Introduction
Statement of the problem
College students are considered “first-gen” when they are the first in their immediate family to enroll in college. Whether it be pride in their family’s success or sadness over being apart from loved ones, this can be a difficult realization to make. Some students may feel “family achievement guilt” and “breakaway guilt” for wanting to pursue their interests and goals. When a student is embarrassed to talk about their academic pursuits in front of their loved ones, they may experience family achievement guilt. Breakaway guilt occurs when a student decides to leave home, such as when they feel guilty about leaving their family to go to college.
Purpose of the Study
The goal of this research is to find out if first-generation college students are more likely to have feelings of family achievement and breakaway guilt than students who come from a college-going family background. These students are not first-generation college students since either one or both of their parents have a college degree.
Research Question
Do students who are the first in their family to attend college and go on to acquire a degree from a four-year university feel a greater sense of duty to their families for their accomplishments and a greater degree of guilt for leaving home when they leave for college?
Procedures
Philosophical Assumptions or Worldview
Worldview: Constructivist
The objective of this study is to determine whether or not there is a distinction between individuals who are the first in their families to attend college and those who are not the first in their families to attend college by identifying and analyzing the patterns that exist between these two groups of people (Ryan & Golden, 2006).
The researcher’s assumptions would be their interpretation of the information provided by the participants on their personal life experiences based on the researcher’s own experiences and background (Rodgers et al., 2018).
Qualitative Design
The current study sought to answer the research question by conducting descriptive qualitative research and using ethnography as a data collection method.
In order to better identify family achievement and breakaway guilt in first-generation college students as contrasted to students from other generations who are also attending college, research instruments such as observations, interviews, and questionnaires were utilized (Bakker et al., 2016).
Role of the Researcher
During the research, the researchers integrated themselves into the study community, consisting of students who were the first in their families to attend college and individuals whose families did not participate in college.
During ethnography, the researcher will take notes and make written data recordings on everything observed while conducting the community observation. Researchers built these four aspects of guilt by utilizing inductive and deductive analysis methods (Ryan & Golden, 2006).
Data Analysis Procedures
Simultaneous procedures
- Evaluating data gathered from questionnaires
- Doing an analysis based on the observable intervals
Strategies for Validating Findings
- Examine the significance of the research once more by giving sustained involvement and consistent observations.
- Prolonged engagement:
- Fostering a sense of confidence among participants while also acquiring information about them (Creswell& Creswell, 2018
- Observations that are made repeatedly, including checking data for errors or misunderstandings
Population
- First-generation college students
- Non-first-generation college students
Sample
Convenience Sampling:
- I asked students at a university in Indiana that offers four years of education to take part in a study by sending them an email.
- After that, participants responded to an email asking if they were the first in their family to attend college or whether they were the children of parents who had attended college.
- The study used the first 90 people who responded to it.
Participants
- Participants totaling ninety
- There were sixty students who were the first in their family to attend college and thirty students who were not the first in their family to attend college.
- The ninety participants are all students at the same Indiana university that offers four-year degrees.
Anticipated Ethical Issues
Researchers impact participants during observational periods. Protecting integrity and privacy of participants; not utilizing any participants’ names and only revealing information related to the study.
Expected Findings
Expected Findings of Study
Students who are the first in their families to go to college tend to feel more responsibility toward their families and more remorse about striking out on their own. When contrasted to students who have a parent or grandparent who went to college, this is especially true.
Descriptive Findings of Questionnaires/Observational Periods
Researchers anticipate that first-generation college students will feel higher family accomplishment shame than students from other generations. According to Wang & Park (2016), this finding has become increasingly widespread among first-generation college students, particularly among those who place the most value on their relationships with their families.
Researchers predict that first-generation college students will have higher levels of breakaway guilt than students from other generations. According to Wang & Park (2016), this is a more common finding among first-generation college students who, up until this point in their lives, have never been separated from their families (Crews, 2019). In contrast, non-first-generation college students see this breakaway from their families as nothing more than a straightforward continuation of their education (Bakker et al., 2016). This helps establish whether or not our anticipated findings are congruent with what we already know or assume we know.
Other knowledge to conquer with the expected findings is viewing a comparable analysis of data from Breaking Away: A Study of First-generation College Students and Their Families. This was confirmed to be true after our research. However, as these first-generation college students decided to go down a different route, it disrupted the family household (Bakker et al., 2016). Wang & Park (2016) indicates that various families have other responsibilities passed down through children.
References
Bakker, M., Hartgerink, C. H., Wicherts, J. M., & van der Maas, H. L. (2016). Researchers’ intuitions about power in psychological research. Psychological Science 27(8), 1069–1077. Web.
Creswell, J. W., & Creswell, J. D. (2018). Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches. Sage publications.
Roger, K., Bone, T., Heinonen, T., Schwartz, K., Slater, J., & Thakrar, S. (2018). Exploring Identity: What We Do as Qualitative Researchers. Qualitative Report, 23(3).
Ryan, L., & Golden, A. (2006). ‘tick the box please’: A reflexive approach to doing quantitative social research. Sociology, 40(6), 1191–1200. Web.
Wang, G. T., & Park, K. (2016). Student research and report writing: From topic selection to the complete paper. John Wiley & Sons.