School Retention vs. Social Promotion

¶ … School Retention vs. Social Promotion

The data for this study will be collected using interviews conducted with key stakeholders such as parents, teachers, school administrators and students in four schools, two in New York and two in New Jersey. A case study methodology is employed. The data collected will be coded and entered into Nvivo 10. The two proposed methods of analysis of the data are content analysis and narrative and discourse analysis.

Content analysis will be the major method by which data is analyzed. The rationale for content analysis is that it is best for primary qualitative data which is numerically reduced. Since the data collected will be coded using Nvivo 10, it will be appropriate for content analysis to be done. After the data is coded, the next step in content analysis will be to sample the coded data then select the relevant emerging themes from all the others.

Sampling in content analysis is important because it helps to strip the relevant data to those that are irrelevant. After coding, the data will then be separated into coding units which represents the categorization of the data. These coding units will then help the researcher to have broader knowledge of the collected data and also to relate it better to the hypothesis formed. Coding units can take several forms. With the type of data that is collected, it will be best for the data to be ranked in order then rated to see which coding units are more important Thorne, 2000()

Content analysis has several advantages. First is that it is the best way of extracting information from a wide-range of data. This is because of the coding units, ranking and rating of information collected. Another advantage is that it is easy to use and allows for flexibility which is of major importance in a qualitative study like this one. However, content analysis has two major limitations. The first is that it makes it hard to interpret the findings when the coding units are not properly built. The second limitation is that since selection, coding, ranking and rating of information is subjective, it does not allow for transparency in judgments made. Therefore it requires that all data collected reflects the content accurately Babbie, 2010(; Krippendorff, 2004)

Narrative and discourse analysis

Narrative analysis refers to analyzing the stories that the key respondents will give alongside other aspects such as social interaction and interpretation in order to understand the structure, functionality and context of the respondents. Discourse analysis, on the other hand, will be used to analyze all extended communication from the respondents. This includes analyzing aspects such as talking sequences, speech acts, propositions, sentences and context.

By combining these two methods, it will be easy for the researcher to understand the extent to which the experience of the respondents in these schools have shaped and transformed their representation. Experience with the two aspects that are being studied, school retention and social promotion, are important for this study. Therefore these strategies will help to recognize the extent to which their experience provides insights to the responses they provide Hodges, Kuper, & Reeves, 2008()

These two methods are also in depth analytic processes and will help the researcher to detect the main themes in the responses and how they are influenced by their experience with the aspects being studied. Though both methods greatly rely on the speech of the respondents as the major source of data, there are reasons why the two methods are chosen. These are that they involve critical thinking since the researcher is required to understand how experience comes into play in the responses. Therefore it helps to make the resulting analysis to be as thorough as possible.

Validity and reliability of data collection and analysis

Since the study uses the case study methodology, it is important that the validity and reliability of the data collected is ensured. In order to ensure the validity of the study, it will be important for the data that is collected to be verified. One way of ensuring this is member checks. Once the data is collected, coded and analyzed using content analysis, it will be important for independent observers or the actual respondents of the data to cross check the analyzed data to the collected data. This will ensure the validity and reliability of the data collected and analyzed.