SOC202A Introduction to Social Research Methods

Rationale and Background for the study

The aim of the study by Jan and Husain (2015) was to investigate about the cause and effects of bullying among students in elementary schools. The main social problem that the authors were trying to resolve is the incidence of bullying. Bullying is the act of humiliation, threatening and intimidating behavior towards a group of people that creates risk to health and safety. Some examples of bullying may include behaving aggressively, practical jokes and excluding someone from events (Menesini & Salmivalli, 2017). 

The research on bullying in children was considered important because of its adverse impact on children. The background details of the article revealed that bullying create barrier to learning and has negative impact both on patient as well as the school. It is associated with decrease in academic performance, increase in risk of misbehavior and absenteeism from school. There has been studies have explored impact of school bullying from the point of view of teachers (Rivara et al. 2016). The study by Al-Raqqad et al. (2017) conducted a review of teacher’s response related to the impact of bullying and found that it is associated with dissatisfaction with academic experience, disengagement from school community, challenges in following school rule, negative attitude towards school work and increase in the frequency of absenteeism. Through the review of literature, the authors in the article found that there were few studies that evaluated the impact of bullying based on student’s perception. Thus, the study was designed to analyse perception of students at the elementary level regarding the cause of bullying schools. Therefore, the main rational and study focus is clear from the above investigation.

Aim and objectives of the study

The study identified aim and objectives for the research on the topic. The aim is described above. The two key objectives were reviewing the nature and cause of bullying from documentary analysis and evaluating the perception of students regarding different causes of bullying. The study was successful in achieving the objectives as the perception were critically analyzed based on differences in male and female student’s perception as well as the comparison of diverse response. An appropriate research aim and objective is such as it can be possible to identify them once the research has been done (Theofanidis & Fountouki, 2018).

Overview of the research methods:

The research was conducted using quantitative research methodology. This is evident from the research instrument used. A self-developed question was used to collect data from participants and the respondents have to rate degree of agreement with different items in the questionnaire. They had to rate as per five point Likert scale and the items that were chosen for the cause of bullying were powerfulness, aggression, revenge seeking, jealousy and physically week. A quantitative research methodology helps in getting numerical data related to a topic and it is also useful in testing a hypothesis by systematically collecting and analyzing the data (Apuke, 2017). In compliance with quantitative research method, the authors developed hypothesis statement too. Five Null hypothesis were chosen based on the cause of bullying selected in the questionnaire. Thus, structure questionnaire were used related to the research topic and it was based mainly in close ended question. Giving ratings based on Likert scale limits the possibility of giving detailed answer which is more likely in open-ended questionnaire.

All the questionnaires were administered by four research staffs and the collected data was analysed through SPSS. Various statistical measures were used to evaluate demographic profile of each students and the response given by each students. The sampling process was completed using random sampling method. The main population chosen for the study was students of elementary schools in the district of Mianwali. Random sampling method is a technique where each sample has equal opportunity for being selected. It involves randomly selecting samples from a desired population of interest. The advantage of using random sampling method is that there is limited possibility of bias and it represents the target population of interest (Elfil & Negida, 2017). The sample consisted of 234 boys and girls student of various government and private schools within the chosen direct. Two stage stratified sampling technique was also used to select samples from four different clusters namely boys government school, female government schools, boys private school and girls private schools. This process was completed in two stages. Stratified random sampling technique is a process where the sample is distributed into several blocks and sampling takes place in two stages instead of single stage (Etikan & Bala, 2017).

Critical assessment of the paper

The above description gave an overview of the research methodology used in the article by Jan and Husain (2015). This section will further critically review the strength and weakness of the methodologies.

Overall research design

The aim of the research was to evaluate the impact of bullying and its consequences from the perspective of students. In normal cases, when the purpose of any study is to evaluate perception of a sample group, related to the research population of interest, qualitative research methodology is used. Use of qualitative research methodology is appropriate when there is a need to evaluate how people experience a phenomenon or social events in the society. The aim of such research is to main understand what those events mean to a population being studied (Teherani et al., 2019). However, the authors did not choose the conventional ways to evaluate perception. Instead the objective of the study was to first determine the nature and cause of bullying from literature review and then evaluate differences in perception by evaluating differences in response for male and female students regarding the cause of bullying. Thus, from this objective, it is clear that the author was focused on comparison of secondary and primary data related to the topic. For this reason, quantitative research methodology was chosen. This method is appropriate when there is a need to get numerical data for research. As the research was concerned with perception or experience, the comparison of data using qualitative research method would have been more feasible. However, research used quantitative research method to compare the two types of qualitative data. The limitation of this approach is that there will be lack of detailed informed regarding student’s perception about the cause of abuse. With great emphasis on numbers and statistical relationship, quantitative research may overlook broader themes and important ideas may remain uninvestigated (Queirós, Faria & Almeida, 2017). Therefore, to achieve both the research objective and aim, mixed method study would have been more suitable. It is useful in balancing contradictions between quantitative and qualitative results (Wisdom & Creswell, 2013).

Sampling process

The study was done using two stage stratified random sampling method. Using this, method total 234 samples of girl and boys students from government and private schools in Mianwali district was selected. The sample size is adequate as 234 samples can give comprehensive insight about the causes of bullying. Small sample size can lead to generalizability issues, whereas very large sample may yield a result that may not be clinically relevant (Faber & Fonseca, 2014). Thus, the sample size is appropriate as per the research methodology used.  Furthermore, the findings are likely to be generalized used this sampling techniques as samples were collected both from government and privates schools. This will give rich information regarding how experiences differ for a private school students compared to a government school student.

The study was done using random sampling technique. Use of this sampling technique is appropriate when the purpose is to select a small sample from a larger group and make generalizations about the larger population of interest. In brief, random sampling technique can ensure that the random sample chosen is able to approximate results for the entire population of interest (Sharma, 2017). Therefore, use of random sampling technique is considered appropriate as research cannot be conducted with entire school students of the district. However, the sampling was not restricted to simple random sampling method. Instead two stage stratified cluster sampling method was used. The advantage of this sampling method is that compiling results for the whole setting is difficult, however, compiling data based on various blocks in a region is more feasible. Thus, by dividing sample into four different school types, cost-effectiveness can be achieved as it eliminates the need for listing data for the whole region. Use of this research is appropriate when research deals with large population. However, there are certain limitations of this approach. Through this research, the opinions of cluster samples are used to make inferences about the entire population (Elfil & Negida, 2017). However, if the opinion of the cluster sample is biased, then the whole result may become invalid. To address this, it is critical to use valid data collection method.

Data collection method

The data collection method in the study was quantitative as a self-administered survey questionnaire with five point likert scaling was used to collect data. The questionnaire was developed after literature review. The question consisted of items were respondents had to give score or rating like never, rarely, sometimes, most of the time and always. The questionnaire tool has 6 items of demographic details and the rest 24 items were at five point rating scales. The items were based on six pre-developed cause of bullying. From this method of data collection, it is evident that the questionnaire was close-ended and the participants did not had authority to give diverse answers as per their experience. Although use of close ended method is useful in getting consistent response and easily comparing results with other respondents, the disadvantage of this method is that many important information related to respondent’s experience remain ignored. There is a possibility to give biased response as too many options would confuse and close-ended questions restrict their choices (Hyman & Sierra, 2016). Thus, use of quantitative questionnaire is appropriate for comparison of findings, but it cannot give clear idea about the actual experiences of participants.

Despite the above limitation, rigour is seen during the analysis of study results. This is said because the validity of the questionnaires were assessed by expert opinion. In addition, pilot study was also done to identify any inconsistencies in the questionnaire. Following this, all unclear items were discarded and the questionnaires were modified. The main rationale behind conducting a pilot study is to examine the feasibility of a research in large scale studies (Malmqvist et al., 2019). Thus, use of pilot method is indicative of rigour and validity of the research findings. While using any research instrument, confirming about the consistency and reliability of the tool is crucial to give transparent findings. The author considered by measuring the internal consistency and reliability of the instrument. The reliability of the questionnaire was found to 0.747 and this confirmed that the question can be accepted in a larger study design. The measurement was completed using Cronbach’s alpha (Adamson & Prion, 2013). Thus, it can be concluded that relevant measures were used to evaluate the validity or psychometric properties of the tool.

Data analysis

The data analysis was completed using quantitative measure. The data was analysed through the use of SPSS 20.0. As the research used quantitative method, use of SPSS was considered appropriate. SPSS is appropriate software for the management and statistical analysis of social science data. The significance of using tool is that it represents data in the most simplest form and the software can easily perform complex data analysis. Thus, lot of time is saved if there is a large data to analyze (Denis, 2018). The use of this statistical tool was appropriate as comparison between literature review results and response of 234 samples were to made.

Two sets of data were collected using survey questionnaires. As there was six items for demographic data, this group of data was analyzed using simple frequency and percentage techniques. In contrast, the responses of students related to the cause of bullying were evaluated using percentage and mean scores. In addition, there was a primary focus to evaluate difference in response between girl and boy students, independents sample t-test was also done. Sample t-test is useful in comparing means of two independent groups and evaluate whether the mean obtained are statistically different or not. Thus, the extent to which response of males differ from that of female can be evaluated using this technique

Results

In quantitative research, the completeness of results depends on response rate for the questionnaires used. In the study, 100% response rates were achieved. Firstly, the results summarized the demographic profile of students. It revealed about gender, age and residence of students. The number of males (153) was high compared to females (81). In addition, 138 students were from rural areas compared to 96 from urban areas. The next part of the results gave summary of item-wise analysis of student’s perception about the cause of bullying. Item-wise analysis of each outcome was done and little difference in bullying behavior for the four category of powerfulness, aggression, physical weakness and jealousy was found. One common response from participants was that instead of seeking revenge, they wanted to tell others to stop. The differences in outcomes in terms of male and female students were also recorded. This analysis revealed no major differences in the perception of girls and boys. However, statistical analysis was useful in shoring that rate of bullying was higher for boys in all five items of powerfulness, revenge seeking, aggression, jealousy and physical weakness. Therefore, from this result aim, it was found that all the research objective were fulfilled and the hypothesis testing could be accurately done. The null hypothesis for each of the item was accurately done.

The study found powerfulness as the common cause behind bullying. This is consistent with the study by Saiz et al. (2019) which revealed that imbalance of power is the main cause behind rise in such incidence. There was a difference in response to abuse as per gender. For example, girls had higher absenteeism rate compared to boys. The study gives the implication to develop anti-bullying policy in schools so that pupils actively seek out help instead of taking measures like absenteeism and poor academic achievement.

Ethical issues

Ethics is an important responsibility while conducting research. It involves taking measures and steps to respect the rights, confidentiality and anonymity of sample’s information during research. One major limitation of the article was that ethical issues were not considered. There were no details on informed consent process, ethical approval and maintaining confidentiality of information. This could contribute to conflicts.

Summary/Conclusion:

To conclude, the report gave a critical evaluation of the article by () that investigated about the cause of bulling in elementary school students. The strength of the article was the consideration of reliability and validity aspects during instrument development and data collection. Expert opinion and pilot testing was done while developing survey questionnaire. In addition, proper training to staffs were given to increase validity of data collection and analysis. Appropriate statistical measures were taken for data analysis too. However, some of the weakness was the use of close-ended questionnaire that limits or restricts response and lack of consideration of rigour in research. These is a need for considering use of qualitative measures too as the research aimed to evaluate student’s perception about the social problem.  

References  

Adamson, K. A., & Prion, S. (2013). Reliability: measuring internal consistency using Cronbach's α. Clinical simulation in Nursing, 9(5), e179-e180.

Denis, D. J. (2018). SPSS data analysis for univariate, bivariate, and multivariate statistics. John Wiley & Sons.

Elfil, M., & Negida, A. (2017). Sampling methods in clinical research; an educational review. Emergency, 5(1).

Etikan, I., & Bala, K. (2017). Sampling and sampling methods. Biometrics & Biostatistics International

Faber, J., & Fonseca, L. M. (2014). How sample size influences research outcomes. Dental press journal of orthodontics, 19(4), 27-29.

Hyman, M. R., & Sierra, J. J. (2016). Open-versus close-ended survey questions. Business Outlook, 14(2), 1-5.

Jan, A., & Husain, S. (2015). Bullying in Elementary Schools: Its Causes and Effects on Students. Journal of Education and Practice, 6(19), 43-56.

Malmqvist, J., Hellberg, K., Möllås, G., Rose, R., & Shevlin, M. (2019). Conducting the pilot study: A neglected part of the research process? Methodological findings supporting the importance of piloting in qualitative research studies. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 18, 1609406919878341.

Menesini, E., & Salmivalli, C. (2017). Bullying in schools: the state of knowledge and effective interventions. Psychology, health & medicine, 22(sup1), 240-253.

Queirós, A., Faria, D., & Almeida, F. (2017). Strengths and limitations of qualitative and quantitative research methods. European Journal of Education Studies.

Saiz, M. J. S., Chacón, R. M. F., Abejar, M. G., Parra, M. D. S., Rubio, M. E. L., & Jiménez, S. Y. (2019). Personal and social factors which protect against bullying victimization. Enfermería Global, 18(2), 13-24.

Sharma, G. (2017). Pros and cons of different sampling techniques. International journal of applied research, 3(7), 749-752.

Teherani, A., Martimianakis, T., Stenfors-Hayes, T., Wadhwa, A., & Varpio, L. (2015). Choosing a qualitative research approach. Journal of graduate medical education, 7(4), 669.

Wisdom, J., & Creswell, J. W. (2013). Mixed methods: integrating quantitative and qualitative data collection and analysis while studying patient-centered medical home models. Rockville: Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

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