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Introduction
Adolescence is a crucial period for the developments of behaviors and lifestyles. Often being obese and overweight are foremost widespread health problems among adolescents that result in declined physical activity. Few studies noticed that during this period of life involvement in sport, and physical activity is decreased. Casey with coworkers studied broadly to identify the reason of this decline in their paper “Using a Socioecological Approach to Examine Participation in Sport and Physical Activity Among Rural Adolescent Girls.” The research area was based on qualitative analysis with an open-ended format research particularly among rural girls. Adolescence is a difficult and traumatic instance due to the fast changes occurring in body image and self-esteem, as well as the alterations in their environment. These alterations may include changes in friend circle and transitions in education levels. This article discovers a variety of independent and interacting factors that impact the participation of rural adolescent girls in physical, as well as sports activity (Casey, Eime, Payne & Harvey, 2009).
Purpose of study
This essay aims critically to analyse the qualitative approach of the research work by Casey et al. (Casey, Eime, Payne & Harvey, 2009). The main questions of the study are:
1-To identify the pattern of research and the success of researchers to explore the topic
2-Has it been successful in exploring the reason of the phenomenon?
3-Has the research been able to describe and explain the relationships and individual experiences?
4-Did the qualitative analysis of the study performed well, or any other method of research should be applied?
Qualitative Research Plan and characteristics
The research work was based on the socio-ecological model of health through which lend to main four focus group discussions in Grade 7 girls (with variable n = 34). The results illustrated that the adolescent girls were highly enthusiastic when they were with friends or supported by families and teachers, during sports or physical activities. Positive feedbacks encouraged them very well. This study proved that a series of personal and organizational factors exaggerated apparent self-competence. These factors are predominantly the coeducational nature of school, physical education classes and peer teasing, that led to the skill comparisons at social level. According to the author, the developmentally appropriate fun activities should be focused to provide opportunities for single-sex classes and generate cultural changes to encourage non-competitive and self-referencing activities (Casey, Eime, Payne & Harvey, 2009).
Qualitative research can present huge amounts of data extracted from verbatim notes, interviews or the focus groups. In the study, the sampling frame targets a list of all secondary schools within a particular province. A sample of four schools were investigated for representativeness, through plotting the series of SEIFA values (Socio-Economic Indexes for Area), an index of relative socioeconomic disadvantage. Several other indexes are used for geographical distribution examination. Focus groups were from four schools among the seven girls of 5 and 11 Grade, aged 12 to 13 years (n = 34) (Casey, Eime, Payne & Harvey, 2009). The participants were interviewed by an open-ended question session about their like, dislike, experience, etc. For data analysis, the researcher applied a constant comparison technique. Overall the study provided a descriptive record of the research, and researcher efficiently interpreted them (Pope & Mays, 2008; Casey, Eime, Payne & Harvey, 2009).
Strengths and weaknesses of the study
The results of this research provide qualitative evidence of the relationship of intrapersonal factors, interpersonal environment, and organizational environment among rural adolescent girls (Casey, Eime, Payne & Harvey, 2009).
In this study, the selected qualitative research approach of data collection and analysis was proficiently capable of illustrating data with a wide range of possibilities. The author brilliantly explored the phenomenon using strategy of inquiry and established a relationship between entities. This qualitative research has been suitable and exploratory for this novel topic (Creswell, 2009).
Several weak points are also observed in this study. The knowledge gathered may not be generalized to other people, because the findings are related to only few people who were involved in the research study. It will be difficult to predict the research aspects quantitatively. If compared with the quantitative study, it takes more time in assembling data, where data analysis is time-consuming. The results can be easily influenced by the researcher’s personal partiality and idiosyncrasies (Creswell, 2009).
In popular perception, the quantitative research is believed to be more reliable and objective confining the research to a limited variable. It utilizes statistics to generalize a finding and focuses at relationships between variables and establish cause and effect in extremely controlled circumstances. Quantitative research is less detailed than qualitative data, and it may fail to spot a desired reaction from the participant (Creswell, 2009).
Conclusion
In the target study the author with his worker proficiently performed the qualitative analysis on the issue of adolescent girls of rural areas. They concluded that to encourage girls for participation in sport and physical activities, practitioners and physical educators need to revive their approach of providing opportunities and encouraging cultural changes for noncompetitive and self-referencing activities. They also have been successful in establishing a relationship between the phenomenon and causes. Performing research through qualitative approach is not a simple or quick task. It is systematic and thorough, and therefore takes slot of labour and time. Though, this study provided a huge amount of data and information, this knowledge can not be generalized to all as it only has been confined to a focus group of participants.
References
Casey, M. M., Eime, R. M., Payne, W. R., & Harvey, J. T. (2009). Using a socioecological
approach to examine participation in sport and physical activity among rural adolescent
girls. Qualitative Health Research, 19(7), 881-893.
Creswell, J. W. (2009). Research Design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods
approaches (Laureate Education, Inc., custom ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage
Publications, Inc.
Pope, C., & Mays, N. (Eds.). (2008). Qualitative research in health care. John Wiley & Sons.
