As an overseas student, Zaid Kilani chose to research downsizing in his home country in the Middle East. He was encouraged by his tutor to research downsizing in a non-Western context. Zaid decided to investigate how employees perceive the downsizing process. To delimit his research project, he decided to focus on one downsizing method that is used in downsizing the civil service in his home country. Further, he focused on one aspect of employees’ perception, which was fairness of the downsizing process. Zaid undertook his research from a positivistic philosophical stance. He conducted a thorough review of the literature, stated his research aims, and formed hypotheses that could be tested statistically. The required data were to be collected via self-administered postal questionnaire, which he wished to send to a sample of the total population of the of 2800 ex-civil servants. A list of these ex-civil servants that included their names, ex-employers, and other details were provided by the Civil Service Bureau in his home country. Unfortunately, no contact details were available. One possible way to overcome this obstacle could have been to contact their previous employers and ask them for the contact details. However, this was deemed unethical as he would be requesting personal details. The alternative, which Zaid adopted, was to search for the ex-employees’ names in the general telephone book, contact them by telephone, ask for their informed consent to participate, and, if they accepted, ask for their convenient postal address. Zaid realized that a further obstacle was that as an unknown male, even though he was a researcher, it would not be tolerable for him to contact female respondents and ask for such information. He, therefore, assigned a female assistant to contact female respondents. To facilitate the process of searching for telephone numbers, Zaid purchased an electronic copy of the general telephone book, enabling him to search using a computer. As Arabic is the first language in Zaid’s home country, it was prudent to translate the questionnaire into Arabic to minimize the possibility of non-response due to language difficulties. To fulfil this object, he decided to follow Usunier’s (1998) suggestion and used parallel translation. This involved having several independent translations from English to Arabic, comparing the translated versions, and subsequently arriving at a final version in Arabic. As Zaid is an Arabic native, he felt this would help to ensure that the specific meanings included in his questionnaire were fully rendered in the Arabic version. To translate the questionnaire by using the parallel-translation technique, two Arabic native translators were appointed. One of the translators had an MBA degree while the other had a Bachelor degree in business administration. Each of them had experience in translation from English to Arabic and back while working with his home country’s civil service. Zaid provided each of the translators with a copy of the English version of the questionnaire and its covering letter to translate independently into Arabic. Subsequently, the translators and Zaid had a meeting to discuss the translated versions question by question. The Arabic version was prepared after minor differences between the two translated questionnaires were found and then reconciled. The differences pertained to the expressions ‘job’ and ‘civil servant’. The word ‘job’ has several equivalents, so the translators and the author agreed on the most appropriate word. In addition, the expression ‘civil servant’ may imply inferiority in Arabic. For this reason, the term ‘civil employee’ was used. For language-gender considerations, two versions of the covering letters were prepared: one to address female respondents and the other to address male respondents. Afterwards, the Arabic version of the questionnaire and its covering letter were piloted.

Questions

1.       What are the possible disadvantages of the way that Zaid used to contact respondent?

2.       Outline the possible disadvantages of using a parallel translation technique?

3.       You have been asked to comment on the covering letter that Zaid prepared. What are your suggestions to improve this covering letter?

Answer rating: 100% (QA)

1 Zaid himself is trying best as per his clear motive but still there are certain areas which are no... View the full answer