TPC Journal-Vol 9- Issue 1

70 The Professional Counselor | Volume 9, Issue 1 Recruitment materials were shared with African American women using direct electronic mail as well as social media. Participants also referred potential participants to the research team for inclusion in the study (snowball sampling). Research team members contacted all participants via direct electronic mail to provide them with details about the study, review the informed consent document, collect demographic information, and schedule the individual interview. Sample size recommendations for qualitative research such as the present study range from six to 12 participants (Creswell, 2013; Guest, Bunce, & Johnson, 2006; Onwuegbuzie & Leech, 2007). Hence, the research team sought to recruit 20 participants to account for the possibility of attrition. In response to recruitment efforts, 22 individuals expressed interest in the study and were initially contacted by the researchers. Two of those individuals were unable to complete an individual interview, and another individual was eliminated because of poor audio recording quality. Hence, data from 19 participants were analyzed for this study. Further recruitment was deemed unnecessary as the sample size exceeded the recommended size and the data analysis reached saturation with data from these 19 participants. The participants ranged in age from 31 to 61, with a mean age of 44.8. Their sons ranged in age from 2 to 35, though all had at least one son under age 25. All participants were high school graduates, and most had an advanced degree (52.6%). Additionally, most participants lived in two-parent households (52.6%) at the time of the study, earned an annual household income of more than $100,000 (42.1%), and lived in a suburban setting (57.9%). Participant profiles are provided in Table 1. Data Collection and Analysis The researchers conducted semi-structured individual interviews with the 19 participants, each lasting 20 to 60 minutes. All interviews were conducted over the phone, audio-recorded, and transcribed verbatim. The interview protocol consisted of the following questions: (a) What have your experiences been like being a mother of an African American boy or young man? (b) There have been several violent incidents reported by the media involving African American young men. How do you feel about these incidents? (c) Was there any particular incident that affected you the most? (d) How would you describe your overall mental and physical health? and (e) What would you say are your strengths as a mother? The interviewers provided follow-up questions and clarifying statements to participants when they were deemed necessary or when participants asked for clarification. Once the interviews were transcribed, the research team analyzed the data in accordance with methods outlined by Moustakas (1994). First, the team immersed themselves in the data by reviewing each transcript individually. They divided the 19 transcripts between the two of them and read through them to become familiar with the data. For each transcript, they identified relevant statements that reflected the participants’ lived experiences (horizontalization) as African American mothers raising boys and young men within the contexts of structural racism and community and state violence. After going through this process individually, the research team met multiple times to review all transcripts and confer about these textural descriptions. The research team identified relevant codes and then synthesized the textural descriptions into themes by examining them for commonalities to distill the meaning expressed by the participants. Verbatim examples were extracted from the transcripts and used to generate a thematic and visual description of the phenomenon being examined. Once the initial data analysis was completed, the researchers conducted member checking by sending each participant their individual transcript as well as the written results section. Participants were asked to comment on the accuracy of their transcripts as well as the alignment of the