Population and Sampling
Several factors impact the success of students. However, parenting students have additional responsibilities that affect their success. Society has a negative perspective towards parenting-students, although things have changed, and students have been able to continue with studies even after becoming parents. Mainly, students who are parents face the challenge of time management with the students having to balance between studies and parenting duties. The scheduling issues associated with a combination of parenthood and studies lead to additional challenges to students. The accessible population in an investigation should be directly affected by the issue addressed in the survey, while sampling should consider the data required.
The study is done on two groups of students in different learning institutions. The first group comprises students who are still parents. The second group includes children who have had experience of sharing a class with a student who is a parent. An inclusion criterion helps in coming up with the second group where students who have had experience around students who are parents will be included (Hadi & Closs, 2016). The study assumes that an individual who has interacted with a student who was, or is a parent, has crucial information on the challenges that the students go through. Generally, the accessible population is the students who have to balance between studies and parenting. Since the whole population cannot be surveyed, the research thus decides to go for a sample. The solutions from the study are directly directed to the welfare of students who have become parents.
The sample population is picked randomly to avoid bias in the responses obtained. However, students who are not parents, or have not shared experiences with parenting students are excluded from the study. Generally, the size of the sample will not be fixed at the start. The results obtained after the first interview will determine whether the sample size will be increased. Purposeful sampling is used in the study to get high quality data (Palinkas et al. 2015). The study is concerned with students who are parents, and thus, not all students can provide information. Besides, convenience sampling could lead to poor quality data hence unreliable results. Therefore, students will first be asked whether they are parents. The students who respond with a ‘yes’ to the first question will automatically be in the group. The second question will be asked to students who are not parents. The students who will have had previous experience with a student who was, or is a parent will be eligible for the second group in the sample.
In sum, the accessible population in a study should be directly affected by the issue addressed in the study, while sampling should consider the data required. The accessible population is the students who have to balance between studies and parenting. An inclusion criterion helps in coming up with the second group where students who have had experience around students who are parents will be included. Moreover, purposeful sampling is used in the study to get high quality data. The study is concerned with students who are parents, and thus, not all students can provide information. Generally, the choice of population and the sampling method determines the reliability of the results from the study.
References
Hadi, M. A., & Closs, S. J. (2016). Ensuring rigour and trustworthiness of qualitative research in clinical pharmacy. International journal of clinical pharmacy, 38(3), 641-646.
Palinkas, L. A., Horwitz, S. M., Green, C. A., Wisdom, J. P., Duan, N., & Hoagwood, K. (2015). Purposeful sampling for qualitative data collection and analysis in mixed method implementation research. Administration and policy in mental health and mental health services research, 42(5), 533-544.