Our Methodology
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Through conversations with an immigrant mother of two—a boy in middle school and a baby girl—and the principal of Carl Von Linné Elementary School, we were able to collect data to guide our conclusions. We used coding techniques to analyze and better understand our quantitative data. Alyona Medelyan, CEO and founder of an AI qualitative coding software, describes this process of data coding as, "labeling and organizing qualitative data to identify different themes and the relationships between them.” Using this method we are able to better understand the people we interviewed as well as recurring pain paints to drive our recommendations.
Taking a deeper dive
For this report, our team conducted primary and secondary research to learn more about how the influx of migrant families has affected the public school system. More specifically, we wanted to learn how school’s should and are addressing the, in some cases significant, mental health needs of immigrant students. Through conversations with both school faculty and parents of enrolled students who journeyed from South America, we were able to collect data to help justify and strengthen our recommendation. While data is usually thought to be in the form of numbers, evaluating trauma and feelings is difficult to do quantitatively. Thus, we decided to go with a qualitative approach to gain a more holistic picture of the current crisis. We used the passion and intricacies of our interviewees’ stories, rather than 1s and 0s, to drive our conclusions and justify our recommendations.
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As researchers Dr. Zubin Austin and Dr. Jane Sutton put it, "Qualitative research can help researchers to access the thoughts and feelings of research participants, which can enable development of an understanding of the meaning that people ascribe to their experiences.”
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Furthermore, it is important to be organized and consistent when conducting qualitative research as it can be difficult to draw conclusions from messy data. Before gathering data, we devised a clear and objective set of questions in order to gather as much information as possible. We conducted two interviews: one with an immigrant mother of two—a boy in middle school and a baby girl—and the principal of Carl Von Linné Elementary School. Throughout each interview, we took detailed notes for further analysis.
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To analyze our notes, we used a strategy of data coding to better understand and identify trends in our data. As the CEO and founder of Thematic, an AI qualitative coding software, describes the process as, "labeling and organizing qualitative data to identify different themes and the relationships between them.” As highlighted in the article, using this method we are able to better understand the people we interviewed as well as recurring pain paints to drive our recommendations.
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Please find our raw coded data as well as a summary page of our findings above.