Tobias own report

Question 1

How many dimensions did you get from your coding? Walkthrough the main findings under each.

Answer 1

3 dimensions

1) Reasons behind the choice of taking an education

• Parents: the educational system is not a given in all parts of the world has made a big impression
• We also saw more generic reasons for taking an education, such as interest and future prospects of education. This finding was common for all the respondents and therefore it seems that “what to study” is the main force for choosing an education for our four respondents.
• Reasons to take an education came from a feeling of having to exploit the opportunities since their parents did not have the same privileges as the respondents have in Denmark.

2) Parents’ ambitions on behalf of their children

• Parents’ lack of belief in making it in regards to education catalyzes an internal motivation to view education as a way to break social patterns, and on the other hand, the education can be viewed as a way to try and live up to the parents’ ambitions.
• Ambitions are shown in the importance of parents being able to tell their network about their children’s achievements

3) Parents’ engagement in school-life

• Help from their parents (if they spoke danish well), siblings or from Danish educational institutions

Question 2

What is the general findings from the qualitative part of your study?

Answer 2

• For the qualitative part, all of the respondents are studying at a higher level of education than their parents. None of the respondents doubted going to university as they saw this as the logical path, which was underlined by their parents’ high ambitions on their behalf to get a good education.
• This is in line with previous research stating that second-generation immigrants’ parents have higher aspirations for their children (Cf. section 1.1).
• The ambitions of the parents was a motivational factor for the respondents as they wanted to break the social patterns and live up to these ambitions. This pressure has been an influencing factor for understanding the decision to take an education for immigrants, combined with the perceived importance of taking advantage of free education in Denmark.
• However, we found that the parents’ engagement in their school life was not that high, which led to large personal responsibilities of the respondents to manage their school.

Question 3

What are the general findings from your quantitative study?

Answer 3

For the quantitative part, we analyzed whether being an immigrant as opposed to natives had an effect on whether you would not get a higher education.

• We found that this connection was insignificant, probably due to the group of immigrants being very broad in terms of country of origin.

However, we did find other significant effects in our study such as

• the mother and father not having a higher education would increase the odds of you not getting a higher education.
• Furthermore, we found that the less important you feel it is to be successful and that people recognize achievements, the greater the odds for you not getting a higher education.

We, therefore, conclude that the parental education level, as well as personal beliefs, have a significant effect on whether you as an immigrant in a Western country will get a higher education or not.

Question 4

What are the research questions you are trying to answer?

Answer 4

Whether or how does being an immigrant in a Western country have an impact on their education?

• What are the effects of immigration, parents and personal beliefs on whether immigrants in Germany will obtain a higher education?
• How do second-generation immigrants in Denmark perceive their upbringing to have impacted their orientation towards education?

Question 5

Why are you using mixed-method and what kind of mixed-method research design are you using?

Answer 5

Greene et al. = Using a _complimentary desi_gn where we study the same conceptual phenomenon. The purpose is to enhance the results

• complementarity mixed-method study, qualitative and quantitative methods are used to measure overlapping but also different facets of a phenomenon, yielding an enriched, elaborated understanding of that phenomenon. This differs from the triangulation intent in that the logic of convergence requires that the different methods assess the same conceptual phenomenon.

Combining the quantitative- and qualitative approach in order to focus our research on the overall phenomena from different perspectives

• The quantitative approach will provide us with the scope and will potentially allow us to generalize our findings based on the German population
• Vice versa, the qualitative approach will allow us to do in-depth research of the phenomena and will provide us with deep insights on the different perceptions and motives towards education, which our respondents may have.

Only conducting quantitative research will possibly lead to some findings, but numbers and statistics will not be able to explain in-depth the reason behind this finding. Therefore it is important to combine the study with a qualitative method, which will be able to explain some of the underlying elements. It may very well vary from individual to individual and the phenomena is most likely a result of a complex social reality, and therefore using only one single method is not sufficient in order to fully comprehend the phenomena.

• Using a mixed-methods approach will provide a good overlap, where the qualitative method will be supporting the quantitative method where it is weaker and vice versa

Question 6

What research design do you use in qualitative method?

Answer 6

Qualitative:

• We do not do grounded theory as we are not trying to develop a theory through an inductive approach.
• Furthermore, it is not phenomenology as we do not only seek to gain an understanding and comprehend the phenomena of the educational level for immigrants. If we did do it this way, we would have tried to gain a deeper understanding of what other things might have an impact on the educational level such as society, teachers etc.
• We do not do ethnography either as we do not observe people in their real-life environments.

We use a case study design to gain deep insights into the phenomena and investigate it in its real-life context. Eisenhardt also states that case studies are the best to bridge from qualitative to quantitative therefore it is good for mixed-method research.

• We could have used multiple case study if we were to look at different countries and then compare and find similarities or differences. So we would deepen our understanding and strengthen our explanation of it.
• We cannot generalize through in the same way as quantitative in this way, but we can do analytical generalization according to Yin, where we transfer our findings.