5. Evaluation

Ethical considerations:

For a detailed overview of the ethical considerations, please go to the “ethical considerations” section under the “methodology” tab.

Researcher bias:

In order to combat researcher bias, the aim or even nature of the study was yet to be determined during the collection of the data (through observations). This was because the researchers were tasked to observe a variety of different areas rather than those specific to cognitive explanations of gender development. However, although this may have limited the possibility for researcher bias, it may not have removed it completely, as the observations may have been affected by researcher subjectivity, which may have thus affected the credibility of the research. This may have been somewhat counteracted however, through reflexivity (see the “methodology” tab for details).

Observations:

Participant expectations may have affected the credibility of the research as well, as the children under observation may have acted unnaturally due to the fact that they were being observed. For instance, many of the children seemed intimidated by the foreign presence of the older student researchers, which may have affected how they responded to the observations. In order to combat this, and thus improve the credibility of the research, covert observations could be used in future research.

Interviews:

The fact that the observations were triangulated with a semi-structured interview with the teacher improved the credibility of the findings, as not only was even more data generated, but this data was from a different source and of a different method (method triangulation). Because of this, the interview also acted as a credibility check, bolstering the overall credibility of the data.

Data recording:

The only source of data recording used was field notes. In spite of the fact that field notes are a good way to quickly and efficiently record data from observations and interviews, the data recorded may not be entirely accurate due to the inherently subjective nature of the researcher. The fact that researcher triangulation was used somewhat counters this flaw in credibility because it raises the objectivity of the data, but a better approach would be to use video recordings and audio recordings. This ensures that the data is in its original form, thus ensuring credibility. However the problem with this is that it brings up ethical issues such as confidentiality and anonymity of the participants.

Sampling technique:

Purposive sample was used (for details on the sample, see the “methodology” tab). One strength of this sampling method is that it was appropriate for the topic under investigation – gender development in international school children. Because of this, a variety of different nationalities were encompassed by the researcher, giving it cross-cultural validity. Another strength is that it was convenient, as all of the participants were in one class. However, one limitation is that it may be difficult to generalize to wider populations due to the fact that all of the participants were international school children from ISM only. Because the research question focuses on international school children in general, children from other international schools were not accounted for in the small purposive sample used.

Generalizability:

As previously mentioned, due to the sampling technique, the study had low generalizability. In order to fix this, the study could examine non-international school children, which would improve representational generalizability. In addition to this, the study could examine children under situations other than classrooms (such as in parks or in orphanages). This would improve inferential generalizability.

Conclusion:

Although the study shows a clear trend in terms of cognitive explanations for gender role development, it is inherently limited by the aforementioned limitations. In order to gain a more holistic understanding of gender role development, additional research – both qualitative and possibly quantitative – is required.