Hi all! Are you a parent in the North West?

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Hi all,

 

Just wanted to introduce myself- I'm Karen and I'm currently doing a degree at Lancaster University, where I have been listening to the views and experiences of parents who have children with a range of special educational needs, but especially ASD and Asperger's.

 

Are you a parent of a school-aged child with Asperger's or ASD in the North West? If so, I would love to speak to you. I am interested in finding out about the home-school relationships between you and teachers/teaching assistants. If you would like to know more, please get in touch and email kebuckell@hotmail.co.uk. It is so important that your voices are heard! Thanks a lot, Karen

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Hi all,

 

Just wanted to introduce myself- I'm Karen and I'm currently doing a degree at Lancaster University, where I have been listening to the views and experiences of parents who have children with a range of special educational needs, but especially ASD and Asperger's.

 

Are you a parent of a school-aged child with Asperger's or ASD in the North West? If so, I would love to speak to you. I am interested in finding out about the home-school relationships between you and teachers/teaching assistants. If you would like to know more, please get in touch and email kebuckell@hotmail.co.uk. It is so important that your voices are heard! Thanks a lot, Karen

 

 

Hi Karen -

 

Good luck with you research. I'm sure you've already thought of it, but will mention just in case: One problem of having to 'advertise' for participants rather than being able to take a random selection from the whole demographic is that you're likely to find an inherent bias in the responses. People who have had good experiences won't generally feel motivated to respond, while those who feel 'aggrieved' in some way are actually likely to be seeking a way of 'making themselves heard'. An advert like the one you've placed here would, by definition, be something of a clarion call for those feeling disenfranchised or aggrieved, regardless of the substance (or lack of substance) behing those feelings. An additional factor in that will be how the questions are presented: any question that can be interpreted in ways that imply a bias will be interpreted in that way (and responded to accordingly) by participants who share that bias.

 

There are other dangers too: are you, for example, going to cross reference your findings about AS children with those of neurotypical children? If you don't, then a general dissatisfaction regarding communication (which I'm guessing you would find in both AS/NT results) and education would be misrepresented. Similarly, there are likely to be big differences depending on schools - both the type (i.e. special and mainstream) and indivdual performance. By that, I mean that parents whose kids are in a suitable placement are more likely to be 'happy' than parents of children who are misplaced in school (whether the misplacement is down to specialist/non-specialist provision or the school's general performance, location, catchment area etc etc).

 

As I said, very best with your research, but given the nature of the topic and the general dissatisfaction there seems to be regarding the education system you will, i think, need to cover all the bases in your interpretation of the results.

 

L&P

 

BD

[Parly]

Hi all,

 

Just wanted to introduce myself- I'm Karen and I'm currently doing a degree at Lancaster University, where I have been listening to the views and experiences of parents who have children with a range of special educational needs, but especially ASD and Asperger's.

 

Are you a parent of a school-aged child with Asperger's or ASD in the North West? If so, I would love to speak to you. I am interested in finding out about the home-school relationships between you and teachers/teaching assistants. If you would like to know more, please get in touch and email kebuckell@hotmail.co.uk. It is so important that your voices are heard! Thanks a lot, Karen

Hi Karen - just sending you an email now.