Making decisions about participants

Abstract

This chapter takes up a number of questions concerning the participants in a research project. In the first part of the chapter, we address how to specify the group of participants that is best suited to your study. We emphasize that you need to keep your researchable questions in mind as you make decisions regarding those whom you will study. We also discuss the theoretical and practical issues that you have to take into account when you specify the group that you will study. In the next part, we discuss considerations about the appropriate number of participants to study. We then turn to the steps you take to locate potential participants, enlist their participation, and set up the time and the place for the interviews. We also present the ethical and practical concerns that you need to address in this process. Specifying the group(s) of people to study How do you decide who the best participants are for your study? And how do you decide how many individuals to interview? The answers to these questions are based on the choices that you made and the theoretical considerations you had when you developed your researchable questions. We described strategies for developing your researchable questions in Chapter 3. Here we offer guidelines for specifying the types of individuals whose participation will enable you to answer those questions. When you set out to specify the group you will study, you must take into account the kind of knowledge you seek. Different types of research involve different types of knowledge, and therefore demand different principles for specifying the group to study. Each project's researchable questions form the basis for specifying its participants. We therefore take a moment to remind you of what we have said earlier about researchable questions in interpretative research. The knowledge interests of interpretative researchers involve learning about the participants' worldviews as the participants themselves formulate them. The researchable questions are framed in terms of specific contexts, specific aspects of daily life, and specific experiences. Furthermore, and in special focus here, the researchable questions identify categories of people who are likely to have had those experiences.