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185 appendix Sample Characteristics and Methodology a lT h o U G h I h a d countless conversations with literally hundreds of Scandinavians over the course of my stay there, I conducted 149 formal interviews. By formal, I mean that these individuals knew that they were being interviewed for my book and consented to the interview, a designated time was set aside to conduct the actual interview, and a structured set of questions was referred to throughout the interview. Although I regularly referred to this set of prewritten questions, the interviews generally proceeded as open-ended conversations, and I allowed each conversation to meander where it would, rather than forcing a standard format or order of questions and responses. I also rewrote and restructured my questions many times over the course of the year, as my interviewing experience grew more varied and extensive. Of these 149 formal interviews, 121 were conducted face-to-face, and 28 were conducted over the phone. One hundred fourteen of the interviews were one-on-one, while 35 people were interviewed in pairs (usually husband and wife couples) or in groups of 3 or 4 (usually sets of friends or colleagues). One hundred thirty-one of the interviews were tape-recorded with the consent of the informants (telephone interviews were recorded via speaker phone), and 18 of the interviews were conducted without a tape recorder, but extensive notes were taken which were typed up immediately following the interview. Of the 131 interviews that were taperecorded , 122 were transcribed/typed up for analysis, but 9 were damaged or lost in the mail en route from Denmark to the United States. Most interviews lasted about one hour. Some interviews lasted longer (over two hours), and a few interviews were shorter, around a half an hour. Of those who were formally interviewed, 75 were men and 74 were women. One hundred three were Danish, 39 were Swedish, and 7 were immigrants to Denmark from Chile, Iran, or Turkey. In terms of the education levels of my informants, it was somewhat difficult to neatly correlate the Scandinavian and American educational systems, as they are quite distinct. However, that said, approximately 34 percent had completed the 186 sample characteristics and methodology equivalent of a university degree, approximately 15 percent had completed some university courses but never achieved a degree or were currently enrolled at a college or university, approximately 11 percent had completed the equivalent of a high school education, approximately 11 percent had completed some sort of specific professional training (such as how to be a social worker, businessman, preschool teacher, etc.), approximately 15 percent had completed some form of specific vocational training (such as how to be a tool maker, photographer, nurse, physical therapist, etc.), and approximately 14 percent had completed somewhere between the sixth and ninth grades. Out of the 149 informants, approximately 23 percent had been raised in small towns (population less than 5,000), approximately 41 percent had been raised in one of Denmark or Sweden’s three largest cities, and approximately 33 percent had been raised in medium-sized towns (larger than 5,000 people, but not one of the three largest cities in Denmark or Sweden). Concerning age, 3 percent of my informants were between the ages of 15 and 19, 21 percent were between 20 and 29, 25 percent were between 30 and 39, 17 percent were between 40 and 49, 15 percent were between 50 and 59, 9 percent were between 60 and 69, 7 percent were between 70 and 79, and 3 percent were age 80 or older. The largest shortcoming of my sample is that it was a convenience sample and hence nonrandom. And because my sample was nonrandom, that means that valid generalizability to the wider Danish and Swedish populations is not possible. Informants were found through a number of ways, the first being what is traditionally known as a “snowball” process. I began by interviewing people that I knew through my daily life: the employees that worked at the corner market where I shopped, the teachers at my daughters’ schools, the parents of the students in my daughters’ classes, the janitor that cleaned my office, the secretaries at the university, my neighbors, etc. Once I interviewed them, I asked to interview their friends, relatives, and colleagues, and thus my sample grew in this fashion. I also found informants through friends and relatives in the United States who had friends, relatives, or colleagues in Denmark or Sweden...

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