QUALITATIVE INVESTIGATION OF TAM
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the Extension Foundation, and the voluntary nature of participation. Participants are encouraged
to express honest opinions regardless of whether they align with organizational goals or
expectations. Data privacy of participants is prioritized so that participants can speak freely about
CRM adoption in their states without fear of reprisal from their respective organizations. This
includes the use of pseudonyms for participants in the research outputs and securing all data to
protect participant privacy. Additionally, all participants are provided with a full narrative
summary of their interview responses, with the opportunity to make any clarifications or edits.
Data Collection
The landscape assessment data was collected by the Extension Foundation approximately
five months prior to this research. The semi-structured interviews are conducted via the Zoom
videoconferencing platform. Semi-structured interviews allow for a set of predetermined
questions but also provide flexibility to the researcher for exploring the topic of CRM with the
interview participant based on the participant ’ s experience with CRM, the specific CRM tool
being utilized, or features within the CRM that the participant is most utilizing. Firsthand
observations of participants utilizing CRM technologies are not used as participants are located
across the United States. Additionally, conducting this type of field research is not cost-effective
for this research. A review of documents, photos, objects, or other artifacts is not used in this
study as the research is more interested in understanding the attitudes and perceptions of CRM
usage in the CES and learning about the successes or failures of CRM implementation.
According to Ravitch and Carl (2021), there are several key characteristics and values of
qualitative interviews to consider in the research design. The key considerations and values of
qualitative interviews are that they are relational, contextual, non-evaluative, person-centered,
temporal, partial, subjective, and non-neutral (Ravitch & Carl, 2021). Additionally, this research
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