A letter to our research students: making sense of sampling issues in the times of Covid-19

Dear Masters and Doctoral students

I write to reach out to you at home, at work, in front of your screens as you think about all the research mountains to climb in order to complete your research project this year.  I am reaching out with keen awareness that Covid-19 has touched us differently. Most of us have family members whose businesses and sources of income have been wiped out by the pandemic and lockdown regulations. We have witnessed desperation in our communities and saw families struggle not just to make ends meet but to put dinner on the table. Not to talk of those of us caring and supporting sick family members or having to experience a family member languish in hospital. With all these challenges you have to work from home amidst the hoo-ha of barking dogs, crying children; emotionally depressed family members, to count but a few family circumstances we work under.

To say these are different and difficult times is an understatement. In reflecting on the pandemic in June 2020, I shared an insight that the pandemic is unique in its transformative effects, because of its international character, its dominance in the media space, and most importantly how it brought immediacy in the ways of being, of living and of working. This happened globally, simultaneous, with immediate effect. Perhaps, the most profound learning from Covid-19 is the poignant illustration of how we, as a human family are so inter-connected. There is therefore no way that the pandemic is not going to affect your research.

After hearing the cries of my students lamenting over real and hard challenges they are facing in collecting data during these Covid-19 times, I felt I could not just sit back and continue as if life is normal. Let’s admit, research method course material written before March 2020 might not have adequately equiped you with sampling issues in times of Covid. I think the problem is more complex than just the issue of getting the right sample size to justify credibility, trustworthiness, and all those validity issues required for a scientific piece of work. My view is that the case study organisation that you were planning to base your study on has changed fundamentally in the past 175 lockdown days.  And this is understandable.

While I do not offer to solve all your sampling and data collection challenges, I offer some tips on how to improve the chances of staying on track with your research plan during these times of Covid-19.

1. Building inner resilience and stress coping mechanisms

 It is difficult to think and write a scientific piece while going through devastating times. I know this from personal experience. The years 2006 – 2010 were the most difficult times in my life. The dark night of my soul. My career and my life fell apart. I lost many things including trust in people. I felt helpless, depressed, scared and exhausted most times. I woke up every day to go to my garden. I found peace in it. I found beauty. I drew energy and inspiration from the beauty of nature. I started to want very little: just to survive for one hour at a time.  I used to say: I need energy just to go through this one hour, this one day. When I look back I realised that these times gave me something completely priceless: an ability to immerse myself into the depth of pain and hurt, hold the pain, feel it and come out of it with expanded  consciousness and ‘fresh eyes’ to see and experience the world.

I suspect the effects of the lockdown will have similar effects for those of us who face what seem to be insurmountable mountains. What we are going through as humanity requires us to relook at how we build inner resilience as we rebuild our lives and move forward.

Inner resilience is built by doing something difficult every day. Opportunities are in difficulties. Inner resilience is built by persistently and consistently doing something difficult until it stops being difficult. Thinking and writing your research project is very difficult when faced with other challenges. You just need to create space and time and write everyday at least for an hour each day.

It helps to draw insights from nature. Have you found that even during a thunderous storm, nature is just calm and peaceful.  Nature is infinitely content. I noticed this while taking a walk through a nature reserve park in Groenkloof this Saturday with a dear friend. We saw birds tweeting, chirping and weaving their nests happily.  The birds looked content with what nature provides. The insight I drew from this view of nature is that one must need very little to be content.

Nature is infinitely content - Picture by P Msweli - Groenkloof: 19 September 2020

2. Do not be married for  better or worse to your research design and  research plans that you put together before the pandemic

Do not fear change. I really believe the saying that the only thing to fear is fear itself. Look at your research design logically, and make the changes taking into account the new pandemic circumstances. I advised my student Phume the other day to change her sampling plan and even the direction of her research when she realized that there is a risk of not getting participants. Rewrite your proposal and resubmit your research ethics proposal if need be. Professors in our business school are working beyond their call of duty, meeting once every week to consider research ethics proposals, to accommodate our students during these difficult times.

3.  Re-think your research questions and use existing and valid data sets as source of your data

I advise students to start sourcing secondary data from valid data sets generated by institutions such as Statistics South Africa, South African Reserve Bank, World Bank; TRALAC; World Trade Organisation; the African Union database of published etc.  Research can be designed using this safe and quick way of gaining data. It is perfectly fine to use secondary data to address masters or doctoral research questions.

4. When writing about sampling issues be focused and detailed

Sampling issues in your write-up should not be thin in detail. Remember that you are writing, your sampling plan almost like a manual that other scholars will follow to arrive at the same conclusion. The best way to think about sampling is to think in terms of what information sources and how many of these sources you need in order to have a true picture around the questions you are researching. If for example you want to know why governance failed in a case study organisation, you have to ask yourself: who and how many sets of stakeholders you will talk to in order to get a true picture of what caused governance failure.

Writing about sampling issues should not be meandered around definitions of different types of sampling techniques. At masters and doctoral level it is assumed that you have covered basics in sampling techniques at undergraduate and honours level. You should write your sampling plan with clarity, exactness and focus. Achieving focus is what results in profound works. These are the topics you must cover in the write-up of the section of your work that deals with sampling issue:

• How many groups of people or organisations are you planning to source your data from?
• Describe each group of participants in terms of their location, and their population size
• What are the criteria for including participants in a group?
• What are the exclusion criteria?
• Provide a detailed discussion of how you will select your participants (sampling method), and how you will recruit them
• How long will the process of acquiring data (interview/ or completing the survey instrument) take?
• If you are interviewing candidates face to face, comment about issues related to Covid 19 regulation safety and security

As you address these topics, ponder on issues of privacy, confidentiality, risk, and the beneficence principle related to research ethics.

Wishing you success with your research projects

Prof P Msweli
Executive Dean and CEO (A)
School of Business Leadership
20 September 2020