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    Exploring the Impact of Home-Schooling on the Psychological Wellbeing of Irish Families During the Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) Pandemic: A Qualitative Study Protocol


    O’Sullivan, Katriona, McGrane, Amy, Clark, Serena and Marshall, Kevin (2020) Exploring the Impact of Home-Schooling on the Psychological Wellbeing of Irish Families During the Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) Pandemic: A Qualitative Study Protocol. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 19. ISSN 1609-4069

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    Abstract

    Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has placed severe restrictions on people’s behavior worldwide with school closures in many countries. These closures have shifted education from the classroom to the home. This change is unprecedented, and home-schooling has placed substantial stress on families across the world. As of 9 April 2020, 1.57 billion children were being educated by families that had little or no experience of protracted home-schooling. An essential but neglected issue related to COVID-19 is the psychological impact of home-schooling on family wellbeing, especially considering the other stressors they are experiencing including social isolation, fears of infection, frustration, boredom, inadequate information, and financial stress. This study explores the impact of home-schooling on family psychological wellbeing during COVID-19. These findings will help develop supports and interventions for this population. Methods: An exploratory qualitative study will be conducted using semistructured interviews with a convenience sample of families (at least one parent and one child). Participants will be recruited using social media outlets, contacts of academic members and snowball sampling. Interviews will take place using Microsoft Teams and via telephone and recorded for transcription purposes. These transcripts will be analyzed using interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA). Ethical approval has been granted by the Social Research Ethics Subcommittee (SRESC) Maynooth University (2407411). The Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) has funded the research with the COVID-19 rapid response grant. The dissemination of findings will be through open access journal publications, distribution of lay summaries, press release and policy papers. Discussion: The research findings will discuss the impact that home-schooling has had on family psychological wellbeing. It will examine how parents are managing their children’s education and learning while handling the other stresses associated with COVID-19. A deeper understanding of the impact of school closures and home-schooling on family processes is essential if the psychological wellbeing of families is to be protected and supported during challenging times such as health-related disasters.
    Item Type: Article
    Additional Information: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage). Cite as: O’Sullivan K, McGrane A, Clark S, Marshall K. Exploring the Impact of Home-Schooling on the Psychological Wellbeing of Irish Families During the Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) Pandemic: A Qualitative Study Protocol. International Journal of Qualitative Methods. January 2020. doi:10.1177/1609406920980954 . The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the Science Foundation Ireland through the COVID-19 Rapid Response under COVID-RRC Grant 20/COV/0151. Dr Katriona O’Sullivan is Principal Investigator. The study protocol has undergone peer-review by the funding body.
    Keywords: interpretive phenomenology; focus groups; interpretive description; case study; methods in qualitative inquiry;
    Academic Unit: Assisting Living & Learning,ALL institute
    Faculty of Science and Engineering > Psychology
    Item ID: 15263
    Identification Number: 10.1177/1609406920980954
    Depositing User: Katriona O'Sullivan
    Date Deposited: 18 Jan 2022 15:26
    Journal or Publication Title: International Journal of Qualitative Methods
    Publisher: SAGE Publications
    Refereed: Yes
    Funders: Science Foundation Ireland (SFI)
    Related URLs:
    URI: https://mu.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/15263
    Use Licence: This item is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike Licence (CC BY-NC-SA). Details of this licence are available here

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