Kankam boadu

Research instruments

There are two main types of items in the questionnaire: structured and open-ended (Sarantakos, 2004; Cohen et al, 2004). The structured items provide responses where the respondents have to choose from the responses provided whereas with the open-ended items, the respondents have to provide their own responses. Cohen et al (2004) stress that the structured form of the responses is easy, quick to complete and straight forward to code in a computer for analysis. The open-ended items even though allow the respondents to express their views voluntarily, are more difficult and time consuming to work with because the answers will first need to be coded and quantified using some form of content analysis. Notwithstanding the difficulty in using open-ended items, they effectively combine with the close-ended items to give a broader picture of respondents’ views.

The use of questionnaire, in comparison with other instruments, offers respondents’ anonymity, there are no geographical limitations to its implementation, it is a comparatively economic method in both cost and time, and it allows time to carefully check the content of questions that are likely to yield more accurate information (Walliman, 2005 cited in Almaamari, 2007). However, questionnaires usually produce very poor response rates (Borg & Gall, 1993). This deficiency was overcome in this research by the presence of the researcher and the use of letter of introduction from the Director of Institute of Development Studies which explained the academic intentions of the study.

The questionnaire used in this research consisted of four main sections. Section one consisted of introduction to the questionnaire that pointed out the rationale of the research, the rights of the respondents and some guidelines for responding to the items. Section A followed by items on demographic information. The other sections were structured based on the research questions. All the structured items were measured using the Likert Scale. In designing the questionnaire, issues in the literature, the researcher’s professional experience and knowledge guided him.

The interview occupies a central position in the whole chain of social investigation. In a qualitative research, the interview is regarded as one of the most suitable methods of collecting data by means of direct verbal interaction between two individuals or among a group of individuals (Borg & Gall, 1993). The greatest advantage of the interview in the hands of a skilled interviewer is its flexibility (Oppenheim, 2000). The interview situation is, however, fraught with possibilities of bias. “The interviewer may give inkling of her own opinion or expectations by tone of voice, the way in which she reads the questions, or simply by her appearance, dress, and accent” (Oppenheim, 2000:31).

Interviews can be employed either as complementary or supplementary method (Cohen et al., 2004) as in the present research with questionnaire. Adopting interviews in a complementary method helps to make follow-up on unexpected results, validate other methods or to get deeper understanding of concepts (Cohen & Manion, 1994).

Literature has shown that whether interview is used as complementary or supplementary data collection, it can be put under three types such as structured interview, semi-structured interview and unstructured interview ( Borg & Gall, 1993; Cohen et al., 2004). An interview guide follows a set pattern, usually adhering, as much as possible, to the order of questions on the interview schedule. An unstructured interview on the other hand allows more freedom for interviewees to handle their responses, as it is not conducted according to a list of prepared questions (Kvale, 2008). A semi-structured interview is conducted according to pre-set questions, with the opportunity to probe the responses of the interviewees.

As stated earlier, this research attempts to explore the perceptions of teacher trainees and tutors on citizenship education, a semi-structured interview is used to complement the questionnaire. Literature reveals that this type of interview is very helpful to encourage the interviewees to freely express their perception, views and experience about citizenship education, and can be used in the Ghanaian context, hence, the researcher used interviews as well.

In all, two interview guides were used in this research (see Appendice B). These were the tutors’ schedule, and the teacher trainees’ schedule. The interview schedules for both tutors and teacher trainees were meant to deepen their responses in the questionnaires and to explore how they both develop citizenship in their class in the colleges of education for the tutors and in the schools for teacher trainees. The findings of the questionnaire were used as the basis of the interview guides.

In all, the interview schedules were put into four parts. Part one was an introduction to the interview that showed the goals and relevance of the study and the rights of the participants. This was followed by items on background information such as name and position, the date and place of the interview and the starting and ending of the interview. The third part of the interview was based on the demographic information relating to the interviewees and the final parts related to the main items on the interview.