Does learning to express oneself Dissertation Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3750 words

Does learning to express oneself - Dissertation Example This endeavor is undertaken not only to clarify the methodology applied in this study, but it also seeks to establish the steps taken to achieve the purpose of this study. The purpose of this research study is to determine the extent to which learning to express oneself properly (write and recite) has on the number of violent incidents among at-risk inner-city middle and high School male students during a school year. Another purpose explored in this study is to investigate whether or not messages presented to juveniles in a creative format (poetic form) has a positive impact on juvenile behavior. Research Design Research design provided the overall structure of the procedures the researcher follows in the conduct of the study. It involved the data collected and the analysis used in the research. For research, a combination of quantitative and qualitative study had been chosen because it provided the researcher the opportunity to play a vital role in the data collection and analysis, in the gathering of the literary narratives and the inductive logic employed in the study (Creswell, 2007: Hatch, 2002; Patton, 1990; Yin, 2009). Moreover, in the mixed method, the researcher is not only an active participant in the whole inquiry process (Hatch, 2002), but it also enabled the researcher to observe social facts experience by the youth (Crocker & Algina, 1986). In this way, the researcher was not outside looking inside the phenomenon being observed, but was inside the phenomenon together with the participants in constructing meanings and understandings for the articulation of the event being observed, and in this case creative writing and expression of oneself as a viable alternative to counter juvenile violence. The literary narratives provided the framework with which the case was described, and out from the stories, themes that could explain and explore the phenomenon (Hatch, 2002; Shank, 2006). The study was inductive primarily because the â€Å"researcher gathe rs data to build concepts, hypotheses or theories† (Merriam & Associates, 2002, p. 5). As mentioned earlier, the researcher had preferred mixed method because it enabled the researcher to be actively involved in the data collection and analysis, in the collection of literary narratives and in the discharge of the inductive logic used in the study. Furthermore, through a mixed method a holistic picture of the incident was attained since it seeks to understand the phenomenon within the social context or circumstances where it was happening (Janesick, 2004). For the qualitative part of the research, Creswell (2007) noted that there are five different approaches to qualitative research; â€Å"narrative research, phenomenology, grounded theory, ethnography, and case study† (p. 53). In both the narrative research and phenomenology, the focus of attention is the life stories and experiences of the participants (Savin-Badin & Van Neikirk, 2007). It looks into the personal belie fs and attitudes of the participants towards the phenomenon (Creswell, 2007). As such, the personal beliefs of the participants become the focal point with which the phenomenon is to be explained (Yin, 2009). Thus, it demands that the personal beli