I. Introduction This master’s thesis represents study of female newspaper and magazine editors in Azerbaijan based on Western and Soviet definitions of journalism with explanation of local national features of this p

II.3.1 Data collection

The data collection was implemented in two cities of Azerbaijan – Baku and Ganja³² between May - November 2011. During this period of time there were two attempts to implement the research. The first and unsuccessful attempt came in May 2011. It followed the pattern of the 2008 research when researcher Eldar Valiyev or his father – Ismayil Valiyev from Internews Azerbaijan contacted female editors with a request for an in-depth interview for purposes of the research. The following strategy successfully tested with male editors in 2008, however, brought unexpected results with female editors. Contacted female editors either refused to be interviewed stating that they do not enough time or asked to send them a written copy of questions. Unfruitfulness of continuing with this procedure became obvious in July of 2011 when the researcher received three answered copies where editors answered questions very briefly, in many cases the answers consisted of only yeses or noes. It became obvious that this strategy leads the research nowhere and needs to be reevaluated. Remembering Disman’s advice about female interviewers (Disman 2007) researcher hired three Azerbaijani female journalism students and gave them assignment to contact and interview female editors for the purpose of this research.

The second attempt brought the desired results and the students were able to implement 11 interviews ranging from 10:28 to 58:55 minutes. The editor of semi-independent newspaper Uc noqte Xosqedem Baxseliyeva refused to give interview due to time constraints yet, as an apology sent the student the filled out quantitative questionnaire.
The seven months of data collection required 920 AZN [904 Euro] and resulted in 15 questionnaires answered, 11 audio interviews implemented and 3 answered lists of in-depth interview questions. The last mentioned three are editors of Ganja based newspapers Gancabasar and Gancenin sesi and editor of Baku based medical newspaper Tibb.
Besides the above mentioned difficulties there was a list of smaller ones. Firstly, it was difficulty of long-distance communication between researcher – Eldar Valiyev located in the Czech Republic and field staff of the research – Ismayil Valiyev and three students Tahira, Matanat and Ulkar located in Baku, Azerbaijan. Majority of communication was done through internet, but many questions connected with the field work required usage of expensive international mobile phone calls³³. Azerbaijani side used SMS to inform of difficulties and request for clarifications.
Second difficulty that we have encountered was familiar to us from the 2008 research and deeply rooted in Azerbaijan tradition of unpunctuality among locals. However, in addition to unpunctual editors who constantly shifted appointments we had to deal with sometimes much undisciplined female student interviewers and even had to reschedule an interview appointment because of an interviewer being late.
The third problem remained from our 2008 research. The students had problems to get to editors of some newspapers since their offices were located in Azerbaijan Publishing House³⁴.

The last difficulty, that disserves to be mentioned is – shyness of one of the interviewers - Ulker. During her interview with old female editor of government newspaper she, seeing that the editor smokes a cigarette, hesitated due to negative connotation of female smoking in Azerbaijan to ask the editor related question.

However, despite of all of the troubles mentioned, we believe that the data collected presents a valuable contribution to media research in Azerbaijan and we are going to present our findings in the next chapter.