Data generation methods

According to Sage (2014), data generation refers to the theory and methods used by researchers to create data from a sampled data source in a qualitative study. Data sources include human participants, documents, organizations, electronic media, and events. Bless, Higson-Smith and Sithole (2013) recommend interviews as the most suitable technique for poor sectors of the population in less industrialised countries. Lazar, Feng and Hochheiser (2010) argues that researchers and participants may come to misunderstand one another. Therefore, to minimise this possibility, two-way communication as the most basic form of human interaction was considered in this study. For data generation in this study, I used semi - structured interviews with teachers and focus group discussions with parents and learners separately.

45 3.6.1 Semi-structured one - on- one interviews

According to Babbie and Mouton, (2010) interviews are one of the most frequently used meth- ods of data gathering within the qualitative approach. Burton and Bartlett (2012) together with O’Hara (2011) explains interviews as favoured methods in interpretivist studies and are a pri- mary source of in-depth information in case studies. Lankshear and Knobel (2014) further argue that interviews are scheduled interactions between two or more individuals where one person asks questions relating to a topic of interest and the other responds to these questions. Also, Boyle and Schmierbach (2015) clarify that the use of verbal interaction to gather data provides the opportunity to discover and obtain an in-depth account of participants’ experiences and views on a phenomenon and the meaning that they place on those experiences (Walliman, 2006). The information that is generated would not necessarily be possible to obtain through observation or artefact collection (Lankshear & Knobel, 2014).

A semi-structured interview, which is an interview where questions can be reorganised and rephrased to allow further probing about a phenomenon, was used to generate data in this study (Cohen, Manion and Morison, 2013). In a semi-structured interview, a set of questions are used Pavlakis (2017) but not followed rigidly (Galletta & Cross, 2013). This set of questions serves as a guide where the responses that are made by the participant can be further questioned and explored by the researcher (Lankshear & Knobel, 2014) which is referred to as an interview guide (Wilson, 2013). In an interview guide, the aspects to be covered are outlined in advance (Cohen, Manion and Morrison, 2014). According to Dowling and Brown (2010) semi-struc- tured interviews are types of interviews that respond to questions that are open ended. The intensity of the interaction of the interview requires the interview to be recorded by using a voice recorder. In this study semi structure interview we used with teachers. However, as Dowling and Brown (2001), permission to record interview process was sought from the par- ticipants before the interviews took place. Each interview lasted for 45 minutes.

3.6.2 Focus group discussions

Focus group as defined by Babbie, (2011) is a data generation technique that offers qualitative researchers the opportunity to interview several respondents systematically at the same time in a common venue. Thus, each participant according to Marshall and Rossman (2011), may make

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comments, ask questions of other participants or respond to comments by others, including the moderator. Babbie (2010) on the other hand, defines a focus group as a group of subjects inter- viewed together, prompting a discussion on a specific topic. Forrester (2010), advises that, in order to get optimum benefit from using focus groups, the researcher must define the purpose of the research clearly, in everyday language, be flexible and take care of group dynamics. Focus group or focus group discussions are a qualitative technique for data generation. Accord- ing to Denscombe (2010), a focus group is a group comprised of individuals with certain char- acteristics who focus on discussions of any given issue or topic. Thus, focus group discussions provide a setting for relatively similar groups to reflect on the questions asked by the inter- viewer.

According to Kamberelis and Dimitriadis (2013), a focus group provides a more natural envi- ronment than that of an individual interview because participants are influencing and influenced by others- just as they are in real life. The three distinctive characteristics of focus groups, identified by Denscombe (2014, 213) are as follows:

a) Prompt: The sessions usually revolve around a prompt, a trigger or some stimulus intro- duced by the researcher in order to focus the discussion.

b) Researcher not a neutral person: There is less emphasis on the moderator to adopt a neu- tral role in the proceedings than is normally the case with other interview techniques. c) Interaction within the group: Interaction between group members is given a particular

value rather than just gathering opinions of people. The collective view is given more im- portance than the aggregate view.

In this study focus group discussions were used to get the views of parents on their understand- ing of their role in the psychosocial development of their adolescent learners, its benefits, their involved practice, what they considered to be challenges to parental involvement and what they thought could be done to enhance it. The focus group interviews were audio taped and each lasted for 45 minutes to 60 minutes. I sought permission with all participants at the outset that the discussion was going to be recorded to capture everyone’s contributions and comments. In addition, focus group discussions were conducted with learners in each participating school.

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Utilizing focus group with adolescent learners assisted me to get to their knowledge and their point of views when it come to the understanding of the role of parental involvement in their development and challenges they are faced with psychosocially.