Chapter II
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
This chapter discussed the research design, the respondents of the study, research locale,
research instrument, data collection, data analysis, trustworthiness and authenticity, role of the
researchers and ethical issues and considerations.
Research Design
This study focuses on the impact of broken family to their children. The researchers
employed the qualitative research design anchored on the phenomenological tradition. The
phenomenology is an approach to qualitative research that focuses on the commonality of a lived
experience within a particular group. The fundamental goal of the approach is to arrive at a
description of the nature of the particular phenomenon (Creswell, 2013).
Research Participants
The respondents of the study were 4 who were having a situation of broken family. They
were interviewed for this research to gather data that is needed in this study. Individual
interviews were conducted with 4 respondents, 1 male and 3 females. The respondents said that
they’ve experience broken family since birth and other respondent said that they’ve been
experiencing broken family in the past 3-10 years. The participants we’ve selected are from the
same school. All respondents’ data is collected between January and February 2018. A total of 7
respondents we approached but 4 agreed to take part. The age of our respondents ranged from
sixteen to 18 years and all were in good health.
Research Instruments
The instruments we used was a researcher-made questionnaire check list to gather the
needed of items that determined the causes and effect of broken family to the school-age. In the
designing of good data collection instrument were considered. For instance, statement describing
the situations or issues pertaining was toned down to accommodate the knowledge preparedness
of the respondents. Open-ended options were provided to accommodate to free formatted views
relate to the topic or issues. In this way, the instrument is authorized to obtain valid responses of
the students.
Data Collection Procedure
We gathered the primary information through structured conversation during the
interviews with the selected senior high school students as our outmost informants. The selected
respondents, with their particular knowledge and understanding, can provide insight on the
nature of problems and give recommendations for solution (Brook, 1995). Through the Key
Informant Interviews, we were able to have a deep connection and gathered deeper insights
about their problems, needs and aspiration as a receipt of the case study.
Data analysis
Analyzing data from Key Informant Interviews can be challenging. It is sometimes
difficult to judge the validity of the information received from one person (Miles and Hukerman,
1984). Thus, the information gathered from this study was subjected to a phenomenological
qualitative method which focuses to reveal meaning of the lived experience from the perspective
of participants (Young and Young, 1991). Phenomenological study is a research methodology
which has its roots in philosophy and which focuses on the lived experiences of individuals. This
approach is must effective for this study because it is based on philosophy and it studies
conscious awareness of the world experienced from the subjective or first person point of view
(Smith, Flowers and Larkin, 2013)
Ethical Issue and Considerations
The respondent has confidential information that needs to have permission so that the
data we gathered is more reliable and more convincing to the audience. This research study was
mainly concerned with children’s views, and therefore there were ethical issues specific to
children’s needs that had to be given special consideration. While many of the ethical issues
affecting children are similar to those of adults, children’s vulnerability, because of their age and
their relative powerlessness, as well as the more limited understanding of younger children,
requires special acknowledgment (Hill, 1998).
Informed Consent. First, we made a letter for our respondents and respondent’s parent/guardian
for them to sign as permission in conducting a research about their situations. We
insure that they’ve signed our letters so that we can distribute questionnaires and
conduct an interview without any violent reactions from them.
Privacy and confidentiality. Privacy and confidentiality is important in phenomenological
research because it involves the personal data where in only the person allowed can
conduct an interview to the chosen respondent. As a researcher we have to hide the
information that the respondents don’t want to be revealed. The data that we gathered
and to be added in our study is according to the approval of our respondents.