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

monitoring their adolescents during the discussion. A mother stated, "As I am a working mother, I have very little time to stay at home… actually, I do spend time even doing my work at home… that small-time period is much busier than my office time… I normally spent that short time helping my daughter to do her school homework”. They shared experiences where responsibilities of monitoring are not being shared among fathers and mothers and parents are embarrassed about communicating with adolescents as barriers to continue quality parental monitoring. Statements made by the parents such as, “I think my wife should know all about my child…” and “I felt embarrassed in asking everything from my child… I mean about her friends all the time… I feel I am not that free for that” evidenced the above-mentioned themes respectively. IV. D iscussion A qualitative research approach, rooted through an exploratory and descriptive research design was selected for this study to allow parents to freely discuss and share their experiences and to explore parents’ perceptions of the monitoring process. This design was suitable as the study explored the contextual elements and experiences of parents' journeys through the monitoring process of their school-going adolescent children, and provided comprehensive descriptions of parents' experiences of monitoring their adolescents' daily activities, their companions and whereabouts. This method helped to study it in-depth and gave opportunities for participants to come up with their feelings. Of the available qualitative methods, FGD was used in this study as it is commonly used in social and health research to explore the perspectives of participants (Tausch & Menold, 2016). The group functions by encouraging the participants to comment, explain, disagree, and share their views. Thus, experiences were shared, and opinions were voiced that might not surface during individual interviews (O.Nyumba et al., 2018; Tausch & Menold, 2016). Hence, although it takes more time and effort to organize focus groups, and they cause greater logistical problems than individual interviews do, FGDs might generate more ideas about, and yield deeper insights into, the problem under investigation (Coenen et al., 2012). In-depth interviews were not considered here as they will not facilitate coming up with their feelings and opinion with straight forwarded questioning where again reminding experiences is much easier with sharing with others. When recruiting participants, diversity in their socio-economic backgrounds was considered to optimize the results of the study. A purposive sampling method was adopted to secure an adequate representation of all three school types in the study. The maximum sample variation allowed the space to gather different types of information about this topic. Four broader themes identified in the perception of parental monitoring were the parents' understanding of parental monitoring, expectations of parents in relation to adolescent lives, the role of sex on parental monitoring perception and perceived factors affecting the amount and the quality of parental monitoring done by parents. Findings suggested that there be different understandings of parental monitoring among parents who participated in the study. Most parents were practicing it unintentionally. Some of them had no impression of the concept of parental monitoring but came out with activities that they were used to practice with their parenting roles which can be considered as monitoring their adolescent children unintentionally. Even though they behaved unintentionally, their aim was to reduce or prevent their adolescent kids from being involved in risk behaviors. This concludes that awareness about parental monitoring is rather a “grey area” that has not been established on its perfect understanding. Parents had a perception that without parental monitoring their adolescents cannot achieve academic success and socially acceptable behaviors. Mostly these expectations were based on their own perception of prioritizing activities and thinking of the benefits, such as school academic work schedules and deciding on friends. However, parents generalized their perceptions on monitoring activities based on their expectations about age and sex appropriate and socially acceptable adolescent behaviors. Those expectations guide parental monitoring through enforcing rules and boundaries for adolescents’ activities, whereabouts and companions. Parent's expectations have been raised as a theme in parental perception on monitoring practices with adolescent's free time use in a qualitative study done in Canada among parents (n=17) of adolescents aged 12–14 years using the interview methods. They also highlighted the expectations of parents are associated with establishing limits and control for adolescents’ free time used for their activities. Once parents’ parameters and expectations were covered, their adolescents were relatively free to behave under parents’ guidelines (Hutchinson et al., 2003). However, this study covers monitoring of their adolescents on their expectations related to adolescent free time activities, the present study generally presents parents’ perceived monitoring as one end result of their expectations. The role of the sex of the adolescent child as well as the parents were identified as a theme that describes changes in parental monitoring perception of parents. Both mothers and fathers are perceived as mothers are mostly responsible for monitoring their adolescent children and without any opposition, many parents accepted that mothers do monitor their children 5 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 as a routine practice than fathers. The same perception has been explored in a qualitative study done among 53