Competencia en asuntos notariales

I administered semi-structured in-depth interviews to six parents from each of the two pilot groups. These were carried out at the parent’s home just after the end of the programme. The partner of the parent was also invited to participate.

The aim of the interviews was to obtain the parents’ overall perception of the ‘Families for Health’programme. An additional purpose of these interviews was to triangulate the qualitative data obtained with the quantitative data to explore whether they converged and also to illuminate and help explain the short term outcomes resulting from the intervention.

4.11.3.1 Sample of Parents

I used purposive sampling techniques to select parents to interview. Purposive sampling is defined as ‘selecting units based on specific purposes associated with answering a research study’s questions’ rather than randomly (Teddlie and Yu 2007). Teddlie and Yu (2007) outline a typology of purposive sampling which includes three broad categories (Table 4.5). The technique used in the selection of parents to interview in the current study was category A: ‘Sampling to Achieve Representativeness or Comparability’. This has two goals. First, to select a sample which is representative of a broader group of cases and second, to enable comparison between different types of cases.

Table 4.5 Typology of Purposive Sampling Category of Purposive Sampling Types A. Sampling to Achieve Representativeness or Comparability

1. Typical case sampling

2. Extreme or deviant case sampling (‘outlier sampling’)

3. Intensity Sampling

4. Maximum variation sampling 5. Homogeneous sampling 6. Reputational case sampling B. Sampling Special or

Unique Cases

7. Revelatory case sampling 8. Critical case sampling

9. Sampling politically important cases 10. Complete collection (‘criterion sampling’) C. Sequential Sampling 11. Theoretical sampling (‘theory based sampling’)

12. Confirming or disconfirming cases

13. Opportunistic sampling (‘emergent sampling’ 14. Snowball sampling (‘chain sampling’)

Source:- Teddlie and Yu (2007) (p81)

Parents were selected for interview depending on whether they completed the programme or not, the number of their children who had participated in the

completed the programme and one was the family who had partially engaged (i.e. attended the first half but little of the second half but did not withdraw). The one family which dropped-out from Group 1 was uncontactable. I also invited six parents from the 12 families who started Group 2 to be interviewed and all accepted, including three families who had dropped-out. In addition, of the four families who dropped out of the programme and who declined follow-up measurements, one parent agreed to take part in a brief interview over the phone and their comments have been included. Only one interview was carried out with a partner present. For two of the interviews with families who had dropped out from the second programme, their children contributed to the interview. The characteristics of the parents who were interviewed are described in Chapter 7 ‘Outcome Evaluation’.

4.11.3.2 Content of Parents’ Interviews

The interviews were exploratory allowing respondents to report their experience in their own words but were guided by an interview schedule including open- ended questions (Appendix XIV). Interviews aimed to cover feelings about being approached to take part in the study; to gain their perception of the programme and about being in the group; to illuminate any effects that the programme has had on them and their children and any changes that they had made; to explore factors detracting from effectiveness and factors that would enhance the programme; and to assess future plans (if any).

Two additional questions were also asked to those who had withdrawn from the programme, to further explore reasons for families dropping out:

What were the reasons for your family not continuing with the programme please?

If there was another opportunity to come to the programme, would you want to try again ? Is so, what would need to be different ?

A further aim of the interview with parents was to gauge ‘respondent burden’. The term ‘respondent burden’ relates to the concern for the burden that complex and volumous data collection places on respondents, with four components identified (Bradburn 1978):-

1. Length of interviews, questionnaires, other measures

2. Respondent effort i.e. are they asked about simple things which they can respond to easily or are they asked for complex information, difficult measurements etc ?

3.Respondent stress i.e. is there any personal discomfort with the data collection ?

4. Frequency of being surveyed / measured, in longitudinal studies

Respondent burden is important as this may reduce both response rates and the quality or validity of their responses (i.e. it may influence the thoroughness that a participant will answer questions if too much is asked of them). However, Bradburn (1978) argues that if respondents are convinced that the data are important then they will accept a high degree of burden.

including the measurement of physical activity using accelerometers. This was deemed to be relevant in the pilot, in order to inform and optimise the data collection methods in any subsequent evaluation.

4.11.3.3 Conduct of Parents’ Interviews

Interviews were carried out in the parent’s home and were around one hour long. Written consent for the interview had been given on the consent form at baseline, but consent was checked verbally when arranging the date for the interview. Interviews were recorded with participant’s verbal consent given at the interview; no-one declined.