Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Whole-Family Study Methodology and Analysis
The study aimed to understand the individual and collective experiences
and meanings of family holidays over time for all family members. Whole-
family methodology was adopted from family research (Handel, 1996). This
involved a two-stage interview process. To begin with, all family members
were interviewed together. The second stage involved each family member
being interviewed separately, to capture their collective and individual
perspectives. This was repeated three times over one year, once before and
twice after their summer holiday, to capture their anticipation as well as
short-term and longer-term recollections of their holiday experiences. The
inherently private nature of families and their mobility on holiday did not
allow for research access during the holiday experience. The application of
the whole-family method longitudinally thus gave a temporal, experiential
and whole-family understanding of holidays (Schänzel, 2010).
Ten families participated in this element of the study, involving 10
fathers, 10 mothers and 20 children (11 boys and 9 girls, aged 6-16 years). To
give a balanced gender perspective on parenthood, only two-parent/guardian
families were selected (94% of the 110 initial survey respondents fitted this
family form). This allowed for step-parents but in fact no 'blended' families
volunteered, meaning the sample was made up of 10 sets of biological
parents and their children (between one and three children per family). The
participants were all white, Anglo New Zealand, middle class, and residents
in the Wellington region, making the families relatively homogeneous and
not representative of the diversity of New Zealand families.
The choice of methodology was underpinned by the philosophical
perspective of interpretivism, with the goal of understanding the complex
world of lived experience from the point of view of those who live it (Denzin
& Lincoln, 2000). A symbolic interactionist perspective was adopted for
this study, which focuses on the connection between
symbols
(i.e. shared
meanings) and
interactions
(i.e. verbal and non-verbal actions and communi-
cations); it also formed the basis for a grounded theory methodology (GTM)
used for the analysis. This allowed a focus on interpersonal relations within
the family group. The interpretive nature of this study not only qualifies
as a more critical and reflexive path in tourism research but also invokes
new ways of interpreting and expressing the multivocality, textuality and
situatedness of its participants (Jamal & Hollinshead, 2001). Case studies of
families are mainly based on interviews and a small number of cases (Handel,
1991) and are almost always conducted in the home (LaRossa
et al.
, 1994).
The three sets of interviews with each family were all digitally recorded
and later transcribed. The GTM was carried out through manual coding,
in that data were initially coded by reading through the transcripts several
times while making notes, which were then sorted into themes and inte-
grated into a theoretical framework. According to Charmaz (2000) this is
