not their mother. My expectation turned out to be true.

Practical Lessons Learned

This research constituted my first use of interviews as a mechanism for data collection. Previously, I

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conducted interviews but only as a tool for guiding me toward specific issues or sources. In the research
reported in this case, I used interviews to collect the primary information that I was seeking. I still consider
myself to be a “numbers guy,” but my experience with this research has made me more open to the use
of interviews in future research. In fact, I already have a research topic planned that uses semi-structured
interviews similar to the ones described in this article.

Perhaps the most important lesson that I learned was that interviews are best used in topics that the
researcher finds to be really interesting. This might seem strange because a researcher should be interested
in whatever research that he or she is pursuing. This, unfortunately, is not true in many instances because
many researchers find themselves doing research for the sake of publishing and not for the sake of finding
the answer to a problem that interests or intrigues them. This is a result of the “publish or perish” environment
that exists in academia today. It is safe to say that when I was conducting the interviews, I did not feel as if
I was interviewing someone. It felt more like a discussion. I enjoyed the interviews, with the exception of the
two interviews that I mentioned above which were too short and ended up being disregarded. The reason is
that I started the research because I had seen something that I found to be interesting, which was that there
were too few females in engineering and that they were outperforming their male colleagues. I was genuinely
interested in what these females had to say.

In the same light as choosing a topic that you are interested in, you should also choose a topic that is
pertinent to society. Something that people are interested in. The topic should be a problem or a challenge
that a group of people are concerned with. Throughout this article, I have talked about the “stories” that
the participants told. I used the word stories because this is what the participants were doing. They were
not merely answering questions. They were delving into their most personal and private experiences and
conveying to my colleagues and myself what they have gone through and why their experiences were
important. This was due to the fact that the topic was important to them.

I also learned that in qualitative interviews, it is always best to conduct a thorough literature review before
designing the interviews. When I do quantitative research, I start with the data and then move my way back
to the literature review because the nature of the data that I can collect dictates the type of research that I will
be able to conduct. This is not the case in interviews. In an interview, the source of the data is there, sitting
right in front of you. The source has a very large amount of information, and what you need to do is to know
how to get the right information from the source. The only way to know that is to have a good grasp of the
literature review.

Finally, I have also learned how important it is that researchers pay special attention to their questions. They
should be conscious of any effort on their part of “fishing” around for the answers that they want. It is a known
fact that the response to a question depends on how the question was asked. I am reminded of the story of
a man asking a priest whether it was Ok to smoke while praying, and the priest replying that it was not Ok
because when someone prays, he or she should not be focused on worldly affairs. However, when another
man asked the priest whether it was Ok to pray while smoking, the response was that it is always a good
idea to pray no matter what a person is doing. The same applies to research. In quantitative methods, a
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researcher can engage in certain techniques to artificially produce results that are statistically significant. In
qualitative methods, specifically in interviews, the researcher can also do the same, even if it was only being
done unconsciously.

Conclusion

The main purpose of this article was to reflect on my experience in using semi-structured interviews in
conducting research. The article described how I chose the research topic and why I ended up using
qualitative methods as opposed to quantitative ones. This was my first experience in conducting interviews
as the main tool for data collection, and it has been a very positive and instructive experience. Talking with
people about issues that are of relevance to them is a fulfilling process. Through these discussions, my
colleagues and I were able to come up with what I consider to be a rich and deep research paper that is
currently under review. Out of all the research papers that I have worked on or am currently working on, it
would be safe to say that this is the paper that I enjoy reading the most.

Exercises and Discussion Questions

1. When are qualitative research methods more suitable than quantitative ones?
2. What are some caveats associated with using interviews?
3. Why does choosing a research topic that participants are genuinely concerned with make the
research process easier?
4. Why is it sometimes useful to conduct pilot interviews and to reflect on them before going
ahead with the rest of the interviews?

References

Bandura, A. (1977). Social learning theory. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Bandura, A. (1982). Self-efficacy mechanism in human agency. American Psychologist, 37, 122–147.

Bandura, A. (1989). Human agency in social cognitive theory. American Psychologist, 44, 1175–1184.

Bussey, K., & Bandura, A. (1999). Social cognitive theory of gender development and differentiation.
Psychological Review, 106, 676–713.

Else-Quest, N. M., Hyde, J. S., & Linn, M. C. (2010). Cross-national patterns of gender differences in
mathematics: A meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 136, 103–127.

Hyde, J. S., Lindberg, S. M., Linn, M. C., Ellis, A. B., & Williams, C. C. (2008). Gender similarities

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characterize math performance. Science, 321, 494–495.

Hyde, J. S., & Linn, M. C. (2006). Gender similarities in mathematics and science. Science, 314, 599–600.

Master, A., Cheryan, S., Moscatelli, A., & Meltzoff, A. N. (2017). Programming experience promotes higher
STEM motivation among first-grade girls. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 160, 92–106.

Sáinz, M., & Eccles, J. (2012). Self-concept of computer and math ability: Gender implications across time
and within ICT studies. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 80, 486–499.

Schuster, C., & Martiny, S. E. (2017). Not feeling good in STEM: Effects of stereotype activation and
anticipated affect on women’s career aspirations. Sex Roles, 76, 40–55.

Zimmerman, B. J. (1990). Self-regulating academic learning and achievement: The emergence of a social
cognitive perspective. Educational Psychology Review, 2, 173–201.

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