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Limitations of the current study
While the present study has supplied much useful
information about adult education programs from a client-centered perspective,
it has several limitations that must be acknowledged.
This study provided little information about minority populations.
By far the majority of study participants were white and the experiences
of African American and Hispanic respondents are underrepresented.
This reflects the demographics of the counties studied. The educational
needs and goals of minority members may differ in important ways from those of
whites; these differences need to be explored further.
While our qualitative research design worked well with rural communities,
it was seriously hampered in a more urban setting.
The kinds of informational and support networks that allowed us to locate
study participants in more rural settings were not fruitful in an urban context.
In fact, we were unable to conduct interviews in the metropolitan county
included in our study, despite its rural character. This suggests the need for
an alternative research design, perhaps including more extensive ethnographic
fieldwork, if further information is needed on undereducated adults in urban and
suburban settings.
Some
of our research questions were more useful than others. We found that the
answers given to some of our questions were too speculative to provide valid
information, although they did provide insights into how adult education is
perceived. Specifically, our qualitative analysis of the interview transcripts
revealed that questions regarding how programs could be improved or how services
could be expanded in terms of scheduling and location yielded inconclusive and,
more importantly, misleading results when analyzed quantitatively.
Given these limitations, however, the study provides ample evidence that
undereducated adults value education and that they are needful of educational
services. Many of the common assumptions about undereducated adults--that
they are unmotivated, lazy, unconcerned about education--are clearly dispelled
by this study. Rather, the lives of undereducated Kentuckians are affected
by complex and interrelated demands that often prevent them from successfully
setting and reaching educational goals.
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