Research Project 1 Monitoring Contemporary Concerns in the Media

At the beginning of Chapter 1 Santrock asserts that today's media are concerned about such life-span developmental topics as health and well-being, parenting and education, sociocultural contexts, and social policy. Monitor a newspaper, radio news program, or television news program for a week and keep a record of stories that reflect each of these concerns. That is, search the paper for news items or listen to news broadcasts, and make a record of stories that reflect these concerns. When you are done, tally the number of stories that reflect each concern. Then write a brief report in which you answer the following questions.

 

Questions

 

1. What was the most frequently expressed concern?

2. Were the concerns you encountered m each category focussed on one particular kind of story? Or were there a number of different kinds of news items that reflected a variety of concerns within each category? Explain your answer.

3. Did the stories reflect a life-span perspective? Or did they reflect some other way of viewing the contemporary concerns? Explain your answer.

4. Can you find information in Life-Span Development that is related to each story and that helps you to understand it better? Explain your answer.

5. What information do you wish you had in order to understand the story better?

 

Research Project 2 Identifying the Developmental Issues in a Research Report

 

The knowledge that forms the basis of your textbook is largely found in research reports published in professional journals. While Life-Span Development provides you with an encyclopedic coverage of many topics, you will benefit a great deal by trying to "go to the source” for information about as many topics as your time and interest allow. This project suggests a way that you can use Life-Span Development to help you understand formal research reports better. See also Research Project 2 in the next chapter for a similar suggestion.

Find a research report in a journal (e.g., Adolescence, Child Development, Developmental Psychology, Family Therapy, Journal of Marriage and the Family) on a topic that interests you. Read the article, then write a report about it in terms of the life-span perspective and the nature of development as outlined in Chapter 1 of Life-Span Development. Attach a copy of the first page of the research article (include the abstract which briefly summarizes the entire article) to your report. In addition to including the main points of the study and its findings, answer the following questions.

 

Questions

 

1. Does the article exemplify the life-span perspective? That is, does it illustrate the seven basic contentions that development is life-long, multidimensional, multidirectional, plastic, historically embedded, multidisciplinary, and contextual? Explain your answer.

2. Does the article explore interactions among normative age-graded influences, normative history-graded influences, and nonnormative events? Explain your answer.

3. Does the article reflect the contemporary concerns of health and well-being, parenting and education, sociocultural context, and social policy? Explain your answer.

4. Which aspects of the nature of development does the article address? For example, is the research about cognitive, social, or biological processes? One or more periods of development? Does the article address such issues as maturation and experience, continuity and discontinuity, stability and change. Again, explain your answers.

 

Chapter 2

Research Project 1 Parent-Child Interaction

 

In this project you will observe a parent-child interaction and interpret it according to psychoanalytic, behavioral, and cognitive theoretical approaches. Go to a local supermarket and watch a mother or father shop with a two- to four-year-old child. Describe the interactions you observe, including demands on the part of the child, verbal exchanges between parent and child, and ways in which the parent responds to the demands of the child. Then answer the questions that follow, referring to your observations.

 

Age ____ Sex_____

 

Description:

                                                                                                              

Questions

 

1. On what would a psychoanalytic theorist focus in this example? How would the sequence of observed events be explained?

2. How would a behavioral psychologist analyze the situation? What reinforces or punishers characterized the interaction? Did specific things occur that would make a behavior more likely to occur in the future? Less likely to occur?

3. On what would a cognitive theorist focus in this situation? Why?

4. What is the child learning in this situation? What does the child already know?

 

Research Project 2 Journal Article Critique

 

Part of conducting psychological research is reviewing and understanding published research studies. In this research project, you will choose one of the topics that will be covered in this course (e.g., play, gender roles, moral development, effects of television) and find a research report in a journal (e.g., Adolescence, Child Development, Developmental Psychology, Family Therapy, Journal of Marriage and the Family) on the chosen topic. Read the article and write a report about the article. Enclose a copy of the first page of the research article (include the abstract which briefly summarizes the entire research study) with your report. In addition to including the main points of the study, give your personal reactions to the research findings.

 

Questions

 

1. Can you use the title of the study to identify the independent and dependent variables? (Many titles are in this format: "The effects of IV on the DV.")

2. What did you learn from the introduction section? What is the historical background of the research topic? Which earlier research findings are given as most relevant to this study? What theoretical explanations are emphasized in this section? What is the hypothesis of the present study?

3. What did you learn from the methods section? Who were the subjects? What procedures (e.g., apparatus, directions, assessment tools) were used?

4. What did you learn from the results section? What kinds of statistical procedures were used? What did you learn from charts, frequency tables, and bar graphs? What results did the authors say were statistically significant?

5. What did you learn from the discussion section? How did the authors interpret their results? Did they provide alternative explanations? Did they talk about the limitations of the preset research study? What future research studies were suggested?

6. What kinds of ideas did this article make you think about? Can you design a similar study on this topic?

 

 

Chapter 3

 

Research Project 1 Heritability of Height

The purpose of this project is to demonstrate the concept of heritability by using height as the characteristic. You will do a kinship study of two families (one of the families can be your own) to collect the necessary data. Record the height of all family members over 18 years of age and separate them by sex. Calculate the mean and range of heights of both sexes for both families and compare them. This exercise is intended to give you experience both with a kinship study design and with the concept of heritability for a variable with a clear operational definition. Use the following format to record heights. Then answer the questions that follow.

 

Person/Sex                                      Family 1 Family 2 Data Family 1  Family 2

 

Self                                                                                      

Mother                                        Average female                                                              

Father                                          Average male

Grandmother 1                            Tallest female

Grandmother 2                            Tallest male

Grandfather 1                              Shortest female

Grandfather 2                              Shortest male

Sibling

Sibling

Sibling

Aunt

Aunt

Aunt

Uncle

Uncle

Uncle

Cousin

Cousin

Cousin

Other

Other

Other

                                                                                                               

 Questions

 

1. Which family in your sample is, on average, taller for both males and females?

2. Of the taller family, how many females are taller than the females in the shorter family? How many of the males are taller than the males in the shorter family?

3. From your data, does it appear that height is an inherited trait?

4. What is the advantage of examining the heritability of a variable like height rather than a variable such as temperament or intelligence?

 

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