R ESEARCH TYPES

3.1.1. Qualitative and quantitative research

Among qualitative, quantitative research or a mixture of both, a qualitative approach was used in this study. The small number of participants and the interview as a tool were chosen as a result of the researcher’s choice of the qualitative paradigm. Since, this paradigm was the best to help the researcher’s to fulfill the research aims.

Qualitative research focuses mainly on factors such as events, people, settings, cultures, experiences and so on. Qualitative methods rely on how people understand and perform in various social settings (Tewksbury, 2009:38-39). According to Dornyei (2007:24), qualitative research includes a data collection procedure that is open-ended and has non-numerical data. The results are analyzed by non-statistical methods. In addition, Zacharias (2012:10) describes qualitative research as understanding an event or an individual which is on-going and dynamic. In

addition^, the number of participants is small and the data are analyzed and interpreted based on participants’ words and stories.

On the contrary, quantitative methods are regarded as more scientific, and they focus on definitions that intend to find out what concepts and variables actually mean in addition to the use statistical methods (Tewksbury, 2009:38-39). Quantitative research according to Dornyei (2007:24) has numerical results, which are analyzed by statistical methods. In addition, sometimes both qualitative and quantitative methods can be used for data collection in a research such as using an interview and a questionnaire in a research together. Zacharias (2012:10) highlights that the purpose of quantitative research is to generalize and predict the relationship based on fixed and decided data collection which is presentable by numerical figures and percentages.

Johnson and Turner (2003) believe that the main reason for using a mixed method, i.e.

qualitative and quantitative methods, is because of the data which should be collected with different strategies and methods. Another reason would be to strengthen the whole procedure and to reduce or eliminate the weaknesses which a study would have. Caracelli and Greene (1997:6) identified three typical uses of a mixed methods study: ‘First, testing the agreement of findings obtained from different measuring instruments, second clarifying and building on the results of one method with another method, and third, demonstrating how the results from one method can impact subsequent methods or inferences drawn from the results’.

Creswell (1998) describes six mixed method research design. The first method is sequential explanatory design in which qualitative data are used to support the quantitative findings. The second method is the sequential exploratory design in which the quantitative data are used to support qualitative findings. The third method is the sequential transformative design in which the quantitative and qualitative data are collected and analyzed separately. The forth method is the current triangulation design in which the qualitative and quantitative data are collected simultaneously in order to confirm and cross-validate the findings. The fifth method is the concurrent nested design in which the quantitative and qualitative data are collected and analyzed together. The last method is the concurrent transformative design in which the qualitative and quantitative data are collected at the same time and are compared and contrasted equally during the investigation of findings.

In this research a qualitative paradigm was chosen because of the choice of the researcher to focus on the topic of parental strategies and support for first and second language of children and also the parental attitudes to bilingualism. Therefore, a qualitative approach with conducting a semi-structured interview for parents seemed appropriate to fulfill the aims of present study.

The reason for using a qualitative approach was because of the researcher’s interest to elicit more information about the interviewee’s opinion, feelings and experiences in the home which was not approachable otherwise. The semi-structured interview assisted the researcher on focusing on individual beliefs and perceptions of the interviewees.

3.1.2. Qualitative data collection techniques

There are various methods for data collection in qualitative research. Hancock (1998:9-13) categorizes data collection methods for a qualitative research into three types: observations, focus groups and individual interviews. The observation method is to see how people react in natural situations. There are various techniques for data collection through observation, including written description, video recording, photographs, artifacts, and finally documentation. Focus group is another data collection method, which is carried out by a researcher with a group of participants, who are being asked about their perceptions, opinions, beliefs, and attitudes towards an idea or concept. The interview is yet another method for data collection in a qualitative study. Interviews, according to Hancock (1998), can be highly structured, semi-structured, and unstructured. The structured interview is to ask each respondent the same question the same way by eliciting a limited number of responses. This type of interview is very similar to a questionnaire. The semi-structured interview has a series of questions which are more open ended and enable the interviewee and interviewer to discuss more about a question. Unstructured interview allows for in-depth discussion with fewer numbers of questions.

According to Patton (2002:340-342), researchers use the interviews to elicit information, which are not directly observable, such as feelings, thoughts and intentions. By means of interviews, one can access the interviewee’s perception about a subject matter. Patton categorized interviews into three types of informal conversational interview, general interview guide approach, and standardized open ended interview. Similar to the categorization of Hancock (1998), Mackay and Gass (2005:173) categorize interviews into three types of structured, semi-structured, and unstructured interviews. The first is similar to the verbal questionnaire which

makes the comparison between other respondents easier. In the second, the interviewer prepares a list of questions beforehand. And finally, in the unstructured interview no questions are prepared beforehand so that the interviewer could adapt the questions according to the flow and speed of the conversation.

Semi-structured interviews have cues or prompts, which assist the interviewer to consider the question further whenever the interviewee has difficulty understanding a question. In a semi structured interview, the interviewer also has the freedom to probe the interviewee to elaborate on the original response or to follow a line of inquiry introduced by the interviewee (Hancock 1998:9).

Moreover, Griffee (2012:159-160) describes interviews as being on a continuum between open and close. The open-ended interview gives an interviewee a clue on how to answer and sometimes may encourage the interviewer to ask a particular question which was not intended to be asked in the first place. The close-ended or standardized interview has fixed numbers of questions, which the interviewer does not ask for elaboration or further clarification. Semi-structured interviews are between open-ended and close-ended interviews on the continuum, in which the interviewer has the freedom to ask for more information or even add more questions to the whole interview.

A semi-structured interview was chosen as the method for data collection in the present study. Semi-structured interviews or the general interview guide approach, according to Patton (2002:343) uses an interview guide as the main source of eliciting data from participants. There are a number of questions, which are to be explored during the interview. An interview guide helps the interviewer to elicit the information he/she needs in a more step-wise manner and around the subject areas, which the interviewer intends to explore. This kind of interviewing tends to be more systematic and comprehensive in elaborating and answering the questions.

3.2. Data collection, processing and analysis