Detailed instructions for interviews
Provided guidelines aim to conduct semi-structured interviews/focus groups with the outlined population of the research.
Initially, contact with the possible respondents is to be established. An official contact letter will be emailed to the respondents (or intermediaries). The Contact letter for the respondents is represented in Appendix A and in a separate PDF file as a part of a set of documents for this Deliverable. It is considered to be the template and can be modified/adjusted regarding the needs of the project and the research process. In cases of great distance or other circumstances, interviews/focus groups will be conducted via online meetings (audio/video call) using platforms like Skype/Zoom/Google Meet/WhatsApp, etc. An interview/focus group guide (a questionnaire) is prepared with a series of additional (follow-up) questions to guide and orient the discussion. An Interview/focus group guide with questions and subsections is represented in Appendix C and in a separate PDF file as a part of a set of documents for this Deliverable.
Regarding specifically the focus group implementation procedure, it is worth mentioning that it is usually run by a moderator, who should guide the discussion but not intrude on it, giving particular attention to the interaction processes within the group and how the participants discuss particular issues as members of the group, but not as individuals. All the participants should be provided with clear and extensive instructions about the discussion before starting the focus group; at the beginning of the discussion, it could be useful to ask each participant to introduce themselves (it will help to associate a voice to a name while coding) (Clark et al., 2021).
The interviews/focus groups are supposed to be conducted in English in order to unify the answers or in the national language if participants cannot or refuse to be interviewed in English. All ethical and confidential aspects will be discussed with the interviewees in advance, as well as through an electronic consent form, so they can familiarise themselves with the research details and review the interview questions. If necessary, they may be again provided with assurance of complete anonymity. The consent form might also be sent via Google form, in case it will be impossible to sign it digitally or by hand (the Consent form for collaboration in research is represented in Appendix B and in a separate PDF file as a part of a set of documents for this Deliverable).
When the time slot is set up, an interview/focus group discussion is scheduled. All interviews/focus groups will be recorded for subsequent transcription and quoting, with the preliminary agreement of the respondents. To avoid technical issues, two recording devices might be used simultaneously. The interview/focus group is planned to last max. approximately 1 – 1,5 hours. The difference in duration might be explained by the fact that these are semi-structured interviews, and, as has already been mentioned, these methods allow more flexibility during the discussion. Moreover, the respondents might understand the questions differently; they have different opinions and experiences.
The recorded interviews/focus group discussions will be transcribed and coded to identify the main categories discussed by the respondents. In this case, the open coding method will be employed to assemble collected data into specified categories that are potentially important for the research. This method also helps to reduce the amount of data that is to be analysed with the help of turning it into smaller fragments (Bryman, 2012). The transcripts will be segmented into the main topics. According to the analysis mentioned above, it is possible to outline the following topics pertinent to the research aim, which should be discussed with the respondents during the interviews/focus group discussions: Understanding EU grand strategies, EU grand strategies and their implementation, Role of technology and innovations, Multilevel governance and EU Public Diplomacy. Respondents' answers will be analysed for each topic to identify key notions pertinent to the research aim. Respondents' quotations will be marked according to the distinguished notions; then, these notions will be grouped into categories. The relevance of the categories to the primary research issue will be assessed to interpret the research results, emphasising the interconnection of the categories with the main aim of the research.