CHAPTER II: METHODOLOGY

Faced with the unique opportunity of capturing the life stories, attitudes, and opinions of successful ABE students, project staff decided to include two Success Stories award recipients in the project as research assistants. The rationale behind this selection was that participants would be more inclined to be interviewed by their peers and would be willing to share freely with individuals whose experiences were similar to their own. Four different instruments (See Appendix A) were selected to collect data: a Review of Success Stories Booklets; an Informal Interview; an Impact Survey, and the Quality of Life Inventory (QOLI), a brief but comprehensive standardized test that measures respondents’ satisfaction with their lives. This multiplicity of instruments allowed researchers to gather data that could be analyzed qualitatively and quantitatively and compared with results from a standardized instrument. The chapter on methodology will describe study participants and research team members. It will delineate research strategies, detail instruments for data collection and analysis, and present study limitations.

Identification and Selection of Study Participants

Participants in this study were selected from a database of 229 ABLE students who were honored as Pennsylvania’s Success Stories award recipients between the years 1978 and 1999. In reviewing this database, the project director found that 50 award recipients were identified only by the adult education programs they attended. No attempt was made to locate these individuals. Addresses and social security numbers were listed for 106 award recipients, and addresses alone were available for another 73 Success Stories winners.

Information on these 179 recipients was sent to PennDot, an arm of Pennsylvania’s Bureau of Transportation. Clerks checked award recipients’ names, social security numbers and addresses against Pennsylvania driver registration files. PennDot was able to match 124 award recipients with previous or new addresses. No telephone numbers were provided. Nine adult learners who were honored as Success Stories award recipients in February, 2000 were added to the database to bring the number of potential study participants to 133 individuals.

The project director contacted current and past program directors and teachers. These ABLE staff members were provided with the PennDot list of names and addresses and asked to supply working telephone numbers for adult learners previous enrolled in their programs or living in their general locality. Of the 22 years covered in this study, only award recip ients from the years 1980 and 1985 are not represented.

No addresses or social security numbers were available for award recipients honored in 1980. Only three members of the 1985 cohort were identified by PennDot. Of these, one refused an interview, one was mentally ill and the third lived in a location that was inaccessible for interview purposes. Of the 133 award recipients identified by PennDot:

70 took part in the study
21 could not be located
12 were identified as dead
Six were physically, mentally or emotionally unable to be interviewed
Four had moved out of the state or country
Three refused to take part in the study
One did not show up for a scheduled interview
Eight interviews could not be scheduled within the given time frame
Eight participants lived in locations unserviceable by research assistants