**3.1 Research design**

This study is primarily conducted based on exploratory qualitative methodology for this multidisciplinary of sociology and religious study. Documentation of experiences and knowledge through the semistructured in-depth interviews with 10 informants of the Malay middle income class group of women entrepreneurs was conducted using interview or oral history technique. The informants were chosen from a group individuals who are pioneers, who started their active involvement in Islamic activities in the 1970s in Selangor. Being pioneers in the Muslimah fashion industry, they share common thoughts and experiences with regard to the resurgence of Muslim and hijab fashion industry in Malaysia.

Interview sessions were conducted with selected representatives of the Malay women entrepreneurs in the group of the upper-middle and middle-middle income classes to obtain their insights and opinions on creativity and innovations and its relations to Shariah compliance. A semi-structured interviewing protocol was created to investigate the traits, behaviours and views of the Malay women entrepreneurs in Selangor, Malaysia. Instead of relying on the earlier literature, the semi-structured interview process encouraged the informants to emphasise the topics they thought were most crucial. According to Adams [67], semi-structured interviews are ideal for a variety of useful activities, especially when several of the open-ended questions call for follow-up questions. Adams [67], then proposes to consider using SSIs in the following circumstances in particular:


From the transcripts of the interviews, the researcher extracted themes or dimensions. Descriptive and content analysis were used to examine the developed themes and dimensions. Thematic analysis (TA) which is proposed by Braun and Clarke [68], which later revised to their contemporary approach, known as Reflective Thematic Analysis (RTA) [69–73] was used to guide this study.

#### **3.2 The selection of informants**

Sample in this qualitative research was selected purposefully guided by a set of criteria. This research employed purposeful sampling for the reason that it would be able to understand the phenomenon of Muslim fashion industry and how it could influence on the Malay women entrepreneurs in Selangor to participate in this industry. The strategy for purposeful selection of information-rich cases is based on a specific type of purposeful sampling, that is criterion sampling proposed by Patton [74]; [61, 74]. According to Patton [74], the purpose of criterion sampling is to pick all cases that meet some criteria. Selecting examples with lots of information allows for deeper analysis, which is the rationale and power of deliberate sampling. The term "purposeful sampling" refers to selecting examples with the intention of learning as much as possible about topics that are essential to the investigation's goal. Instead of producing empirical generalisations, studying "information-rich cases" or situations which produces insights and thorough knowledge ([74], p. 169). In the context of the current study, the samples chosen fit the set of criteria.

Three criteria were used to justify the sampling strategy used in this study. First, a sample was picked using a categorical selection method, with Malay women entrepreneurs from the middle class as the representative group. Second, Selangor is home to many successful Malay women business owners. Third, the Malay women business owners chosen for the study are those who worked in Selangor's Islamic and Muslimah fashion industries.

In order to calculate the sample size, the principle of data saturation was applied, and new participants were added until further data stopped to provide fundamentally novel and unique insights. According to Mwita [75], when a researcher realises that they have gathered all the necessary data and that there is no longer any fresh, pertinent information or data that can be obtained from the study's respondents or subjects, this is referred to as saturation [75, 76]. Saturation typically means that a researcher needs to stop gathering new data for a certain topic. Data saturation has been widely employed in social science research and has emerged as one of the key components of the qualitative approach, which has its origins in the Glaser and Strauss grounded theory (1967) ([75], p. 414). Therefore, in the context of the current study, at a sample size of 10, data saturation occurred.

#### **3.3 Data analysis**

Meaning data was collected through the interviews. The average duration of each interview session was two and a half hours, and with the informants' consent, the interview sessions were audio-taped in their entirety and transcribed verbatim resulting in 345 pages of data. The transcription of the interviews was then converted into a Microsoft Word document.

The transcripts were analysed by categorising the text according to a six-phase process proposed by Braun and Clarke [69], which are described in **Table 3**. Thematic Analysis (TA) is utilised to analyse and combine massive amounts of data from naturalistic settings into insightful descriptions [68]. TA provides a technique for finding patterns or themes of meaning in a dataset and for interpreting and understanding their significance [69].

Thematic Analysis (TA) principles were manually applied to the data in order to find patterns of meaning that underlay the transcripts. Before categories were created and given names, this included a very iterative process including comparative analysis of patterns that emerged from the data.

*Creativity, Innovation and Shariah Compliance by the Malay Middle Class Women… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.109655*


#### **Table 3.**

*Six-phase thematic analysis procedures by Braun and Clake [68].*
