Data Collection Challenges in Researching Parentification Among College Students in Goa, India

Research training paints a picture of research as a linear process. At the beginning of a PhD, novice researchers expect that a research study will be structured and manageable. However, the practical challenges emerge only in the field. Based on my research experience, I aim to shed light on the clash between the expectations and the reality of gathering data in this chapter. My PhD research explores the parentification experiences of college students using a retrospective approach. I had expected that recruiting research participants would be a smooth and straightforward process. However, the data collection phase proved to be difficult. Significant challenges included gaining access to participants, facing academic misconduct and navigating language comprehension issues shaped by sociocultural contexts. While some of these problems were avoided in online data collection, it came with its own drawbacks. The online data collection requires researchers to engage with social media algorithms that shape the visibility of the post. Due to lack of engagement on social networking sites, the study did not reach the target population effectively, and the responses collected via online data collection were not authentic. As a result, both the credibility of the responses and the representativeness of the sample were affected. The issue escalated even more as the study followed a non-probability sampling method. By sharing my challenges and the ways I navigated them, this chapter aims to help future researchers cultivate more practical and realistic expectations of fieldwork. It also provides solutions to common challenges encountered in psychological research.