An Important Rule of Research: Let the data tell you what to focus on!

Research is very tricky.

Initially, my research group thought we would focus our study of the Croft School on the role parents play in shaping the academic lives of their elite children.

My partners and I are aware that parents profoundly influence the academic aspirations, self-perception, and academic achievement of their children. Elite school students attend institutions that teach them the importance of academic achievement, and their parents usually reinforce this value. Since parents play such a influential role in the academic lives of their children, and thinking we would get a ton of information on how our interviewee’s performance in school is influenced by their parents, my group thought we had chosen the perfect topic. “Wow, coming up with that proposal wasn’t so bad!” I thought to myself. I high-fived my partners, and began scouring the Internet for sources addressing the relationship between parental involvement and academic achievement.

“We just crushed that research proposal!”

“Wow!” I thought to myself, “I’m finding so much information, and it all supports what we were thinking!” Indeed, studies show a positive relationship between parental involvement, school engagement and academic performance.

I also found that the social class position of parents influences the academic opportunities, and thus the academic achievement, of their children.  For example, elite schools tend to admit most of their students from the upper class, since parents of these students can afford to pay expensive tuition fees.  Elite private school students regularly score above public school and subsidized (voucher) school students on the Chilean national test, SIMCE.  This data shows that the social class position of parents, determined by their socioeconomic status, can significantly impact the academic performance of their children.

“I’m on a roll!” I thought to myself. However, I could not seem to find any information on the Internet or the school’s website about parents. But I didn’t let that bother me too much. I had conducted a lot of quality research, and that was what mattered.

“Your group’s case study on the Croft School and case study on the student you interview need to have a connecting theme,” Professor Howard told our class. When it dawned on me that us not finding anything about the school and its relationship to parents was actually an issue, I looked at my partners, and no words needed to be exchanged. “Dang, we have to change our topic!” our eyes said to each other.

We decided to reconvene a few nights after that class to talk about a new topic, and I was pretty stressed about it. About an hour before our group met to talk, I took Adam’s advice about how to go about coming up with a theme for the school: gather as much data on the school as you can, then find a common theme in that data. So rather than researching what I thought we should write about, I began letting the research guide me.

A few minutes into my research, I discovered that the Croft School is part of an organization of independent schools that provides strong academic programs alongside unparalleled co-curricular opportunities.  These activities are intended to provide students with a holistic education that develops a wide range of talents, skills, and abilities. Indeed, according to their website, the Croft School is strongly committed to providing an integrated, holistic education, where sports, arts, and service are at its core.

When I met with my partners that night, I was excited to show them what I had found.  Both of them thought studying co-curricular activities at the Croft School would be very interesting. The idea of studying just sports came up, but our group agreed it would be too narrow of a focus. So, we decided to focus on co-curricular activities in general.

Co-curricular activities!

Going forward, our group will focus on researching how co-curricular activities impact academics at, and the social structure within, the Croft School, as well as in other Latin American schools.

There are two things, however, that will determine how successful our research is. One, will our interviewee be interested in any co-curricular activities? If the answer is no, we may have to call another audible and change our topic. But we have decided we will cross that bridge when we come to it. Also, I have recently been experiencing difficulty finding information and articles on how co-curricular activities actually impact academic performance and social structure within the Croft School, as well as other schools in Latin America. While there is ample research on the positive impact that co-curricular activities have on the academic achievement and identity development of students, we may need to make inferences using this research and what we find about the Croft School online in order to develop our analysis on the school. We are still in the thick of the research project, but co-curricular activities are certainly a topic we are all very interested in and excited to (hopefully) study more deeply as the semester progresses.