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CHAPTER III RESEARCH METHOD
A. Research Design
This research was a qualitative research and the results of the research were data in the form of expressions instead of numbers. Qualitative research aims to develop
an understanding about social phenomena in the world, such as identifying why things are the way they are Yorkshire, 2009: 7. The first step required in this
qualitative research was doing close reading to the given text and figuring out every details in the text that supports the data of the research. Then, the researcher
interpreted the meaning of the text guided by the theory used in order to answer the research questions.
The data of this research could not be measured numerically. Therefore, a descriptive-qualitative method was employed to analyze the data of the research. The
data were used to describe the phenomena as the effects of traumatic experiences toward adolescence’s psychosocial development as depicted in Chbosky’s The Perks
of Being a Wallflower. The descriptive-qualitative method helped the researcher explain the complexity of the meaning of the data in order to make the readers
understand it.
B. The Data and Sources of Data
The primary source of this research was The Perks of being a Wallflower, a novel written by Stephen Chbosky and published in 1999. The novel was composed of four
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parts excluding epilogue and the story is formed in letters. The researcher read and scrutinized the script comprehensively. The novel tells the fictional story of a grown
up boy who experience identity crisis during his personality development. This novel provides main data of the study in the form of sentences and expressions reflecting
the topic of traumatic experience and personality development. Furthermore, the data taken helped the researcher to answer the research questions 1 how traumatic
experiences make Charlie fail to accomplish the basic strength in the fifth stage of Erikson’s psychosocial development, 2 how does the failure give impact toward
Charlie’s personality in the sixth stage of Erikson’s theory.
C. Research Instruments
The research instrument of this research was the researcher herself, who played an important role in analyzing the data on the novel. According to Creswell 2014:
185, the researcher as the key of the research instrument collects the data by examining documents and observing behavior. A secondary instrument is also
possible to be used in collecting the data, but the researcher is the one who gather the information. The researcher collected, categorized, and interpreted the data from the
novel to get meanings in accordance with the topic of the research. The interpretation and analysis of the researcher on the data were highly needed in order to guide the
reader to get a deep understanding about the social phenomenon depicted in Chbosky’s The Perks of Being a Wallflower.
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A table sheet was also needed as the secondary instrument to make the researcher easier in collecting the data during the research process. All of the data that could be
analyzed were recorded in the table sheet. The table sheet also helped the researcher classify the data into categories.
D. The Technique of Data Collection
The research data were taken by reading the novel carefully and noticing every detail that would be analyzed. In this research, the researcher was doing close reading
to Chbosky’s The Perks of Being a Wallflower. The next step was re-reading the novel comprehension and taking notes of the data from the novel. Then, the
researcher interpreted the data from the novel and categorized the data in order to answer the research questions. The last, the researcher identified the data based on
each categorization. To answer the first research question, the data were categorized into three parts of Charlie’s failure in the fifth stage of Erikson’s Psychosocial
Development; those were identity diffusion, identity foreclosure, and negative identity. The second categorization was related to the effects of the failure to
Charlie’s personality in the later stage of the development; those were intimacy and isolation.
The researcher used a data sheet for facilitating the work during the process of data collection. The data sheet helped the researcher to record all the data found in the
text. The forms of the table sheet are displayed in Table 1 and Table 2 below.
