Developmental Research Methods
There are a number of research designs that are used
in developmental research. As discussed in your textbook, longitudinal and
cross-sectional research is used to assess developmental change and to explore
developmental topics and changes over time.
Go to the KU Online Library and select either a
longitudinal or cross-sectional research article. What is the research
question, and how did the researcher(s) attempt to answer this research
question? Prior to discussing the steps involved, be sure to name the research
method, which should be eitherlongitudinal or cross sectional. Finally, use
caution when directly quoting from the article, ensure that you are summarizing
using your own words.
Based on the information in your text, what ethical
issues should you consider when conducting a research study with children?
Identify at least two ethical issues described in your text.
Think about what you would like to learn about
developmental change; then create your own research question that would require
using either a longitudinal or cross-sectional methodology.
STUDENT
1 Response:
What is the research question, and how did
the researcher(s) attempt to answer this research question?
The question that was asked by the researchers was:
”Addresses the gap between coping strategies in relation to critical adolescent
characteristics.”
The study: cross-sectional and longitudinal.
92 mothers and their children who have developmental disabilities.
The study overall was designed to look at how the emotions and mood of the
mother affected the child with DD. An while most of the information that was
gather did indeed support the hypothesis when you read the article you can help
but feel like more really does need to be done. By this I mean that mothers are
projecting their depression, anxiety symptoms off onto their children, which we
already know can happen even when the child doesn’t have DD issues. However the
added complications of DD only increases the maternal feelings of failure, and
when a parent feels as though they have failed as a parent that emotion is
projected to the child. The article suggest the following; “Active
Coping/Planning and Positive Reinterpretation/Growth as coping strategies among
mothers of adolescents with higher levels of behavior problems.” (Woodman,
2013) Now for us we would think of this as more of a fairly obvious concept,
however when you really start to think about parenting and how different
parenting style has changed from when we were children to how it is now we see
how the concept of positive parenting has come about.
Based on the information in your text,
what ethical issues should you consider when conducting a research study with
children? Identify at least two ethical issues described in your text.
According to the text there are 7 ethical guidelines that need to be followed
when working with children. The two that I find to be the most important are;
nonharmful procedures, and deception (Bukatko, 2008).
Nonharmful procedures is the concept that we as investigators cannot cause any
physical or psychological harm. If the child is going to be exposed to some
sort of stressful event then there needs to be a diagnostic or therapeutic
reason for the stress to be imposed.
Deception is when we as the investigator has to keep information from the
child, however we do need to make very clear to the child at the end of the
study why we had to keep the information from them.
Think about what you would like to learn
about developmental change; then create your own research question that would
require using either a longitudinal or cross-sectional methodology.
Something that I would like to research:
How a child is affect by repeated parental military deployments, consisting of
4 or more deployments with less than 2 years home time in between deployments.
The reason that I would like to learn more about this and why I think that this
would make a good longitudinal study is because there are so many military men
who are being deployed every other year, who do have children. We do not really
know what the long term effect of these multiple deployments are going to have
on these children, like we do on the multitude of moves that a military family
has to go through.
References
Bukatko, D. (2008). Child and adolescent
development: A chronological approach. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company.
Woodman, A. C.-C. (2013, June). The role of coping
strategies in predicting change in parenting efficacy and depressive symptoms
among mothers of adolescents with developmental disabilities. Journal of
Intellectual Disability Research, 57(6), 513-530.
STUDENT
2 RESPONSE
The study was researching sex differences in
personality. The study focused on two possible sources that may or may not be
an inconsistency for sex differences in personality. Those sources were
culture and age. The researchers attempted to answer the question by
doing a cross sectional study. They used adolescents age twelve to
seventeen and twenty-three different cultures. The testing they used was
the NEO-PI-3. This is a personality test that measures the five major
domains of personality and six facets within each domain. It is
considered a gold standard in personality testing. The researchers used
mostly undergraduate college students in each country to collect data from
children within the age group that the informant knew and only one test was
given to each informant. The adolescents that participated in the study
remained anonymous and the study was voluntary.
Ethical issues to consider when conducting research on
children would be several, but two that stand out are informed consent and
non-harmful procedures. Informed consent is making sure the child is told
of all the features of the research that may affect the child being willing to
participate. The child has the right to stop the participation at any
time during the study. (Bukatko, 2008, p.64). Non-harmful
procedures is making sure the researcher cannot use any procedure that could
cause physical, emotional harm to the child. The least stressful research
option available whenever possible.
I would like to see a longitudinal study on children
with mental health diagnosis such as bi-polar disorder will need to continue
with medications and therapy through their adolescences. The reason I am
interested in this information is that I have seen a few children in our area
that have been on medication that “outgrew” their disorder.
De Bolle, M., De Fruyt, F., McCrae, R. R., Löckenhoff,
C. E., Costa, P. J., Aguilar-Vafaie, M. E., & … Terracciano, A. (2015).
The emergence of sex differences in personality traits in early adolescence: A
cross-sectional, cross-cultural study. Journal Of Personality And Social
Psychology, 108(1), 171-185. doi:10.1037/a0038497
Bukatko, D. (2008). Child and adolescent
development. A chronological approach. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin
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