IACC External Meetings Demand Report 2022

3.4 Research Method - Semi-structured Interviews As a long-established research method, qualitative interviews involve a conversation between the researcher and the subject towards developing an understanding of central themes and research questions (Lochrie et al., n.d.). For the second research questio n ‘What are the needs and wants of the clients of IACC’s venue's regarding business events?’, it was decided to gather the necessary information by conducting semi- structured interviews. The reasoning behind it is that qualitative methods are helpful for describing, interpreting, contextualising, and gaining in-depth insight into specific concepts. The key feature is their ability to provide an undiluted focus on the individual. They provide an opportunity for a detailed investigation of people’s personal p erspectives and opinions. Interviews have open-ended questions, and they offer clarification for an in-depth understanding of the needs and wants regarding future usage of external meeting venues. More detailed information can be gathered due to the open-ended questions in the interviews. Interviews are particularly well suited for researching the needs and wants as they require personal depth which cannot be gathered by a survey. Interviews also provide flexibility as the interviewer can quickly adjust to the answers given by the interviewee. 3.4.1 Target group Access to appropriate participants is vital and must be realistic and achievable within any project timeframe. To gather the most relevant information about the needs and wants of IACC’s venues, their clients will be the defined target group. By researching these subjects’ insights will be gathered on their expectations when booking a venue of IACC and how their customer expectations can change due to COVID-19. The method purposive sampling will be used as the participants of the research will be preselected based on their knowledge, work experience, and position (Jordan, 2021). The communication regarding the defined target group is very indirect as the project team cannot contact the clients of IACC’s venues directly. In order to conduct the desired ten interviews, the client of the project will become the assigned intermediary between IACC and the venues - activating the venues to contact their clients to participate in the interviews. The reason behind this fact is that the e-mail will be sent on behalf of the client as this is a known contact to potential interviewees. The e-mail of the Project Group, managementproject.group10@gmail.com will be included in the e-mail of the contact person in order to enable the venue's clients to directly contact the Project Group to schedule an interview. To encourage involvement and as a thank you, the Project Group will plant a tree in the name of the company if they agree to it, for which the participant works. At the same time, the Project Group contributes to environmental protection by giving back to the environment. 3.4.2 Design of the interview In a semi-structured interview, the interviewer asks a pre-determined set of questions while the rest of the questions are not planned in advance, additional questions will be asked based on the topics raised by the interviews. An interview scheme will be prepared in advance of the interview, which is a written list of questions, open or closed-ended, and will be used as a research tool for collecting data. In addition, the rest of the questions are not planned in advance. Since semi-structured interviews combine both the structured and unstructured interview styles, they can offer the advantages of both. They allow for the objective comparison of candidates, while also providing an opportunity to spontaneously explore topics relevant to that particular candidate (Pollock, 2020). Participation in this interview is completely voluntary and the potential participants will be informed of the purpose of the research in advance. A small introduction of the Project Group and what the project entails will

20

IACConline.org

Made with FlippingBook Learn more on our blog