Methodological Considerations for Qualitative Research with Immigrant Populations: Lessons from Two Studies
Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to discuss methodological challenges that occur in research with immigrant students. Based on two previous qualitative studies conducted by the author (Kachnic, 2020 & 2021), this paper describes methodological issues encountered in the field when conducting qualitative research for immigrant students.
First the author introduces the two studies and then presents main methodological considerations. The motivation for this study is the widely known high level of expected early school leaving of immigrant students (Hippe & Jakubowski, 2018).
The analyzed studies utilized (1) common data analysis technique (Attride-Stirling 2001) in order to generate comparable categories and (2) common research perspective in order to acknowledge the influential role of teacher on student's peer groups (Dietrich & Cohen, 2019). Both studies relied on school climate as a theoretical framework because research shows that positive school climate can have compensating, moderating and mitigating effect on academic success for immigrant students (Berkowitz, 2020).
To ensure methodological variability needed in the school climate research in general (Berkowitz, 2020), each study utilized a separate research method: (1) First study used focus group session with two immigrant students and two school teachers. (2) Second study used semi-structured interviews with four school teachers. Two main methodological considerations surfaced from the studies: (1) involving teacher and student participants ensured a broader theme generation, and (2) conducting of follow up sessions enabled us to make cross-participant validation of emerged themes (Gunderson, D'Silva & Odo, 2012).