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themes have four main themes as follows: the teachers’ perspectives on the importance of programming; the challenges teachers face in teaching programming to primary students; time and resources allocated for programming; and recommendations for better teaching the programming.
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includes a question that investigates the students' cognitive ability to understand the programming curriculum being taught to them at school. Additionally, it has questions that check on the parents' awareness of the necessity of the idea that children programme the computer rather than the computer programming the children. In addition to that, the questionnaire has questions to be answered by the parents themselves about their perception of programming and if they feel confident in supporting their kids or not, because traditionally, it has been argued that the parents' passion for any technology is correlated to the kids' passion to learn it. An online questionnaire was used to assess parents’ perceptions and students’ attitudes towards programming. The Google Forms tool is used for producing the online questionnaires because it is straightforward to codify. The Likert scale is a forced-choice scale that is used in a questionnaire to get a series of answers that go from the most extreme to the least extreme. It is a powerful and simple instrument. A positive expression (strongly agree) in the questionnaire indicates complete agreement, and a negative phrase (strongly disagree) indicates complete disagreement. Furthermore, there is also a rationale for combining negative and positive statements is that a response may be required to evaluate each part on its own merits (Maher 1993). To prevent confusion, questions were related whenever possible. The researcher created two versions of the questionnaire (Arabic and English) so that she could guarantee a larger number of respondents. Then she translated the Arabic responses to English and finally combined the Arabic and English responses to form the findings and make the analysis. The first part of the questionnaire explores the goal of the study and general questions to determine the demographic data of the respondents such as age, gender, and nationality, whereas the second part highlights the parents’ level of estimation of the importance of computer programming to their kids' academic and future achievement as well as highlights the challenges that may hinder the kids' willingness and ability to learn to program. The questionnaire at the end includes a thankful phrase for the participants for their help and cooperation.
3.5.2 Sample Selection
Voluntary response sampling was used because it was a cost-effective and time-efficient way to collect the necessary data from parents. The reason for distributing this questionnaire to the parents and not the students themselves stems from the researcher’s unwillingness to expose the children at this age to the Likert-scale questions. According to Zeman et al. (2006), the
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emotional development of children is interdependent with their social, neurophysiological, cognitive, and linguistic development. Consequently, the scale that employs a Likert style to evaluate emotional states may be challenged with concerns regarding whether the states are internally distinguished by the child and their cognitive capacity. Turning again to Piaget, certain types of judgments are difficult for children throughout the concrete operations stage (7–11 years of age), in which the child still develops the capacity to form judgments and reason about the physical world (Piaget 1954). Thus, it would seem that the use of Likert scales for assessing judgments about intangible or abstract concepts such as internal feelings and tangible or physical materials is really challenging (Mellor & Moore 2014). Therefore, the questionnaire was distributed to the parents—mostly mothers—because they are the main factor the researcher can depend on to get information about the students' experiences and perceptions.
Choosing the appropriate sample size entails anticipating that the sample size will be large enough to provide adequate "power" to the investigation. A study's "power" can be defined as the likelihood of properly detecting that the intervention creates a treatment effect if one exists (Shorten & Moorely 2014). For determining the current study sample size, the whole population size is unknown, as the study target parents are from the UAE, which makes it hard to determine their exact number.
Where the population is unknown, the sample size can be derived by the infinite population sample size formula by calculating the minimum sample size required for accuracy in estimating proportions, considering the standard normal deviation at a confidence level of 95 per cent (1.96), the proportion selecting a response or option (50 per cent = 0.5), and the confidence interval (0.05 = 5). The formula is:
S= Z2 × P× (1−P) / M2 Where:
S = sample size for infinite population
Z = Z score. It is determined based on the confidence level. If we consider confidence level 95% then Z score = 1.96.
P= % of population probability (assumed to be 50% = 0.5)
M= margin of error. It means a miscalculation or change of circumstances. It takes 5% (0.05).
So, according to this formula:
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= 3.8416 × 0.25 / 0.0025 S = 384.16
Thus, 384.16 participants are representative of the unknown parents in UAE.
3.5.3 Piloting the online questionnaire
The questionnaire was amended and piloted with four participants before it was distributed.
Spelling problems and confusing sentences were spotted and reworded throughout the piloting phase. The questionnaire was originally designed in English, but it was later decided to convert it into Arabic to avoid any misunderstandings, given that the bulk of participants were Arab nationals. The Arabic translation was validated when developing the question items to assure the survey's legitimacy. After deleting the perplexing questions, just ten items remained.
3.5.4 Quantitative data analysis
The quantitative phase was employed to generalise the results of the qualitative study. The link has been sent to the parents the researcher knows, as well as shared with her connections on different social media platforms like Facebook, the parents' WhatsApp group, and LinkedIn.
The questionnaire statistical data was analysed using SPSS version 23. A cohort of 35 parents took part in the study (70% mothers and 30% fathers); their ages ranged from 25 to 45. To ensure the study’s validity, parents who responded with a strong agreement or agreement were counted. Many parents felt more comfortable answering the questionnaire in their mother tongue, especially in the open-ended question at the end. Many of them freely shared their ideas and some suggestions, which were considered and added to the study results.