Abstract
A Western worldview pervades the social and psychological study of children. The current study employed a story-stem method to qualitatively explore the daily and family life experiences of young Ghanaian primary school children in urban Ghana through their story narratives. The recorded narratives of 69 5- to 8-year-old children were elicited through presenting stems of common child-caregiver scenarios and thematically analysed. Five overarching themes were identified: daily routines and concerns, child-caregiver interactions, spirituality, death-related fears and depictions, and responses to injury. The narrative themes reveal the likely mental and physical occupations of these children, as characterized by household chores, financial concerns and school concerns, as well as underlying cultural values through their portrayals of parenting values, parental discipline and spiritual beliefs. Story stems depicting common childhood problems (e.g. knee injury) sometimes evoked death and hospitalization subthemes following an escalation of health problems. Possible interpretations for these findings are discussed, taking into account cultural, developmental and emotional factors. Story stems are a promising and developmentally appropriate tool for qualitative analysts to investigate the experiences and worldview of young children in non-Western cultures.
Highlights
The following measures were taken to ensure quality and rigour: (1) the thematic analysis was conducted blind to all child and family background information; (2) a reflexive approach and log were utilized throughout the analysis process; (3) analysis was completed in regular consultation with the other authors; the operational description of codes was discussed and a refined coding frame was jointly finalized to ensure coding frame transparency (Joffe 2012)
The daily routines and concerns theme covers everyday life encompassing going to school and money concerns as subthemes that children raised spontaneously, while household chores, recreational activities, and sharing mealtimes had been introduced or prompted in the story stems
Such narratives may demonstrate the caregiver expressing a desire for the child to make their family proud or for financial help, or otherwise may reflect a form of indirect praise of the child’s abilities—all of these interpretations suggest a certain relational inter-dependence, and each link with otherthemes
Summary
In Accra, the capital of Ghana, over 90 percent of schoolage children attend school, which is compulsory up to the age of 15 years (Fink et al 2012). English-speaking children, aged between 5 and 8 years, were recruited from a private and a public primary school in the Greater Accra region, Ghana. The current study utilised only the procedure, which presents four semi-structured scenarios or ‘stems’ that were likely to be familiar to young children (having a nightmare, hurting your knee, having a stomachache, and getting lost) This procedure was designed to elicit story completions from which, in the original MCAST measure, the child’s attachment classification is usually evaluated. The following measures were taken to ensure quality and rigour: (1) the thematic analysis was conducted blind to all child and family background information; (2) a reflexive approach and log were utilized throughout the analysis process; (3) analysis was completed in regular consultation with the other authors; the operational description of codes was discussed and a refined coding frame was jointly finalized to ensure coding frame transparency (Joffe 2012)
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