Research Analysis On Sexual Decision-Making Of Rural Female Adolescents

The research conducted by Ezer, Leipert, Evans and Regan (2015) on rural heterosexual female adolescent’s decision-making within their sexual lives used a qualitative study design with the focus on individual interviews. Participants were recruited by initial sampling and theoretical sampling. Advertisements for the research were posted as tearaway flyers around areas of relevance to the desired participant group as well as at a post-secondary institution where the researchers felt they may connect with those who had left their rural hometowns to pursue higher education.

The study obtained eight rural female participants, none of which had personally experienced pregnancy or giving birth. Through open-ended questions, a female interviewer asked each female a variety of questions regarding their decision-making process and what their most influential forces were that drove their decision-making. Out of the eight participants, four participated in a second interview to elaborate on the first. The researchers used constructivism and grounded theory to guide their research and ensured to record any field notes of observations and perceptions before, during, and after each interview. The researchers concluded that there were four main influences that affected the rural adolescent females’ sexual decision-making: personal values and circumstances, family values and expectations, friends’ influences, and community influences (Ezer et al. , 2015). This research provides is an exploratory study looking to gain insight on the sexual decision-making of rural female adolescents.

As Grinnell, Williams, and Unrau (2016) explained in the second chapter of their text, when researching a topic that has not previously been researched or has a limited history of research, it is most beneficial to use an exploratory study. Since a very limited amount of research had been previously done on this topic, the use of the qualitative methodology of grounded theory was a strength of this research. Since grounded theory develops a theory based on the data collected from participants, the researchers were able to gain important insight on a fairly new topic of study.

• Use of qualitative grounded theory and open-ended q’s in an interview
• Stated its limitations – recording assumptions
• Re-interviewing – looking for elaboration on things discussed
• Most interviews done in person – can gage physical reactions to questions

Weaknesses

• Some interviews done over the phone – lack personability, unable to gage physical reactions
• No data from females who had actually experienced pregnancy
• Not interviewing in hometowns – no rural context
• Interviewing in public space – anonymity
• Not culturally diverse – can’t be generalized, exclusions of many populations of peopleLimitations
• No one actually experienced pregnancy
• Not interviewing in hometowns
• Some in person, some by phone
• Not culturally diverse.