Page 24 - Through the gate of the neoliberal academy • Herschberg

22 CHAPTER 1
Interviews and focus groups
The second step in my data collection was to conduct semi-structured interviews with committee members, working in the Dutch university, who had taken part in a committee for postdoc or tenure-track assistant professor positions in the period 2010 – 2014. In total, I interviewed nine men and four women (see Appendix A). I conducted two focus groups (one in the SSH department and one in the STEM department) with five men and two women (see Appendix A). The focus groups were held with committee members who had taken part in a committee for tenure-track assistant professor positions (and not postdoc positions) because the number of advertised positions for assistant professors was far more than for postdoc positions. During the focus groups, at least one other researcher of the Dutch GARCIA research team joined in order to guide the discussion and make observations. The number of women and men among the interview and focus group participants reflects the number of women and men that took part in hiring committees for early-career positions. The interviews and focus groups were all conducted face to face in a meeting room in the university.
For the interviews and focus groups I used similar topic lists (see Appendices B and C). They were structured around two themes: selection criteria for assistant professor or postdoc positions and department (gender) policies regarding recruitment and selection. In the interviews I added a section of questions on an actual selection process that the respondent had been involved in. The interviews lasted between one and two hours, and the focus groups lasted two hours. The interviews and focus groups were recorded with respondents’ permission and transcribed verbatim. Through interviews and focus groups, committee members reflected on their recruitment and selection practices. They actively constructed their experiences and perceptions.
Observations
A recommended method for research into social practices is observation as through observations one can study “what it is that people actually do in organizations” (Yanow, 2006) instead of what they say they do. Observations allows for grasping “the processual and interactive dimension of gendering in its two main aspects: saying and doing” (Bruni et al., 2005 in Poggio, 2006, p. 229). Doing observations gave me the opportunity to study selection practices in the original group settings in which hiring decisions are made.
I got the opportunity to do a first observation in the Dutch university because I was invited to observe a hiring procedure in one of the departments. For