Consent Process
Participants were informed about the study and confidentiality guidelines during an initial telephone call. At the first interview session, the researcher explained additional details of the study and provided a consent form requiring the participant’s signature. Participants had the opportunity to ask questions before being asked to confirm their consent; as well, they were free to decline participation and to withdraw from the study at any time without any financial incentive.
Data Security
All participants’ names and contact information were kept in secure files by the researcher. Participants chose pseudonyms that were added to the data collected. The pseudonym code, transcripts, evaluation data, and all recordings are stored in digital forms, password encrypted. The participants’ information is kept separately from audio recordings and transcripts and will be stored for 5 years.
Data Analysis
All methods of the phenomenological approach were followed when analyzing the data collected. As noted above, the study focused on exploring the reasons why mothers disallow the use of technology during mealtime and how this might benefit the family relationship. Two in-depth individual interviews were conducted with five mothers and/or female legal guardians of children aged 5 to 18 years. Once data were collected and when interviews appeared to be saturated, the interviews were transcribed prior to data analysis. Then the transcripts were studied and the researcher placed significant statements into “horizontalization,” a step “where the researcher will read across the interview repeatedly to identify significant statements in the data and group these into themes” (Padgett, 2017, p.159). The researcher used Quirkos (Student License), a qualitative data analysis software program, to assist with transcription analysis, coding, and text interpretation. Next, significant statements were placed in a cluster of meanings to identify themes experienced by participants. Data were analyzed to identify emergent themes reflecting common and recurrent experience. Then, a textural description was done, followed by a structure description and the essence of the phenomenon.
Strategies for Rigour
To guarantee consensus on standards, several strategies were applied to reduce researcher bias. The researcher was constantly checking for credibility by making sure that what the interviewers are claiming was in accordance with what the paper was investigating. To guarantee that the study was on the right track, the researcher was engaged on a member checking, where the researcher was taking the observations back to the participants to check trueness and accuracy; the researcher was also reframing questions, where questions where reformulated differently to check consistent responses, providing quotes for other participants to check opinions and analyzing triangulation when participants described things that might not necessarily be true.
Also, the researcher was promoting transferability by extending the content of the findings to other situations, referring to the generalizability of the study findings by analyzing its saturation. Even though the research used a small sample of five mothers, I believed that the participants were providing saturated answers. The researcher also did a time sampling strategy where participants where interviewed at different times.
Dependability was also another area that had special attention since the researcher was promoting consistency of the findings, traceable documentation of data, and records. The strategy used was code-record procedure, where after the researcher analyzed the data she allowed it to sit for few days and analyzed it again few days later to check consistency.
Dissemination
Research analyses and findings will be provided to participants. The final study may be submitted for a conference presentation and/or publication.
