Global Journal of Medical Research, K: Interdisciplinary, Volume 22 Issue 3

children and/or parents rate the level of monitoring in which each parent engages. Since the parent's role has been established as an important aspect of parental monitoring, it is important to explore parental perception and share their experiences aiming to identify and evaluate the facts on parental monitoring in the study’s cultural context. Sri Lanka has been considered as having a family-based culture in which the parent’s role has considered as a significant factor in one’s life and this culture accepts and considers an adolescent as a child even if they are moving forward with their physical, psychological, and social developments with seeking more and more independence and autonomy. However, the busy lifestyle of parents has led to lesser involvement with adolescents in the recent past and also the risk behavior involvement among Sri Lankan adolescents has shown a tremendous increase during the last decade. Many studies have been done to identify factors that lead adolescents’ behavior to risks and to explore concepts needed in the prevention of risk behavior involvement of the adolescents other than many of the parenting behaviors and parents' involvement. Parental monitoring also has not been explored in detail in the Sri Lankan context, even though this has been identified as a much important concept worldwide focusing positively towards healthier adolescents with minimizing adolescents’ involvement in risk behaviors. Furthermore, exploring the content of parental monitoring through identifying true perceptions and experiences of parents will help to design effective parenting programs to promote better parenting as well as healthier adolescence through improving parents’ monitoring practices. II. M ethods Investigators developed a mediator guide to collect data following a thorough literature review and conducting discussions with experts from the fields of psychology, public health and sociology whose expertise lies in working with Sri Lankan adolescents. The mediator guide included an introduction for the discussion and a section with semi-structured open- ended follow-up questions addressing two main areas; parents’ experiences and their perceptions on parental monitoring. To ensure integrity and trustworthiness, all the discussion questions were reviewed by a panel of experts. Pretesting and the content validity of the guide were assessed before using it in the study proper. Audio recordings with the use of notes taken during the discussions were transcribed verbatiminto Sinhalese and translated into English by a research assistant. Narratives written down were confirmed and corrected after listening to the recordings of the discussions repeatedly. Pseudonyms were assigned in the places of real names of parents to maintain the anonymity of the data. Transcripts and translations were checked with the original audio-recording by the principal investigator. Thematic analysis approach was used for analyzing collected qualitative data through an iterative 2 Year 2022 Global Journal of Medical Research Volume XXII Issue III Version I ( D ) K © 2022 Global Journals Perception and Experience of Parents on Monitoring their School Going Adolescents– A Qualitative Study Conducted in Kandy District, Sri Lanka A qualitative study was conducted through focus group discussions (FGD) with biological parents of schooling adolescents in the age group of 14 -16 years in Denuwara education zone in Kandy district. Qualitative exploratory approach is ideal in situations in which to no data currently exists as well as when researchers use a primarily inductive approach to explore a broad research area (Rendle et al., 2019). Ten FGDs were conducted with ten parents for each. For two FGDs, there were only nine and eight participants. Parents were informed through purposively selected schooling adolescents about their recruitment for the study. Either father or mother of selected adolescents was invited by key contacts (class teachers) to participate in the parent session. A parent with any severe psychological impairment for themselves or a parent with an adolescent with physical or psychological impairment and biological parent who is widowed or remarried were excluded. This study was conducted during the period from December 2019 to January 2020 and all FGDs were held at school premises in classrooms, on Saturdays. Discussions were conducted separately from each other using the moderator guide, by the principal investigator, who was specially trained in conducting FGDs and qualitative research. All discussions were held in Sinhala . One portion of the discussion was dedicated to exploring perceptions of monitoring and the other portion of the discussion was to share the experiences of monitoring behavior. The area of the discussion was changed in subsequent discussions to elaborate on the pattern of expressions of the participants. The duration of the parent’s discussions varied from 60 to 90 minutes. An observer was also present during the discussions and took notes about the qualities of interactions between participants including any perceived power imbalances and participants’ level of engagement. The verbal responses were noted down manually during the discussions by the observer and the discussions were tape-recorded with the consent of participants maintaining confidentiality. Special attention was given to prevent non-verbal clues through body language. Participants were given time to have interactions. In addition, they were encouraged to have a free flow of thoughts and tried to keep the discussion on track, drawing information from participants as much as possible, monitoring the length of discussion on particular topics and maintaining a neutral stance. Participants were given enough time to think as well. Probing was done as and when necessary until the participant ran out of new information to share.