Microsoft Word 2007 ichrie conference Proceedings Final-Final 06-06-07. doc

 
2007 Annual International CHRIE Conference & Exposition 
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The convention center’s research department made initial contact with the Client Advisory Board members 
and encouraged support for the study by indicating the results would assist the convention center in better serving 
their customers. From the 43 Client Advisory Board members, a random sample of 22 was selected and asks to 
participate in the study. Twenty one of the 22 selected board members participated in the study. Since the average 
number of shows produced at the convention center each year average is 115 shows for conventions with exhibits, 
tradeshows, and conventions without exhibitions, the 22 interview participants are representative of the overall 
population of customers for the convention center. The average time to conduct an interview was 47 minutes and 
ranged from 22 minutes to 1 hour and 17 minutes.
The following research design was used to conduct the qualitative interviews. The first step was to send an 
initial email to the participants to introduce the researcher, indicate the purpose of the research, the timeframe of the 
interviews, and thank the participants for their time and sharing their expertise to improve and advance the 
convention industry. The second step was to phone each of the interviewees to schedule a telephone interview. The 
third step was to conduct the telephone interviews. Since the participants were located around the United States in 
different locations, telephone interviews were selected to meet the data collection criteria. The fourth step in the 
qualitative process was to transcribe each of the interviews. The transcription documents for the 21 interviews and 
interview notes comprised 231 pages of qualitative data.
The final step in the qualitative process was analyzing the qualitative data using the qualitative software 
program NVivo7. NVivo7 was used to sort data and assist in the investigation of themes and patterns within the 
data. The analysis took a systematic approach of identifying key words and key phrases among the responses. This 
process allowed the researcher to meet validity and reliability issues that can arise in qualitative research.