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Running Head: SUPPORTING STUDENT PARENTS 1

Providing Adequate Support Systems for Student Parents in Higher Education

A Mixed Method: QUAL + QUAN

Leonard Zongo

Northern Illinois University


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Background and Research Interest

Providing adequate resources to all students in college is pivotal for their success in

college because the daily stresses of college live can be daunting for many students. One

particular student population in the non-traditional students group definitely needs help because

they have to raise their children on top of handling academic related work. According to a 2014

study from the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, 26 percent, or 4.8 million of college

student population are students who are raising one or more children while taking classes.

Despite this staggering number of students with kids on college campuses, affordable on-campus

childcare services are practically inexistent or hard to find (White, 2014). As a Graduate

Community Director and working in Housing and Residential Services, I had a firsthand

experience with these groups of students and the struggles that they go through on a daily basis

are real. Though the complex that I oversee is designed to accommodate the needs of non-

traditional students such as student parents, there are no real systems and procedures in place that

allow the staff to address their needs or direct them to proper support services on campus or in

the local community. According to Creswell (2015) “When researchers conduct a study, they

proceed through a distinct set of steps” (p.7). This research will follow the basic guidelines for

conducting research that Creswell provided in his book and all precautions will be taken so that

the integrity of the research is not impacted by any failure to comply with the IRB regulations in

regards to conducting rigorous research.

Purpose of the Study on Student Parents

Given the fact that previous research concluded that appropriately assisting student

parents can have positive outcomes on their offspring, this quantitative and qualitative research

will focus mainly of the types of support services that are available on the targeted study sites
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and their impact of student success. Additionally, student parents living on the selected

university campuses will provide their perspectives on the type of support they believe would

have the most positive impact on their college journey. The study will identify how much

support universities should provide to student parents in order to alleviate their daily struggles

between attending college and raising a dependent. With student parents constituting 26 percent

of the U.S. undergraduate student population, the research will be extremely beneficial for two

types of audiences. The first beneficiaries of the finding of the research will be student parents

as this information will better inform their decision making process when applying for college.

The findings will allow them to take a certain number of factors into consideration prior to

selecting a particular four-year institution to attend upon graduating from high school. The

second beneficiaries for this research will be four year public institutions. The findings will

allow those institutions to maximize their effort in regards to providing adequate resources to

better support this particular group of students whose number is significantly high. The support

systems that could be put in place are day care centers, parenting skills services, scholarships for

student parents or a private/public partnership with local day care centers to accommodate

student parents. The research questions are as follows:

 Qualitative study question: What can universities do to better assist student parents?

 Quantitative study question: Does student parents’ retention and graduation rate increase

with the level of support system available on campus.

Mixed Methods - Correctional Research Design

“A mixed methods research design is a procedure for collecting, analyzing, and “mixing”

both quantitative and qualitative methods in a single study or a series of studies to understand a

research problem (Creswell & Plano Clark, 2011). Using a mixed methods research will allow
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the research team to have a comprehensive understanding of the impact that student parent

support systems can have on student success and their overall perception of the institution. The

quantitative part of the study will provide an opportunity to establish a relationship between

student parent support systems and their graduation rates. The qualitative part of the study will

determine whether student parents chose institutions on the basis of the support systems that a

university has in place. The quantitative study by itself may generate a positive correlation

between student parent support systems and student success. The result however may not

explain why there is a relationship between these two sets of variables. That is why a qualitative

study that describes student parents’ feelings and perceptions in regards to the amount of support

systems in each institution will help the research team to better understand the data collected.

For example, if the result of the quantitative student study shows a positive correlation between

student parent support systems and their graduation rates, and the qualitative study reveals a

stronger tendency for student parents to choose institutions with high amount of support systems,

then the research problem will be better understood. The mixed method study will not only

provide factual information such a statistics and numbers, but it will also explore the stories

related to the issue from those who are mainly affected such as students with dependents.

In the quantitative part of the study, the research team will use a correlation statistical test

to describe and measure the degree of relationship between student parent support systems and

graduation rates. The variables in the study will not be manipulated; they will rather be utilized

to establish an association among the variables involved in the research. According to Creswell

(2015) “a correlation is a statistical test used to determine the tendency or pattern for two (or

more) variables or two sets of data to vary consistently” (p.339). In this study, the main interest
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is to determine whether we can predict student parents’ graduation rates based on the type of

support systems that each institution has in place.

Literature Review

Longitudinal Study on Student Parents

An article titled “Does College Enrollment and Bachelor’s Completion by Mothers

Impact Children’s Educational Outcomes?” which was published by David Monaghan, a senior

researcher at the Wisconsin HOPE Lab tackled the notion of supporting student parents. The

article focused particularly on student parents who constitute 4.8 million of the U.S

undergraduate student population. The end result was to determine whether college enrollment

by student parents could have a positive impact on the educational outcomes of their offspring.

Monaghan (2016) drew our attention on the magnitude of the problem being studied and used a

statistical data to show how important the enrollment rate of undergraduate college students has

grown exponentially from 1980 to 2010, reaching 72 percent. Such data creates the reader’s

interest and motivates the reader to want to know what the research is all about. The author

furthermore narrowed down the research topic to student parents and their offspring. At this

point, the author clearly identified the targeted audience who will be the beneficiaries of the

research. Later on, Monaghan (2016) identified another type of audience; policy makers who

will be responsible for setting into motion the results of the findings. Given the fact that

“parent’s college-going” is likely to benefit their offspring and little research has been done to

establish the “impact of parental education attained during a child’s lifetime” (Monaghan, 2016,

p.4), the justification for the research about supporting student parents is clearly pointed out.

The principal concern and purpose of the Monaghan’s research was to determine whether

or not “supporting parental enrollment might be a relatively cost-effective strategy for raising the
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educational attainment of two generations simultaneously, while narrowing educational

disparities” (p.4). The author aimed to explore how investing in student parents’ education can

have positive long term goals for society at large. So, one of the main questions that was being

studied was whether policy makers should subsidize student parents’ tuition through “public

grants and low-interest rates” (p.4).

The study was a longitudinal quantitative research that was commissioned by the Bureau

of Labor Statistics. The initial sample of 12,686 respondents born between 1957 and 1964 was

first interviewed in 1979. The interviews continued until the offspring of the respondents were

included in the study in 1986. The background information of respondents was initially

collected through a survey. Then a cognitive test was administered in order to single out the

qualifying candidates for the study. Children of respondent, a total of 11,512 sample, were

additionally administered a survey at the age of 15 and continually participated in the interviews

to determine the educational outcomes over the years.

Monaghan (2016) clearly pointed out what portion of the respondents was being

considered in the data analysis process. Inverse probability of treatment weight (IPTW) method

was used to assess the outcomes of the study. The IPTW method served to differentiate

respondents who were likely to behave accordingly with the empirical estimated observables

from those who were behaving otherwise. Additionally, standardized differences (SD) were

used to reduce bias observables. The author provided a step by step guideline to help the reader

understand how the data collected had been processed. Multiple formulas, tables, and graphs

were also provided to allow the reader to better understanding the data analysis process.

The findings of the study corroborated the predictable outcomes generated from previous

theories and empirical research. The study confirmed that children whose parents enrolled in
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college and completed a bachelor’s degree are 5 to 15 percent points likely to complete high

school, attend college, and complete a bachelor’s degree than their counterparts. Factors such as

family size and family income were also pointed out as contributing factors that either enable or

prevent student parents from enrolling and completing a bachelor’s degree.

The Struggle is Real

When the struggles are compounded by harsh economic challenges, student parents

definitely face devastating results and have a hard time succeeding in college like their

counterparts who do not have to worry about a dependent. According to Mugglestone (2015)

student parents have to work more hours than their student counterparts with no dependents. On

top of that, the inability to find a flexible work schedule makes career advancement and job

opportunities less available for student parents. Recent studies found that the average cost for

enrolling a child at a child care revolves around $10,000. Furthermore, the exorbitant cost of

college tuition combined to the above mentioned problems creates a climate that is not conducive

to the academic success of student parents. In an attempt to identify better ways to support

student parents, a recent study by Young Invincibles analyzed three main factors and their

findings indicated substantial differences in the amount of time use, social costs, and financial

costs between student parents and students with no dependents. The results or the findings of the

study are in the table below:

TIME MANAGEMENT

On average, increased caretaking responsibilities take up more of a young parent’s day than

their jobs.

MOTHERS VERSIS FATHERS

Caretaking responsibilities disproportionately fall on young mothers over young fathers.


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STUDY TIME

Young parents who are students spend one third less time on their studies than their childless

peers, and are much more likely to attend evening classes.

WORK SHIFTS

Young parents work the after-midnight shift at a rate twice as high as non-parents; among low-

income parents, the rate is three to four times higher.

DEGREE COMPLETION RATE

Bachelor’s degree recipients take on 25 percent more student debt if they have a child.

COSTS

Childcare and education costs have expanded from two percent of the total cost of raising a

child in 1960 to 18 percent of the cost in 2013

Gender Inequality in Higher Education

According to Mugglestone (2015) “caretaking responsibilities disproportionately fall on

young mothers over young fathers.” So this study will also contribute to tackle a long term

problem that student parents will face during college and in the workplace. Over the past years,

a significant number of Higher Education institutions have taken steps to offer salary

adjustments to their female professors and faculty members. In 2013, Western Michigan

University had agreed to adjust salaries in order to rectify a long-standing issue that revolved

around unequal pay based on gender (Zipp 2013). According to the author, this agreement was

reached through a collective bargaining between the university and its professors’ union (para.3).

The issue of salary gap between female and male faculty that happened in Western Michigan
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University is not an isolated case because gender based salary inequalities have been a prevailing

problem in many other universities.

In a report published by Clayton (2013) on gender equity in salaries of faculty, similar

observations around gender pay gap were made at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

According to the report, after taking various factors such as department, tenure track, and years

of employment into account, there was evidence that a salary gap existed between female and

male faculty employed at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (Clayton, 2013, para.1). The

statistical evidence that were provided from the analyses revealed that male faculty members

were being paid 2.4% higher than their female counterparts.

Another research conducted by CUPA-HR in 2016 pointed out that women have always

been paid less than men in higher education administrative positions. The research indicated that

“women earn 79 % for every $1 that men earn” (Bichsel & McChesney, 2016, para. 3).

According to Bichsel and McChesney (2016), the gap has however decreased from 59 % in 1974

to 21% in 2016. But for over a decade, the salary gap has remained unchanged. The authors

stated that consequently, actions need to be taken in order for change to happen. Consequently,

beginning to support student parents adequately at the college level will give them more leverage

when they exit campus settings and enter workplaces.

Curtis (2010) dove into the heart of the problem and provided more details about the

pervasiveness of gender salary inequity in Higher Education. The author made the following

revelations from data collected by the American Association of University Professors. Female

fulltime faculty members earn less than their male counters parts in academic positions such as

professor, associate professor, and assistant professor. The same observation is made in

institutional categories such doctoral, master’s, baccalaureate and associate degrees (Curtis,
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2010, para.2). The author also indicated that women tend to occupy lower paying jobs in

colleges and universities.

In an attempt to explain why this problem is still persisting, Curtis (2010) pointed out the

fact that universities do not always acknowledge that there is a problem based on the data that

are being presented as evidence of salary inequity in Higher Education. According to Curtis

(2010) when faculty members try to confront universities officials on the issue, the most

common response from “administrators and skeptical colleagues” is “the overall averages don’t

tell the whole story; you have to take other factors in account” (Para.3). Such statements

constitute a strong indication that universities are likely to maintain to status quo than to create

reforms and policies that can move women from a disadvantaged group to similar advantages

that male faculty members enjoy. Additionally, many university administrators believe that

gender inequity is not the university’s fault because females tend to have lower paying positions.

Why Invest in Student Parents?

Monaghan (2016) used previous research and theories on education attainment to

illustrate the importance of conducting a study on the positive outcomes of investing in student

parents’ education. According to human capital theory for example, “acquiring education

increases productivity – the quantity and the quality of one’s output per time unit – and hence

one’s wages” (p.4). Consequently, supporting student parents’ education is a way to indirectly

contribute to the success of their offspring as theories suggest that students who have educated

parents perform better in school than those whose parents are uneducated. Based on current

studies such as those of Harding, Morris, and Hughes (2015) when parents possess the necessary

cultural capital, their offspring do better when it comes down to navigating the college culture

which is usually a daunting experience for first generation students.


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Residential Curriculum

Most of the debate around the curriculum points to materials that are being covered inside

classrooms. Faculty play a crucial role in students’ education for certain but one important

aspect of students’ learning experiences that should be considered as well in the debate is their

living environment. Students spend a tremendous amount of time in residential settings such as

living learning communities, residence halls, fraternities and sororities and they will most likely

not partake in any form of activities that are not tailored to meet their very individual and unique

needs. According to Cawthon and Schreiber (2012) since Housing is an integral part of a

university, Housing also contributes to the education of student who live on campus.

Understanding and utilizing the most effective types of residential curriculum can positively

contribute to help students from various backgrounds, especially student parents to succeed

academically.

Ethical Considerations Involving Human Subjects

Beneficence

As pointed out in the CITI training, prior to conducting studies on human subject, some

serious ethical considerations such as dignity, bodily integrity, autonomy, and privacy values as

have to be taken into account. The ethical considerations stipulate that when research is being

conducted and human subjects are involved, beneficence should be the top priority. The ultimate

goal of conducting research on student parents must culminate in utilizing the findings of the

research to the benefit of the participants.

The Belmont Commission

According the recommendation of National Commission for the Protection of Human

Subjects in Biomedical and Behavioral Research founded in 1974, most entities conducting
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research on human subjects have to abide by strict federal regulations. Regardless of the nature

of the research and the source of funding, the federal protocols for handling human subject have

to be followed by all researchers. According to Pathol (2006), the main tenets of the federal

regulations are as follows:

 Physical and psychological risks to subjects are minimized.

 Physical and psychological risks to subjects are reasonable in relation to anticipated


benefits to those subjects and to the importance of the general knowledge that may

reasonably be expected to result.

 Selection of subjects is equitable

 Informed consent will be obtained, including at least the following items being
communicated to potential participants or their authorized surrogates:

 purposes of the research, its expected duration, and the nature of any

interventions/experiments;

 anticipated risks and benefits of participation and the reasonable alternatives to

participation in the research protocol;

 confidentiality provisions relating to the research records;

 any compensation and/or treatment available for research related injuries;

 the right to not participate and to discontinue participation at any time without

penalty.

 Informed consent will be documented appropriately.


Throughout the research on student parents, all the steps of the research will be

monitored closely to ensure that all the federal government requirements are met. This will

contribute to give more credibility to the finding of the research. Once the research credibility is
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established, the findings of the research will be taken seriously as well. Following the federal

regulations are a crucial step of the research process in order to avoid wasting resources receive

from donors and the time and energy invested by all the people involved in the research.

Data Collection

Sampling

The participants in this study will consist of undergraduate students who are parents with

children age 3 months to five years old and registered at a four-year public higher education

institution in Illinois. For this particular study, the only groups of undergraduate student parents

that will be considered for the research are those who live in university housing. To sample the

institutions, a website browsing was conducted in the Illinois higher education directory in order

to identity the universities that meet the criteria of a 4-year public institution. Once the

institutions have been identified, a more detailed inquiry has been done in order to compile the

contact details of student support systems in each institution that meets the criteria for the

research. Another in depth browsing of the universities websites has been conducted in order to

identify the student parent support systems that are in place. The research will take place in the

following 4 year public institutions in the state of Illinois

Setting 1:

Northern Illinois University is a public institution that was founded in 1895. It has a

total undergraduate enrollment of 15,027, its setting is suburban, and the campus size is 800

acres. Its in-state tuition and fees are $14,334 (2016-17); out-of-state tuition and fees are

$23,799 (2016-17). Northern Illinois University is located about 65 miles west of Chicago in the

city of DeKalb.

Setting 2:
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Southern Illinois University--Carbondale is a public institution that was founded in 1869.

It has a total undergraduate enrollment of 13,031, its setting is rural, and the campus size is 1,136

acres. It utilizes a semester-based academic calendar. Southern Illinois University in-state

tuition and fees are $13,481 (2016-17); out-of-state tuition and fees are $27,130 (2016-17).

Setting 3:

University of Illinois--Urbana-Champaign is a public institution that was founded in

1867. It has a total undergraduate enrollment of 33,368, its setting is city, and the campus size is

1,783 acres. Its in-state tuition and fees are $15,698 (2016-17); out-of-state tuition and fees are

$31,320 (2016-17). The University of Illinois is located in the twin cities of Urbana and

Champaign in east-central Illinois, only a few hours from Chicago, Indianapolis, and St. Louis.

Permission

Permission for this study will be requested from both the public institutions and the

student parents living in those campuses. A letter will be sent to the three universities

introducing who the research team is composed of, their credentials, and the purpose of the

study. The letter will indicate the portion of the students that the study will be about:

undergraduate students with children age 3 months to 5 years old and living on campus. The

letter will also explain all the details of the research process and address all the ethical

precautions that will be considered in order to respect the human subjects being studied. Another

letter will be sent to students who have been identified to participate in the study. The students

selected will have the option to participate or not participate in the study. They will also be able

to withdraw from the study at any time.

Data collection process


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Since this is a QUAL + QUAN mixed research, Data will be collected simultaneously

from universities and the students. The preliminary surveys will allow the research team to

identify the student parents living on campus and collect their contact information as well.

Letters will be mailed to the selected students explaining the purpose of the study, where the

study will take place and the period of time through which the study will be conducted. Once

student agree to participate, the letters will be sent using certified mailing in order to better track

the delivery of mails. That will allow us to make sure that our letters are reaching the targeted

audience for the research.

Qualitative data collection

Initially, student parents who are potential candidates for this study will be invited to take

an online survey to determine their eligibility. Approximately, 30 student parents from each

institution will be reached throughout the survey process. That will give the team approximately

90 survey responses to analyze and identify the students who meet the criteria for the research.

The qualifying students for the research will then be invited to the interviews. The time, date,

and location of the interviews will be carefully selected so that there are no time conflicts

between students’ class or work schedules and those of the research interviews. The techniques

that will be used are observation and semi-structured interviews to gather information from

students. The questions will consist of multiple choice questions, open ended questions and

rating questions. Notes will be taken as well concerning areas of concern that student parents

will bring up during the interview that were not originally on the list of questions. The data

collected will be processed and analyzed as we move forward with the study. The notes will be

carefully organized into themes and transformed into codes that will be easily interpreted by the

research team. During the interview, the notes will be taken verbatim so that nothing can be lost
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during the translation of notes to codes. The raw notes will be analyzed and grouped into

category of interest. The remaining notes that are not relevant to the topic being studied will be

processed separately to identify observational themes that could be taken into consideration in

the data processing. All interviews will be audio taped as well to ensure that the interviewees’

statements are being fully recorded. Notetaking and audio recordings will be helpful in case one

of the data collecting instruments fails.

Quantitative data gathering

The study will take place in three Illinois four year public institutions. Conducting the

study in three different places will allow room for comparing different strategies used by

different universities to meet the needs of their on-campus student parents and identify better

ways through which apartment staff can support those groups of students. The research will take

place in three settings because the findings from the three sites will be compared and common

trends will be identified. Also, all the support systems located in each university will be

analyzed in comparison with the graduation rates in order to establish if there is a correlation

between these two sets of variables. All three institutions are location within a 5-hour radius and

arrangements will be made so that the team that is responsible for collecting the data reaches

their different locations by bus. Lodging and food accommodations will be made as well to

allow to team to better carry out their mission without having to worry about these basic

elements.

Once the access to the different sites has been granted at the institutional level, the

contact person in the study sites will help us identity staff members working in student parents

support services to be interviewed. University members working at the administrative level, who

have managerial roles related to policies will be interviewed as well. These interviews will allow
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the research team to identify exactly what types of supports systems are being used to support

their on-campus students with dependents. The result of the interview will lead us to the

collection of data from policy documents, and enrollment and graduation rates from the

registration and records office. The research team will then make a triangulation of the data

collected from each institution in order to parallel the findings, culminating in a more

comprehensive understanding of the relationship between student support systems and

graduation rates.

Data analysis

Data will be coded and all information related to the participants will be destroyed in

order to respect their privacy. The data will then be analyzed by a team in order to assess the

answers and see if the research questions have been answered in regards to theory prediction.

Qualitative data analysis

The team will make sure to follow the six steps that Creswell (2015) described in his

book. According to the author “there are six interrelated steps involved in qualitative data

analysis and interpretation” (p.260). The team will prepare and organize the data collected in

order to facilitate the data analysis process. Together, the team will decide on how the data will

be stored and transcribed. Additionally, the team will decide whether the data will be analyzed

by hand or through a computer. After this step, the team will explore the data and code them

into text segments and assign the code labels to the segments. These codes will not only protect

the identity of the participants to the research but they will also serve as means to describe the

central phenomenon of the study. The codes will also be grouped into larger themes that will

constitute the main findings of the research. Then the findings will be organized into tables,

graphs, and figures that will serve to explain the common trends of the study.
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Once the interviews are complete, the team will thank the students for their participation

in the study. Students will also be informed about when they will be able to see the results of the

study. The next step would be to start processing and analyzing the qualitative data. The notes

will be carefully organized and scanned into a computer. The audio recordings as well will be

uploaded into the computer to match the notes. The audio recordings will then be transcribed by

the team members and the transcripts will be compared to the notes that were taken during the

interviews to ensure that anything was not lost during the notetaking process. After this activity,

the team should be able to have a single transcript per student parent interviewed. While going

through the notes, the team will start to record their first impressions about student parents’

opinions in regards to whether supports systems matter to them or not in their college choice

process. At this level of the study, the team should be able to identify the common themes or

trends that students pointed out in the interviews. The team should be able to identify student

parents’ perceptions regarding the impact of support systems such as scholarships, daycare

centers and parenting skills services on their educational experience. Once the themes have been

identified, a table will be created to summarize the themes and to compare them with the

predictions of previous research and theories.

Quantitative Data Analysis

The data will be carefully prepared and organized for analysis. The main goal through

the data analysis process is to determine whether the information gathered point to one direction.

For example, do the data allow the team to answer the research question? The attempt here is to

determine whether there is a correlation between student parent support systems and their

graduation rates. At this level, numeric scores will be assigned to the data and the statistical

program that will be used is a correlation coefficient. Based on the data analyzed, the team will
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determine whether there is a positive or negative correlation between student parent support

systems and their graduation rates. The scores will also be put into tables and graphs to facilitate

the interpretation of data. The results will finally be compared to the results of previous

literature and conclusions will be drawn from previous predictions. The pie charts below will

serve as an example of how the positive correlation will be visually represented.


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Mixed Methods Data Analysis

The findings from the quantitative research will be compared to the finding of the

qualitative research. For instance, if there is a positive correlation between student parent

support systems and their graduation a rate, that does not necessary indicate the causation of the

trend. Therefore, the results from the qualitative research will be crucial to validating the

findings of the quantitate research. For example, if student parents respond favorably to the

presence of support systems on their campuses, that could give more credibility to the overall

findings of the research.

Findings and Reports

The findings of the study will be analyzed to confirm the predictions of previous theories and

research findings. The final report will include a narrative section that lays out the perceptions

of student parents toward support systems that are in place on campus. It will also include a

statistical report showing the positive correlation between the nature of student parent support

system and their graduation rates. Prior to being made available to the public, the final report

will be carefully reviewed by the research team to ensure that all research requirements and steps

have been met throughout the data collection and analysis process. Recommendations to action

plans will be included and these recommendations will clearly indicate who is going to do what

in order to help students with dependents that live on campus. The report will also include the

research plans and activities that can be referenced when a similar research effort is needed in the

future.

Limitations

Given the fact that the study will be focusing solely on students residing on three Illinois

universities, the results may not be necessary applicable to all U.S. student parents. There is also
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the possibility that some of the universities that are being targeting refuse to participate in the

research. That could impact the overall plan of the research and require alternative measures

such as contacting other institutions that were not originally targeted by this research.

Additionally, a correctional design does not demonstrate causation. It only informs us that two

elements or variables are related. So the findings of the research may not be holistically helpful

to the institutions as there will not be a way to show evidence that the increase or decrease of one

or two variables are caused by others.


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SUPPORTING STUDENT PARENTS 25

Appendix

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