Learning NVivo

This exposition of NVivo and its functions addresses just its most basic features. There may be features not covered here that you would find useful in your own work, so try to explore it! Enjoy!

(1) Import the documents

You need to import the documents you want to code. NVivo 9 can accept documents in both rich text and Word formats. To import the documents, →Internals→ External Data on Ribbon→ Document button on Find bar→ Browse→ Open.

(2) Coding

For NVivo, coding is accomplished through nodes. There are several ways of going about the coding process in NVivo:

·      I read through the interviews both in printed form and in the Document viewer. The viewer is treated as having a number of different components or sections.

·      I worked out some codes that seemed relevant to the documents.

·      I went back to into documents and coded them using NVivo.

An alternative strategy is to code while browsing the documents. Notice that there are 3 groups of hierarchically organized nodes and two non-hierarchically organized nodes.

(3) Applying nodes in the coding process

Coding is carried out by applying nodes to segments of text. Once you have set up some nodes, assuming that you are looking at  a document in the viewer, you can highlight the area of the document that you want to code and then right-click on the mouse while holding the cursor over the highlighted text, and then → Code Selection → Code Selection at New node... This opens the New Node dialog box.   

(4) Coding Stripes

It is very helpful to be able to see the areas of text that have been coded and the nodes applied to them. Selecting this facility allows you to see multi-coloured stripes that representing portions of coded text and the nodes that have been used. To activate this facility, → View in the Ribbon and then→ Coding stripes in the Find bar→ Show Nodes Recently Coding.

(5) Searching Text

Once you have coded your data, however, preliminary that may be, you will want to conduct searches of your data at some points. NVivo allows you to trawl through all your documents so that you will end up with text that was coded at a particular node in all your documents. Document Viewer → Nodes in the Navigation View. This will bring up your list of nodes in the List view.

(6) Memos

One feature of the grounded theory approach to qualitative data analysis is the use of memos in which ideas and illustrations might be stored. In the Navigation View → Sources→ Memos→ Create tab on the Find bar and then → Memo.

(7) Saving on NVivo project

When you have finished working on your data, you will need to save it for future use. To do this, on the menu bar at the top, → File → Save.

Conducting Interviews

Recently, I have conducted several interviews with finance managers for my qualitative assignment and also ANU students for their learning experience. From my experience, I would like to share the following useful points to conduct semi-structured interviews:

(1) Know the schedule

Before interviewing anybody, an interviewer should be aware of their schedule. Even if you are the only person conducting interviews, make sure you know it inside out. Interviewing can be stressful and it is possible that under duress standard interview procedures like filter questions can cause interviewer to get flustered and miss questions out or ask wrong questions.

(2) Introducing the research

Prospective respondents have to be provided with a credible rationale for the research in which they are being asked to participate and for giving up their valuable time.

(3) Rapport

This means that very quickly the relationship must be established that encourages the respondents to want to participate in and persists with the interview. Unless an element of rapport can be established, some respondents may initially agree to be interview but then decide to terminate their participation because of the length of time the interview is taking or perhaps because of the nature of questions asked.

(4) Asking questions

Few tips are particular useful to engage with interviewees. First, Don't say too much. It is important to become listeners and treat interviewee as an expert in the field. Second, become reflective listening by spotting the grey areas and clarifying the answers provided by interviewee.

(5) Recording answers

Always ask permission to record the interview and explain the reasons of recording. Not to so can result in interviewers distorting respondents' answers and hence introducing errors.

(6) Questions order

Early questions should be directly related to the topic of the research. As far as questions that are more likely to be salient to respondents should be asked early in the interview schedule, so that their interest and attention are more likely to be secured. With a long schedule or questionnaire, questions should be grouped in sections, since this allows a better flow than skipping from one topic to another. A further aspect of the rule is general questions should precede specific questions to avoid interviewees provide brief answers on general questions after they provide details respond to specific questions.

(7) Probing

It frequently happens when respondents need help with their answer. One obvious case is where it is evident that interviewees do not understand the questions. The second kind of situation is respondents do not provide a sufficiently complete answers and has to be probed for more information. Some probing questions can be used. "Are there any other reasons why you think that" or "Could you say a little more about that?"

(8) Prompting

This occurs when the interviewer suggests a possible answer to a question to the respondent. There may be a very long list of possible answers. To read out a list of questions, it is probably to hand  a list of questions to the interviewee.

(9) Leaving the interview

Do not forget common courtesies like thanking the person for giving up their times. Ask "advice to a friend" to get recommendation to new interviewees.

Research Method and Unit Analysis

In-depth interviews are deemed to be the most appropriate qualitative technique to explore the factors and internal barriers that influence the preparedness of companies for IFRS convergence, in particular to understand the 'hows' and 'whys' of the institutional isomorphism influence the IFRS adoption. Prior studies have studied the IFRS adoption by using survey and archival research which have relatively restriction in understanding the IFRS adoption process in the organisation level (see Jones & Higgins, 2006; Jermakowicz &Gornick-Tomaszewski, 2006; Guerreiro et al., 2012).

   Generally, full convergence with IFRS will have considerable impact on the publicly accountable entity in Malaysia.  Hence, companies listed on the Bursa Malaysia that meet the definition of ‘publicly accountable entity’ are selected as the unit of analysis in this study. To address the research context, personal interviews were conducted with Financial Controllers, Chief Accountants or Head of Finance/Accounts Department as they are presumed to be directly involved with the adoption process of IFRS in their respective companies and have better understanding and wide knowledge on IFRS. The length of the interviews ranged from 30 to 90 minutes. Interviews were semi-structured, which allowed greater adaptability and flexibility of the discussion. The general structure of the interview was controlled by the question guidelines.

   In total, seven public listed companies from a broad range of industries participated in this study. Five out of seven companies in the sample were conducted by face-to-face interview in Malaysia for one week period in April 2013 and another two interview were conducted via Skype due to location distance between interviewee and interviewer. The use of Skype in qualitative research is supported by academic researchers. In the past, telephone interview has been widely adopted in research. Holt (2010) argues that use of telephone interview is a new research medium with the additional benefit of enabling the ‘visual’ in the interview setting. Hanna (2012) extends the Holt's (2010) suggestion on telephone interview to Skype interview and states that "additional visual element offered by Skype that the interview can remain, to a certain extent at least, a ‘face-to-face’ experience while preserving the flexibility and ‘private space’ elements offered via telephone interviews".  Thus, Skype interview is deemed to be suitable medium apart from face-to-face personal interview to address this research context. 

References

Guerreiro, M. S., Rodrigues, L. L. and Craig, R. (2012), "Voluntary adoption of international reporting standards by large unlisted companies in Portugal - Institutional logics and strategic responses", Accounting, Organizations and Society, Vol. 37, pp. 481-499.

Hanna, P. (2012), " Using internet technologies (such as Skype) as a research medium: a research note", Qualitative Research, Vol. 12, No. 2, pp. 239-242.

Holt, A. (2010), "Using telephones for narrative interviewing: a research note", Qualitative Research, Vol. 10, pp. 113–121.

Jermakowicz, E.K. and Gornick-Tomaszewski, S. (2006), "Implementing IFRS from the perspective of EU publicly traded companies", Journal of International Accounting, Auditing and Taxation, Vol. 15, pp. 170-196.

Jones, S. and Higgins, A. D. (2006), "Australia's switch to international financial reporting standards: A Perspective from Account Preparers", Accounting and Finance, Vol. 46, pp. 629-652.

Time and Project Management Course

I attended this course conducted by Dr Sage Leslie from Academic Skills and Learning Centre. I find this course is particular useful to those PhD students who always complain that they don't have enough time to handle their thesis and course works. Many valuable tips and advice were given by Dr Sage.

First, we should have daily "To do list" and themed checklist. You should know what do you need to fit in the checklist. The checklist should include your daily life and not just your PhD thesis. It is also important to set aside dedicated thesis time each week and set specific goals for this time.  You should know when are you at your best for reading? For writing? Be realistic! The checklist must be a 'whole of life' plan.   PhD is life long journey. You must manage your life well in order to proceed this long journey.

Second, project management is also important for PhD study. To manage the study effectively, try to define the project parameters in terms of time, length and criteria for completion. Break the project into small milestones to make yourself more focus. If can, one should always revise the project plan frequently and sometime may need to work backwards from due date to monitor the progress of plan.

Third, this course introduces some reading techniques and managing the reading effectively. You must have a clear purpose for reading. Try don't read every word of everything. I should try to learn this technique as I always like to read everything and read for pleasure sometime without any purposes. In addition, try to file documents by theme so you can return to them easily. I realise filing is important for time management especially if you have more and more reading materials. I used to save my journal articles in authors name, years of publication, journal name and title of journal. Basically try to rename the files as details as possible and store it in specific themed files. It enables me to extract the file easily from my hard disk in future. We may need to return and read these documents periodically. Even the hardcopy of the documents, I will file them in the proper folders and label the folders clearly. Filing and retrieval save your times!

Fourth, managing your notes. Keep the 'use' for the information in mind. Some information or draft may look irrelevant to you at the moment but try to keep it for the future use. Again, try to write sections as you go. Try to write down anything relevant to your research project. Writing helps you organise your mind and 'force' you focus sometime!

Lastly, look after yourself! Healthy is vital for this study marathon. Only healthy person can smile at the end of marathon! It is not something wrong if you feel you need to rest for a while or even STOP your study for a certain period. Managing life should be in your PhD study plan. All the best!     

Planning a Research Project - Checklist

I have listed the checklist for my research project. Hope you find the checklist is useful for your study as well.

· Do you know what the requirements for your dissertation are, as set out by university or department?

·   Have you made contact with your supervisor?

·   Have you allowed enough time for planning, doing, and writing up your research project?

· Do you have clear timetable for your research project with clearly identifiable milestones for the achievement of specific tasks?

·   Have you got sufficient financial and practical resources (for example, money to enable travel to research site, recording device) to enable you to carry out your research project?

·   Have you formulated some research questions and discussed these with your supervisor?

·   Are the research questions you have identified capable of being answered through your research project?

·   Do you have the access that you require in order to carry out your research?

·   Are you familiar with the data analysis software that you will be using to analyse your data?

·   Have you allowed others to comment on your work so far and responded to their feedback?

·   Have you checked out whether they are likely to be any ethical issues that might be raised in connection with your research?

·   Have you allowed enough time for getting clearance through ethics committee, if that is required for your research? 

Does abusive spouse is a good participant for IFRS compliance study?

Much has been heard about husbands abusing their wives. In more cases than we care to admit, husbands from a variety of backgrounds are physically and emotionally battering their wives with their fists and their words. Abuse in marriage, whatever form it takes, is ultimately about a pattern of exerting power and control over one one’s own way. Men with strong power and control will normally ignore the existing laws that govern the family violence. Hence, the roles of regulator are questionable in enforcing the laws and protecting the abusive victim. 

Similarly, in the context of IFRS compliance, research studies show that most of the established companies have propensity to manipulate the financial statements or engage in earning managements. These established companies tends to ignore the accounting rules. This shows that the accounting regulators may fail to perform its roles to regulate the compliance of IFRS. 

Hence, it would be interested to study the perception of men with abusive characters on the effectiveness roles of regulators in enforcing the laws. In particular, study should focus on the other factors that can cause the non-compliance of law on family violence. Moreover, study should investigate the perception of abusive victims on the effectiveness of law in protecting them. Their views and opinions should be proved more useful than the abusive spouse. This result can be applied into IFRS compliance context to examine whether these factors also can cause non-compliance of IFRS.

Formulation of An Argument

One of the difficulties in writing up research is the formulation of an argument. The writing-up of research should be organized around an argument that links all aspects of the research process from problem formulation, through literature review and the presentation of research methods, to the discussion and conclusion. Too often, we tend to make a series of points without asking what the contribution of those points to the overall arguments that we are trying to present. Try to avoid tangents and irrelevant material that may mean that your readers will lose the thread of your arguments. If you are not able to supply a clear argument, you are very vulnerable to the 'so what?' question. 

The argument is a thread that runs through your dissertation. These are commonly used phrases in formulating an argument in dissertation chapters.

Dissertation Chapters	Commonly used phrases for argument
Introduction	This thesis is concerned with... This thesis will explore/ examine... The growing adoption of... has attracted a lot of interest in the mass media but there is a dearth of research into its actual use.
Literature review	Recent research on X has shown that... Therefore, much of the existing research suggests... By contrast,... found/argued/suggested... In this thesis, I will build on (name3)'s suggestion that... In exploring this issue, the following research questions are proposed... ... although the findings are somewhat inconsistent...
Research methods	Research method 1 was employed to answer the research questions because... The research followed (name3)'s approach to studying X by... A mixed methods approach was adopted so that it would be possible to...
Results / findings	In exploring the research questions, three main themes were identified... The findings suggest that... This theme is exemplified by interviewee's comment that... By contrast, interviewee X pointed out that...
Discussion	The aim of this study was to... Overall, these findings confirm/fail to provide support for the suggestion that... Four main themes relating to the research questions emerged. These themes have implications for the investigation of X...
Conclusion	A key findings of this research for Z theory is that... The concepts that have been used to research X have been shown to be of some utility but the results are somewhat mixed in that... The main contribution(s) of this research is(are)... Through this research it has been demonstrated that... The implications of these findings for the study of X are that...

References

Bryman, A. (2012). Social Research Methods (4th ed.), New York: Oxford University Press.