Interview Data
Description
This dataset consists of three groups of semi-structured interviews focusing on how music study abroad agencies assist students in applying to elite overseas art institutions. Participants include study abroad consultants, portfolio instructors, and student applicants. The interviews mainly explore application strategies, portfolio preparation, background enhancement, language preparation, and overall planning, reflecting the professionalized and market-oriented nature of music study abroad applications.
Files
Steps to reproduce
Once data collection was complete, data analysis employed thematic analysis (Braun & Clark, 2006) to explore music study abroad application strategies and ways to translate applicant strengths and weaknesses. Initially, the researcher read the transcribed text line by line to familiarize herself with the interview data. The qualitative software MAXQDA 24 was then used to initially code the noteworthy features across the dataset. After combining and integrating these codes, we first clarified the core themes and then optimized and refined them through multiple rounds of review to ensure that they closely fit the raw data. This process involves, first, drawing a thematic structure map to clearly present the connections and hierarchies among themes; second, defining and naming each theme to ensure the authenticity and fit of the theme; and third, screening representative content excerpts to provide strong data support for each theme. All in all, we identified six themes and eight sub-themes that are closely related to the themes derived from the data coding.