Page 26 - Through the gate of the neoliberal academy • Herschberg

24 CHAPTER 1
Research reports (and interview summaries)
In the two cross-national studies I analyse research reports that were written by other research teams in order to compare findings in different national HEIs. Each team wrote two research reports that centred on recruitment and selection of early- career researchers (and gender practices) in their respective institutions (for the first research reports see: (Herschberg, Benschop, & Van den Brink, 2015). The second research reports are not published online in full). We, the Dutch team, had prepared guidelines for the research teams on what to include in the reports, in order to facilitate comparability across countries.
All research teams had collected data on recruitment and selection practices in their own institutions: documents, interviews, and focus groups. To ensure comparability, every team used the same topic list for the interviews and focus groups, which the Dutch GARCIA team had developed (see also the section on Interviews and focus groups). The Dutch team provided instructions via Skype to the researchers that were responsible for collecting the data in the other countries. Furthermore, the research approach and research topics have been discussed during project team meetings to ensure that the protocols were used in similar ways.
Interviews and focus groups were recorded with respondents’ permission and transcribed verbatim in order for the research teams to analyse the transcripts in depth and write the research reports. The majority of the interviews and focus groups were conducted in the local languages of the various research teams, which is why I could not draw on the original interview transcripts. Instead, every research team (except the Dutch team) made summaries in English of all interviews and focus groups they had conducted. These summaries were written to provide the authors with primary data to strengthen the analysis. We had prepared guidelines for the research teams on what to include in the summaries for consistency across countries. The summaries consisted of four themes: information about the respondent (sex, department), selection criteria considered important, organisation of the selection process, and gender policies in recruitment and selection. Finally, the research teams provided quotes they thought reflected the interview responses best. These quotes were in addition to the quotes provided in the research reports.
A disadvantage of using research reports written by other teams is that I depended on their choice and interpretation of the data. Translation issues might also have influenced the reporting of the data in the research reports and the interview summaries and quotes. I tried to limit these disadvantages as much as possible by instructing the research teams and to make use of the same interview and focus group topic list and guidelines for writing the reports and summaries. I contacted