Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
professionals with experience as consultants and
project management in CCIS and experience in
the development of software for contact centers.
Another issue is to have worked in several busi-
ness areas and diverse geographic areas with
markets of different maturities and dimensions.
By last, the specialists should have skills beyond
computer science.
The observer team has almost ten years of
effective work in the area. Their projects cross
several geographies, among others, Tokyo (Ja-
pan), São Paulo (Brazil), Hong-Kong (China),
Macau (China), Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia), Ma-
drid (Spain), Amsterdam (Holland) and Lisbon
(Portugal). Projects business areas range from
finance and insurance to travel agencies and retail.
Frequently used in exploratory-descriptive
studies, as well as in other types of research, fo-
cus groups, as data gathering technique, seemed
particularly useful in this context, as explained
in the next section.
point of view of the researchers and participants.
To participants, focus groups offer synergy, mo-
mentum, stimulus, security and spontaneity. To
researchers offer collective wisdom, innovative
ideas, structure, speed and specialization.
This required preparing a list of subjects to
cover. This list of subjects evolved into a sequence
of questions and sentences for comment. This
tool was reviewed and tuned in order to reach
the defined goals.
A letter requesting the participation and ex-
plaining the goals, the focus group process, and the
use of data gathered was sent to the interviewees.
Focus group was realized in the physical pres-
ence of the participants, had the duration of about
two hours, and was tape-recorded (with explicit
concordance of the participants). Curriculum Vitae
of the participants were also requested.
Focus group record was transcribed verbatim
and the resulting document was sent to participants
for revision and acceptance. Confidentiality was
always assured.
Before analysis of content, verbatim docu-
ments and notes were organized. That material
was processed through content analysis based
on emergent thematic categories. Data analysis,
in qualitative research, is a phase of the research
process that occurs every time the researcher
collects new data. In the analysis, researcher
must continually use what has already emerged
(Deslauriers, 1991). One of the key elements in
qualitative data analysis is the systematic cod-
ing of text (Miles & Huberman, 1994; Strauss
& Corbin, 1990). Codes are the building blocks
for model building and the foundation on which
the analyst's arguments rest. Codes embody the
assumptions underlying the analysis.
The first coding step consisted of organizing
all the contents in major topics. As they had been
identified, these new topics were also considered
in the organization of the information. The sec-
ond step was to iteratively look for similarities,
differences, common denominators, models and
dAtA coLLection And AnALYsis
This section presents the procedures and tools
used to gather, organize and analyze data. Many
qualitative researchers prefer the term “empirical
material” to the word “data” since most qualitative
data is non-numeric (Myers, 1997).
Focus groups are interactive discussion groups
used to generate knowledge, hypothesis, explore
opinions, attitudes and attributes (Fern, 1982). To
MacDonald (1992), a focus group is seen as “…
[a group] discussion of a particular topic under
the direction of a moderator who promotes group
participation and interaction and manages the
discussion through a series of topics”.
Focus groups seek to maximize search time
and to take advantage of the synergies that arise
from group effort.
Stewart e Shamdasani (1990) point the ad-
vantages of focus groups over other methods like
individual interviews and Delphi groups from the
Search WWH ::
Custom Search