a.From the perspective of research methodology, what is wrong with the newspaper reporter’s title? Explain your answer. b.Critique the methodology the researcher used to collect data. In doing so, describe both strengths and weaknesses. In providing you response, be sure to touch on concepts covered in this course, including: external validity, prediction, randomness of sample, causal links, and biases of self-reporting.c.Let’s say the researcher identifies 600 people who express interest in participating in the study. He determines that having a sample of 300 participants is adequate to give him valid results, so he can winnow down the number of participants. What criteria should he establish in identifying who should be included in the study?d.Propose a hypothetical longitudinal cohort study (p. 66 of text) to properly test the question: “Does being raised by two parents cause career success?” Would a researcher be able to conduct this study? Why or why not?
Introduction
A researcher is said to have conducted a research study to resolve the answer to the question, “Does being raised by two parents cause career success?” Based on his findings, Virginia times had published an article named, “Raising a child with both parents will do wonders for your child's future career success!”
The assignment provides a scrutiny of the research methods used and aims to point out how the article has misinterpreted the findings and hence is likely to mislead its readers. Additionally, it proposes another approach to conduct the study.
Fallacy of the statement, “Raising a child with both parents will do wonders for your child's future career success!”
The researcher reported that he had found that for the subjects he had considered, the ones being raised by two parents had reported greater success than the one who had not. This by no means imply that people raised by two parents are guaranteed success in professional life. The study merely attempts to study the tentative causal relationship between a child’s parental status and future career outcome from an empirical standpoint. The article as published by Virginia times is thus misleading.
The study merely reports that it has found relatively higher success scores for the group in the sample with both parents involved in the formative years than the one with only one. Success however could depend on various factors, which may jointly act to influence success. The study does not take into account the presence of those factors and hence no definitive statement, such as the aforementioned title should be made (Healey, 2014).
A critique of the data collection methodology used in the study.
The researcher is said to have placed an ad in a local website, seeking volunteers for his study who were either raised by a single parent or by both, whom he would pay $10 for taking part in the study. He recorded their response to a series of questions regarding the latter success that they may or may not have achieved up to that point of time.
The collection method thus present certain disadvantages. The data is likely to be restricted to the locality to which the website is associated. This brings into question, whether the findings of the analysis could be translated to a larger group of people outside the locality being considered in the survey. The external validity of the data could thus be brought under scrutiny. The researcher went on to have the subjects answer a series of questions about the later career success. This raises two concerns. Firstly, whether the questions were worded to invoke unbiased response, uninfluenced by the researcher’s own expectations; secondly, whether the subjects were at a point of their careers where their success could be comparable to one another. A subject who is at the beginning of a career is not comparable to one who is much more advanced in their career (Ahrens, Krickeberg, & Pigeot, 2014)
There are however some advantages of the collection method. The researcher seems to have placed monetary incentive to encourage response of the tentative volunteers. This could ensure a good number of responses to the ad. Also, the criteria for the eligibility of the volunteers state that subject must be from either a two parent household or one parent household and does not specify any age or ethnicity requirements. It is thus expected that the sample of data would be random and not biased to a single type of person. This is expected to counteract any bias that could arise out of the data (Ahrens, Krickeberg, & Pigeot, 2014).
How might the researcher select his subjects from the list of interested participants?
Given the circumstance that the researcher had been able to get 600 response to his ad and then decided to consider 300 of those 600 willing participants, it would be reasonable to select subjects who are actually well advanced in terms of years invested in their careers and not just at the beginning stages. This is because the study focuses on the career success of the subjects. Success in career is something that is not earned through talent and years of efforts. Career scores are therefore expected to vary with time. The study in question does not take into account the longitudinal nature of the phenomenon that is career performance. Therefore it would be prudent to keep in mind the cross-sectional nature of the study and only consider people of comparable age (Lewis, 2015).
Approaching the study using a longitudinal cohort design:
A more suitable approach to the study would be a longitudinal cohort study of the subjects. The study would take into account only those subjects who have not achieved the standard of success as defined by the researcher. Taking the baseline group as the one having both parents during the formative years, the selected subjects are to be followed up thereafter in time. The career status of the subjects is to be tracked over the course of the study till completion of the study period or till a subject achieves success or they die. The objective is to estimate the relative risk of becoming successful of the group coming from one parent household with respect to the baseline and hence determine whether they are less likely to be successful of not (Twisk, 2013). .
This method however would require the researcher to invest years to the study before any concrete conclusion could be reached. Consequently, it would also require considerable monetary funds. The study also has the risk of losing subjects over the course of the follow up process and inconsistency regarding the response from individual subjects. Although not completely impossible, it would be challenging for the researcher to carry out the proposed survey (Bryman, 2015).
Conclusion
The approach to the study by the researchers seems to be cross-sectional in nature. It could be so that an individual who has not achieved success and hence classified as unsuccessful at the time of study might go on to achieve success at a later time. It therefore does not entertain the possibility of a certain individual to perhaps obtain success at a later time after the study. Therefore it is not able to definitively capture the causal relationship that might be present between parental status during the formative years and success in career.
References
Ahrens, W., Krickeberg, K., & Pigeot, I. (2014). An introduction to epidemiology. In Handbook of epidemiology (pp. 3-41). Springer New York.
Ahrens, W., Pigeot, I., & Wild, P. (2014). Design and Planning of Epidemiological Studies. In Handbook of Epidemiology (pp. 473-524). Springer New York.
Bryman, A. (2015). Social research methods. Oxford university press.
Healey, J. F. (2014). Statistics: A tool for social research. Cengage Learning.
Lewis, S. (2015). Qualitative inquiry and research design: Choosing among five approaches. Health promotion practice, 16(4), 473-475.
Twisk, J. W. (2013). Applied longitudinal data analysis for epidemiology: a practical guide. Cambridge University Press.
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