Here is my formal write up of Mei-Lin’s investigation into attitudes surrounding the care of the elderly in larger Chinese communities within the USA (Swales & Feak, p.109):

There is a widespread assumption, according to Mei-Lan, that Chinese communities typically take good care of their elders and that elders would often refuse assistance from outsiders. Mei-Lin noticed that the available research on US Chinese communities appeared to have been centered on large Chinese communities from East and West coast cities and was interested to discover if this was also true for Chinese communities in smaller Midwest communities; as a result she decided to undertake research into this for inclusion in her master’s in social work. She implemented a small-scale pilot-study consisting of what sociologists would call “semi-structured” interviews. Mei-Lin sourced her subjects via personal contacts she already had within her local Chinese community. After perfunctory approval by her university review board, Mei-Lan held face-to-face interviews with her subjects, in the absence of family members, each lasting around one hour and conducted in the prefered language of the interviewee (Mandarin, Taiwanese, or English.) Unfortunately Mei-Lan experienced some refusals and as a result was only able to interview approximately ten subjects: too few for any meaningful statistical analysis. However this did make for a good pilot-study and her interview-based approach was, according to Mei-Lan greatly aided by the availability of language choice that she offered to her participants.

The problem with Mei-Lan’s approach began with her conducted interviews with participants sourced only through her personal contacts. This led to too small a sample size, restricting the breadth of her finding and rendering them unsuitable for any meaningful statistical analysis. This problem was exacerbated by the refusals she received. In addition, the depth of her inquiry was limited by her choice of a semi-structured interview lasting only an hour. Although this provided her with a good pilot-study, she could have still learned more for her ten participants by conducting far longer, open ended discussions from which she could obtain more of a descriptive narrative of their experiences living in the US. From this she could conduct, for example, a word frequency analysis, and search for experiential trends amongst elderly Chinese people in regards to their status in their communities and the outside assistance that they are both offered and accept.

Swales, J. M., & Feak, C.B. (2004). Academic Writing For Graduate Students. MI,Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press.