The longitudinal survey of the predictive power of early childhood satisfaction – the methods of the survey and the methodological dilemmas

Abstract

Having chosen the qualitative and quantitative integrated research method – in which I constantly reflected to the moments of the study, keeping a continuous control over the data collection and the analysis process – I hoped to get round a particular approach regarding the issue of the institutional change. I searched for partly adaptable tools and I completed them with self-made ones. They provided an opportunity to test the hypothetical relationships on a small sample, and then to refine them to be more accurate. After having tried the method in kindergarten developed in a pre-test, I made some correction on the kindergarten tool and I completed it with the specific genre of discursive interview. As a part of the school study and regarding children taking part in the longitudinal survey, I asked the class teachers to rank their performance on a five-point scale, and to measure attitude I created a so-called Likert-type scale. To make the kindergarten and school data interpretable and comparable with each other, I formed satisfaction and attitude levels. Taking into account the methodological dilemmas of the planned research (features of participants due to their age; the comparability of data because of the longitudinal nature; subjectivity; anonymity; ‘adequate-requireddesirable’ responses; linguistic and sociolinguistic aspects) reinforced me that the studies of young children involve a number of specific difficulties. It is a reasonable belief that it is hard to measure directly the opinion of children, especially kindergarten children. Nevertheless, it is important to know the beliefs, needs and expectations of young children; therefore my research is an attempt to ‘measure’ satisfaction and attitude of children despite all the methodological difficulties.