La ilusión sensorial

In order to address ethical issues, ethical approval was sought for the research from AREA Faculty Research Committee, University of Leeds, for clearance to conduct the study. This clearance was given via a letter (see Appendix A). After this, I obtained approval from SpED. They granted approval and gave me a letter introducing me to the schools (see Appendix I).

I went to the regional offices and the Directors of Education wrote to the respective schools informing them of my research. I then went to the selected schools to inform the headteachers and parents about the study. Informed consent was sought directly from the parents and headteachers thereby avoiding an observation by Homan (2001) that sometimes educational researchers do not directly seek informed consent from their research subjects. Neuman (2003) points out that ‘‘it is not enough to get permission from people; they need to know what they are being asked to participate in so that they can make an informed decision’’ (p.124). Participants become aware of their rights and the details of the study when they read and sign a statement giving informed consent (Sarantakos, 2005; Neuman, 2003). This statement need not always be written; it can also be given verbally. In this study, full details were made explicit to the research participants at their normal school PTA meeting and opportunity was given to them to ask any question for clarification. This was done by the researcher herself. However, I made sure the headteachers were well-informed about the study for them to be able to give the full details to parents who had not attended the PTA meeting. My contact details were provided so that I could be contacted directly if there were any questions that the headteachers could not answer relating to my study. This was to ensure that the parents fully understood what the research was about. The research participants

were made aware that their participation was voluntary and that they had the right to withdraw from the study at any time. At the PTA meeting parents’ verbal consent was obtained.

Secondly, when disseminating the questionnaires a letter explaining the details of the study was attached. Parents were told the period within which to return the questionnaire if they decided to participate in the study. It was agreed between the headteacher and the parents at the PTA meeting that the questionnaires were to be returned to the headteachers. The parents requested the headteachers reminded them about the return date if they had not returned the completed questionnaire within one week of the deadline. The headteachers handed the completed questionnaires over to me after the agreed time. I was therefore in constant touch with the headteachers.

The parents were sent letters inviting them to participate in the interview. They were requested to indicate their consent by indicating ‘‘Yes I will take part’’ or ‘‘No I will not take part’’ on a sheet of paper and then return this to the headteacher stating where and when they wanted the interview to take place. On the day of the interview they signed consent forms (see Appendix E).

Another issue that arises about giving full or explicit information in the process of obtaining informed consent is the assurance of confidentiality and anonymity. This helps to establish trust between the researcher and participant. Assurance of confidentiality means that the researcher promises that any information divulged by the participant will be treated as private and will not be revealed publicly (Denscombe, 2010; Cohen et al., 2007; Sarantakos, 2005; Neuman, 2003).

In this research, the participants were assured of confidentiality and anonymity in the letters that were sent out to them and at the PTA meeting (Sommers and Sommers, 2002). They were assured that their identity and comments would not be revealed without their approval. Additionally, the questionnaire and interview schedule excluded any identification details such as name and address of the respondent. Other forms of identifiers were replaced with pseudonyms immediately after the questionnaire and interview data were recorded (Creswell, 2009; Sommers and Sommers, 2002).

As mentioned in section 4.9.2 the interviews were tape-recorded with permission from the interviewees after they had been assured of confidentiality. The data collected has been stored under lock and key and is only available to my supervisors on request. The interview recordings and transcripts have been stored

in the University of Leeds M drive and a personal storage device. These are both encrypted and password protected and therefore no unauthorised person has access to them. Sieber (2008) suggests that after the analysis the data should be kept for five to ten years before being discarded. Based on this, the data would be kept for five years. The next chapter presents the analysis of the quantitative data.

CHAPTER FIVE

5 DATA ANALYSIS OF QUESTIONNAIRE DATA

5.1

Introduction

In the previous chapter, the methodology used for the study was presented. This chapter presents the results of the analysis of the questionnaire data. The analysis is presented in four sections (A to D). Section A presents the background information of the respondents. Section B focuses on PP about IE and the demographic variations in PP and it answers research question one. Section C addresses PE of their children in inclusive schools and the demographic variations in PE. It answers research question two. While Section D addresses PI in IE and it answers research question three. The focal points of the analysis are the research questions stated in section 1.4.