Teoría de las Inteligencias Múltiples

This section discusses ethical considerations, delimitations and limitations for the study. These issues were considered before data collection took place, as required by the University of South Africa (UNISA) in research involving humans to ensure that it meets ethical requirements.

4.7.1 Ethical considerations

The general purpose of research ethics is to protect the welfare of research participants, and to support that, Mouton (2001: 243) argues that researchers have the right to the search for the truth, but not at the expense of the right of other individuals in society. Since the researcher acquired material and information provided on the basis of mutual trust, it was of paramount importance that the rights, information and interests of the participants were protected. This is consistent with Burton and Bartlett (2009: 29) who maintain that “ethics should be a central consideration for all education researchers.” This means that the researcher had to assure the participants of their right to privacy and the confidentiality.

The participants of this research were well informed about the purpose of the study, procedures, risks, benefits, alternative procedures and limit of confidentiality: this is called “informed consent” (Johnson & Christenson, 2008: 109). Voluntary and informed consent in written form were obtained prior to the commencement of data collection as indicated in appendices 1, 2 and 5. The researcher was, therefore, satisfied that informing participants in advance would allow them to choose whether or not to participate without any force, fraud, deceit or any other form of coercion. In the context of this study, permission was granted by the Director for NUST-COLL through the office of the registrar to collect data at the regional centres. It was also

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required that the researcher had to provide a supporting letter and the ethical clearance from the university research supervisor before permission could be granted from the NUST registrar’s office. After permission was granted, the researcher convened a meeting with all the regional coordinators to explain the significance of completing the questionnaires (by students) and to clarify any arising issue, during their first semester meeting in Windhoek. This was possible because all the regional coordinators normally meet in Windhoek at the main campus for their workshop meetings. The process of data collection was also explained to all the COLL regional coordinators during the face-to-face interviews and later over the phone especially during the distribution and administration of the student questionnaire.

4.7.2 Confidentiality and Anonymity

The researcher ensured that privacy, anonymity and confidentiality of the participants were respected during the conduct of this study. It is a norm that researchers should make sure that information provided by the participants and their identity is kept anonymous (Kumar, 2011: 246). Similarly, no one should have access to individual data or the names of the participants except the researcher, and the participants should know who will see the data before they participate (McMillan & Schumacher, 2010: 122). In the context of this research, only the researcher had access to the collected data and kept all the used instruments locked up in a safe. Furthermore, students were not required to reveal their names on the questionnaires. The regional coordinators were code-named R1 – R8 to ensure their anonymity during the interview. The researcher also informed the regional coordinators about the usage of the voice recorders during and after the interview. The voice-recorded data was needed for transcription seeing that the notes taken by the researcher during the interview were not comprehensive.

4.7.3 Delimitations and limitations

This study was confined to all senior students from seven (7) COLL regional centres and eight (8) regional coordinators. The names of the regional centres were given in

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Section 4.3.1 of Chapter 4. The researcher was in agreement with the literature that researchers should narrow their studies to avoid ending up with data that are too unwieldy or often unrelated to the core of the research problem (Heck, 2011: 206). Furthermore, it was important to consider factors such as geographical location, the availability of participants, evidence to be collected and the priorities in doing analysis when deciding the boundary of the study.

The selected regional centres are located within different and unique geographical setups such as urban, rural and semi-urban areas. The researcher anticipated the challenges of accessibility for some students due to distances, work and other responsibilities. To have access to all students, the collection of data was done during the second semester registration in July 2016, where questionnaires were handed over to students for completion and students could bring them back to the regional coordinator upon their next visit to the centre. It should be noted that distance students have a choice to use or not to use SSS available at the regional centres and this affected the number of students visiting the centres per day especially the centres that were serving many students from the remote areas. The decrease in the number of students visiting the centre after registration affected the return of completed questionnaires to the regional coordinators and only 109 of 301 were eventually returned.