Case construction

The case under investigation consists of twelve participants between 16-18 years and one 21 year-old. As most of the participants in SeMo are between 16-18, the age distribution of the case can be seen as adequately corresponding to the population in the program. The same applies also to the population of Swiss young people in their transition one (transition from obligatory schooling to professional life or further education).

In qualitative research, perfect generalization from a small sample to the subject population is not the main aim whereas in quantitative research, high importance has been given to randomness of the selection procedure in order to avoid bias.

In addition, quantitative studies usually entail a large and representative sample.

Instead, in qualitative research the interest is in a detailed analysis of the substance and quality of the human experience. What determines the selection process is the purpose of the project rather than 'a strict methodological mandate' (Marvasti 2004: 9). Thus, a purpose driven sampling entails that the researcher seeks for groups, individuals or different settings whereby the processes of interest are likely to occur (Cheek 2005). The link between the general and the specific case leans on the fact that no individual case stands completely alone isolated from the general. It is always a part of the social processes and it must be studied as such: 'to study the particular is to study the general' (Cheek 2005: 378). The goal of qualitative research is not empirical generalization. Psathas (1995) mentions that the 'criteria of unique adequacy' should be met by the analysis, meaning that the analysis should follow the

uniqueness of the case providing results that are 'uniquely adequate for the particular phenomenon' (p. 50-51).

The general public under study is young people with low qualifications in transition from school to work in Switzerland. An additional purpose structuring the data collection is the vulnerability and a certain marginality of this population.

The SeMo population is seen as representative regarding the described public under study, since most of the subjects are in a transitional measure. As opposed to what can be seen as a smooth transition (straight from school to professional life or education), the SeMo participants have, for varying reasons, resorted to a transitional solution. The fact that most of them have followed the lowest school track in addition to their young age makes them one of the most vulnerable groups in the labor market. It can be noted that another, even more marginalized group of young people exists, which is out of the reach of public services. However, as the access to this population would have been too difficult considering the limitations of time and resources given to a PhD- dissertation, the general population of study must be limited to those registered with public employment services. Ultimately, taking into consideration the time limits of the research, this decision also served the purpose of collecting the most information and the opportunity to learn most from the subject group due to the open access to the program of SeMoNord.

While a perfect correspondence of the sample to the SeMo population is not a necessity in a qualitative research, some of the main variables will be described in order to maintain the possibility to reflect on the results while keeping in mind the whole population in SeMo as well as the whole population of young people with low qualifications in Switzerland. In addition to age, other interesting characteristics are sex, country of origin and level of education. Women are overrepresented in the case group (8-5) due to the fact that they were more willing to participate and the difficulty of persuading men to be interviewed. This is not a problem, however, since gender comparison is not one of the aims of my research. Country of origin or nationality is different from Switzerland for one third of the interviewees while some of these possess a double nationality. In this case, there are no statistics available but it is important to note that the data does not only consist of young people with Swiss nationality and origin.

Approximately three quarters of the case group have finished their obligatory schooling with a certificate of the lowest school track, secondary school track for options (VSO), while the rest of them have the general secondary school level (VSG). This corresponds well to the SeMo population since most of them have a VSO level of schooling.

Within both of the interview sequences, the interviews took place either during the working hours or during the time for job search activities depending on the availability of the interviewees. Interviews with the participants were based on volunteer involvement that was initiated by the professionals asking for volunteers. However, the method of selection differed slightly by workshop, since the organization of work within the workshops was different depending on the personality and ways of working of the manager. While all the interviews with the participants in the end were based on volunteers, the selection procedure for nominating the possible interviewees differed by workshop. In most of the cases, interview candidates were suggested by the professionals, after which these

candidates were asked for participation. An exception was one workshop, where the influence of the professionals was left to minimum as the candidates were asked directly to volunteer, two of whom did so. In another workshop, the interview candidates were asked for participation during the observation. One of these participants was suggested by a professional while the other one was picked randomly. In addition, two interviewees in another workshop were selected due to the fact that they were the only options available for the day. The criteria for selection were, in over half of the cases, based on an evaluation made by the professionals of the participant's openness, talkativeness and readiness to speak. In addition, some individual cases were selected according to an evaluation of the diversity and even hardship of their transitional experiences.

A certain bias could be assigned to this type of selection procedure: first of all, selection done by the gatekeepers might derive from their attempts to choose those interviewees most likely to advance their own or the program's aims. In this case, the bias would result in a high number of participants with favorable experiences when it comes to the program at the expense of those having critical opinions. The second possible bias concerns the requirement of maximizing the possible variation in case selection (see Patton 1990). As the mentioned criteria used for selection concerns the most talkative interviewees or alternatively the ones with exceptionally adverse transitional experiences, these characteristics would be overrepresented.

However, several factors speak against the existence of such biases. When it comes to the first bias, it would be balanced out due to the fact that not all the participants were selected by the gatekeepers. Instead, in three of the workshops, either the complete responsibility of finding candidates was left to the interviewer or, in some cases, volunteers were commonly asked amongst all the workshop participants present. Thus, slightly over half of the interviewees were suggested by the gatekeepers. Secondly, I am inclined to evaluate it as highly questionable that the aim of educated professionals in social and educative work would be to advance the reputation of the program at the expense of the young people and their need to make their voices heard. Thirdly, the use of critical discourse analysis entails that individual opinions and thoughts are not taken at face value. Instead, the aim of CDA is to discover discourses within the narratives and the possible power effects they have. The last issue concerns the necessity of resorting to the input of professionals. Following the first interview experiences, the young people turned out to have certain uneasiness in opening up and talking about their transitional experiences. Thus, without the contribution of the most talkative individuals, there would have been a risk of the data remaining rather poor.

The second bias concerning the selection of interviewees by the gatekeepers suggests that the case group could be biased since it includes young people possessing the same characteristics, that is, talkativeness. Such a selection would leave out the participants that are less open and expressive and, who are hence perhaps, more marginalized. The risk of this imbalance is seen as inevitable due to the difficulty of including the least talkative participants as well as the ethical obstacles in basing the selection in anything else than volunteers.

Moreover, as the first interview experiences showed, it required a considerable

amount of time and effort to encourage some of the young people to share their experiences. Hence, only a small number of these young people, in spite of the evaluations by the professionals, could have been assessed as talkative. In addition, in the phase of analysis, it turned out that most of the people that, indeed, were talkative, had experienced considerable hardships during their transitions. When it comes to a possible bias entailing overrepresentation of unfavorable transitional experiences, the intention of my research is not to provide a sample perfectly representing the whole SeMo population, nor the unemployed youth in general. Rather, the attempt is to provide information on the young people with low qualifications and of the obstacles they face in realizing their capabilities and agency. Thus, as the research interest is in vulnerability, the overrepresentation of traumatic or adverse transitional experiences does not pose a problem in my data. As with qualitative research, the aim of the data is rather to show what is typical in that specific object of research and not to represent the overall distribution of features (Hartley 1994).