Methods to Interpret the Data

The analysis process was based on the guidelines of qualitative research methods (Strauss

& Corbin, 1990, Sandelowski 1995, Stake 1995, Miles & Huberman 1994). We try to create a description about end users as application developers. We draw a profile of each of the interviewees and compile a holistic view about each of the informants. The Grounded Theory (Strauss & Corbin 1990) guided the process of finding concept categories and relationships among them.

The main idea of the analysis process was to find out what the informants did or were said to have done. The informants were also encouraged to express their opinions, ideas and plans for the future. The reason for this was to shed light on the conditions, contexts and consequences of their actions. Special attention was paid to the separation of the analysis and interpretation of the data at the very earliest stages of the analysis (Sandelowski, 1995). At the early stages, the view tried to avoid interpretation and concentrate on the analysis.

The analysis and interpretation process can be divided into six phases as listed below (Kvale, 1983). We completed the first five of them. The interpretation of the actions of the informant is fundamental. The concept of 'life-world' is here materialised as being in the organisation as a staff member. This is expected to be a concrete and useful method for understanding staff members in the working practice.

During the interview we tried to keep the different views and levels of interpretations in mind. The process of analysis used follows the steps by Kvale (1983):

The interviewee's view:

1 The interviewee describes his life-world

2 The interviewee discovers new relations and meanings The interviewer's view:

3 Condense and interpret what the informant says

4a The level of self-understanding: What the interviewee him/herself understands as the meaning of what he describes

4b The level of common sense: Draw a broader understanding of the meaning about the theme

4c The level of theory: Draw a theoretical interpretation. In this phase the data is interpreted through a broader theoretical context 5 Re-interview (we conducted this as a follow up interview) 6 Involve action (not conducted)

In the first stage of analysis the organisational data were studied and labelled with as many concepts as possible. This stage was intended to cover the first two steps. Every relevant act that the informant said to have done was given a name. The focus was on how the interviewee describes his "life-world". The opinions and perceptions were listed, too. The purpose of this step was to interpret sentence by sentence what the informant is trying to say. One list of categories was made for each informant. The categories varied depending on the informant. An example of the categories found is presented in Table 2.6.

Table 2.6 The Analysis of Data:

Possible Category/Property Names and Values (Example)

We wrote a short story about each informant. This was done in order to have a more holistic view of the working history and adoption process. These stories are presented in Section 4.2. Preliminary analysis of the categories was made from the labelled actions.

The concepts, which are similar, constitute categories with common properties.

Interviewee Person A Possible category/ Value Property name

Actual job content Operator, Supervisor Education Technicial, CAD

Hardware Mainframe

environment

Requirement further process of data

Tool spreadsheet, database, macro language Perception about it makes the job easier to the others the usage of EUAD the reporting will be more efficient Motivation own interest

to begin EUAD etc.

A summary of every interview was written to get the central idea and meaning of the phenomena for each person as a whole. The categories found earlier were in the background to shape the interpretation of individual cases. Every interview was analysed using an Event- State network (see Miles & Huberman, 1984 and 1994). It helped to get the basic idea about the story of the EUAD. This analysis covers the phases 3) – 4 b). An example of the analysis is given in Figure 2.4.

Figure 2.4 The Event-state Diagram for Person H

Laboratory Staff Member, Develops All Kinds of Applications (Example)

The concepts in bold face depict significant activities of the EU in the light of this study.

The regular face illustrates factors or events that the informant mentioned as a reason or consequence of the activity in case. The arrows indicate the direction of the relation.

In this Figure above (2.4), the informant mentioned as reasons for his working with PC was the fact that his father was an IT professional and they had a Home PC. He has also got many ideas from working with a PC at home and working as a laboratory operator. He has got more and more computer related duties when working as a supervisor. His Working as a laboratory operator consists mainly of operating with laboratory equipment. He collects data and controls the processes of micro-mechanical research work. The corporate computing systems affect his work quite a bit, because the results of the measurements have to be entered into the corporate computing systems. His work includes a lot of producing reports. He gets lots of ideas of new systems, because he is very interested in computing. The interest originates

Corporate

computing Supervisor

Laboratory equipment

Working as a laboratory operator

Reports

Ideas

Organizational support

EUAD activity Useful application

Problems Solving problems

with help systems and manuals Interested in

computing

Own applications Working

with PC Father: IT-

professional

Home PC

from his childhood. His father is an IT-professional and he also has a Home PC since he got the first VIC 20. He works with his PC by creating own applications. He creates his own applications off duty hours. This extra work at home with the PC and the new application ideas in work characterises his EUAD activity. The organisation that he works for also supports him. The result of this is new useful applications. He also has problems, which he quite easily solves with the help of manuals and help systems.

3 Description of the Informants

In this chapter we draw an overview about the data and about each of the persons interviewed. We shortly describe their working environment and the contents of their own work at the time of the first interview. The individual process of the EUAD activity is described. This covers the personal reasons for starting to develop applications as well as the implications of this activity to their work contents, to the perception about him/her self as a worker and plans about the future. The personal descriptions also cover the career status and environment more than three years later, when the second interview took place. That is supposed to give a longitudinal description of his or her work history.