Research Proposal 2-3 pages APA format

4-2 Final Project One: Literature Review

Kevin Menard

Southern New Hampshire University

4-2 Final Project One: Literature Review

I. Describe the community need in your local community or a community of your choice, and explain why you chose this issue.

The need or issue that we are going to address in this assignment is the foster care system in the United States. We say that the future of a great nation lies in the hands of our children because they are the individuals who will lead our future generations. The welfare of children in a country is therefore very important. There are so many children in the United States that need to be adopted, and there are about 800,000 children every year that go through the foster care system in the country. The main intention of the foster care system in the United States is to ensure that children are provided with a safe and comfortable environment to grow up. However, over the years this system has failed repeatedly in delivering this objective. This is because there are so many children put in foster care who undergo harsh living conditions due to abuse, neglect, and lack of stability as they are switched from one home to another. Statistics show that more than 60,000 children in foster care go through neglect and abuse every year (Mitchell, 2016). For children welfare to be improved, we need to address this issue, and this is the reason why I picked this issue.

II. Assess the primary and secondary sources for their credibility, justifying how the sources are or are not credible. How do you know the sources are credible? How do you know the sources are not credible?

The research on this issue will be based both on primary and secondary sources. The primary sources to be used in this research are foster parents, children, and the institutions that place children into foster homes. The secondary sources to be used will include the National Institute of Health research on the topic and Children Bureau research.

One can know if a source is credible or not depending on whether or not information received from this source can be trusted (Grudzina & Kolba, 2008). I believe that my secondary sources are highly credible because the information will be gathered from United States government research works which are highly used and trusted. For the primary sources, information provided may not be so credible mainly because the sources to be questioned may hide a lot of information or even lie for reasons such as fear of being exposed. An example of this would be that the foster parents are being compelled to lie for the foster children to uphold their reputation.

III. Assess the primary and secondary sources for their applicability to your research, justifying how the sources are or are not applicable. How will the sources support your research question? How do the sources you’ve found appropriately cover the range of research needed to address your topic?

Both sources are highly applicable to this research. This is because they will help provide information that directly relates to the topic being discussed in the research. The primary sources will help provide information on the condition of foster care, challenges, statistics of children in foster care, the rate of abuse and negligence, and rate of movement from one home to another along with the various loopholes in the system. The secondary sources will also help provide statistics to compare, information on the various challenges facing foster care system, and the consequences of foster care in the country. This information will help devise strategies for improving the system which is the whole point of this research.

IV. Conclusions: Using the primary and secondary sources, what conclusions can you draw for informing your research proposal?

a) What types of research designs have been used with similar issues? Differentiate the advantages and disadvantages of the types of research designs.

The types of research designs used on the issue of the foster care system include case study design, which entails studying a specific research problem. This type of design eliminates inaccurate presumptions because it narrows down its focus on a field of research. However, it minimizes reliability if the sample size of cases is too small. The other design is causal design which applies x and y to study a phenomenon. It enables researchers to establish a causal relationship between variables thus increasing accuracy. On the other hand, other variables can distort the outcomes of causal relationships thus affecting validity. Cross-sectional design is also another common design type, which measures variances among a group of people. One advantage is that it integrates time in accurately measuring certain characteristics but it is difficult to establish accurate homogeneity among people or subjects.

b) What types of research methods have been used with similar issues? Differentiate the advantages and disadvantages of the types of methods.

The research methods applied are under the scientific method, which integrates a systematic process to make valid observations. It consists of two types of scientific research such as descriptive research, which is an in-depth observation of phenomena. Since it is based on the scientific method, it eliminates errors compared to causal observations. However, an in adequate sample size affects the outcomes. The explanatory research aims to give an explanation as to how and why certain phenomena exist. It largely contributes to academic research thus fostering credibility however; it relies on descriptive research during the initial stages of research.

c) Discuss any ethical dilemmas stemming from others’ research and how these dilemmas may be relevant to your own research.

There are ethical dilemmas that arise from others’ research based on the foster care system. There is the likely possibility of research on human subjects being conducted at the expense of participants for the benefit of the whole society (Millum &Emanuel, 2007). One of the issues is informed consent, which is required from the subjects being studied. Without proper protocol of obtaining data, this introduces bias into the research thus making it unreliable. Another issue is data confidentiality, which poses the risk of exposing personal information of the subjects or participants. This kind of research propagates violation of privacy. In foster care it is important to promote ethics as this impact the emotional and behavioural wellbeing of the children, aspects that are usually ignored (Ferrara et al., 2013).

References

Ferrara,P.,Romani,L.,Bottaro,G., Janniello,F., Fabrizio,C.,Chiaretti,A.,& Alvaro,F.(2013). The Physical and Mental Health of Children in Foster Care. Iranian Journal of Public Health, 42(4), pp.368-373.

Grudzina, D. & Kolba, B. (2008). Writing an A+ research paper: a roadmap for beginning and experienced writers. Clayton, Del: Prestwick House.

Millum, J., & Emanuel, E.J. (2007). The ethics of international research with abandoned children. Science, 318(5858), pp. 1874-1875.

Mitchell, M. (2016). The neglected transition: building a relational home for children entering foster care. Oxford New York: Oxford University Press.

Padot, R. (2015). Politics of foster care administration in the United States. New York: Routledge/Taylor & Francis Group.