For Kim Woods

Running Head: Single Parent Upbringing

Single Parent Upbringing

Fernando Pupo SO 300 Research Methods Park University

The focused question for my research is: How being raised by a single parent affects how children and their development?

In order to make our research successful we should conduct research about similar researches done in the past on similar or related topics with the same outcome. The same will be a part of the Literature Review of our research which includes all the scholarly articles that we can study during the course of our research. This will help us to broaden our thinking and help us to think ideas which we might have missed. Thus conducting a literature review is an essential part of a research process. It is also not possible for us to go use the entire article as a part of our research process or else the essence of our research questions would get diluted, thus conducting a literature review should be done with utmost care. We shall take notes from the different articles we review and include those notes as literature reviews in the report.

An article which I reviewed in the course of the study was “Are Married Parents Really Better for Children? What Research Says about the Effects of Family Structure on Child well-being” by Mary Parke. The topic mentioned above and my research topic is very similar and the main scope of research by Mary Parke is the effect of family structure on the wellbeing of children. There is not a very big difference in the topic of my research. A thorough study of the topic helped me to refine my research question. Earlier my research question was focussed only on the growth and development of a child under single parenting. But with the study of this paper I changed the research topic to “The effects of single parenting on the well being of children”. Thus now my study not only included the affects of single parenting on the growth and development of a child, but also on how the same child lived as an adult and if the single parenting had any significant impact on the life of the same child as an adult.

The basic question asked by Mary Parke in her study is “How the changes in family structure have affected the well being of children”. The topic is very explicit in nature and clearly states the possible outcome. There can be only two outcomes for this research whether the changes in family structure witnessed over the last few decades have or have not affected the well being of a child grown up under single parenting.

The major ideas of the study by Mary Parke was that the if single parenting effects the well being of children, then how can marriages be made more stronger in order to avoid the effects single parenting has on the well being of children. The study also tries to find out the differences between a child who is raised under two parents and those raised by single parenting. It also looks at if there exists any significant differences between the well-being of these two kinds of children.

The study was a descriptive study and was a part of a series of studies which might help in the formation of a policy on couples and marriage. The main purpose of the study was to find out ways to strengthen the marriage. The study can be used to make inferences about the entire population and thus the outcome. This type of a study helps to find out a causal relationship. The effects that single parenting bears on the well being of children. The method used by the researcher was survey, as the data was collected with the help of surveys conducted in different parts of the countries.

The data group was mainly children above the age of 14, and the children who were surveyed included both, those who were raised under single parenting and those who were raised under the parents staying together. Another part of people part of the study was the based on the parents as it was important to find out the reasons behind separation. A large part of the data was taken from the data collected by the government agencies.

The findings of the study done by Mary Parke was that single parenting had significant impact on the well being of a child and the children those who grow up under the parenting of both parents staying together were significantly better off than those growing under single parenting. Children who grow up under single parenting are found to have achieved lower level of education, experience health and behavioural issues and even mental health problems. Thus in short the outcome can be summarized as those not living with their biological parents are said to face serious problems.

Thus it is very important to review different studies done in the past to improve on the research being conducted. It is imperative to read more than one article to have a better and a clearer picture and one may need to reread the articles in order to understand the fine prints of the study and simultaneously prepare notes for the research. One should make notes of as much data that is available and then the same notes can be organized and synthesized and the review can be written. A literature review summarizes different articles and gives a point of view about different studies and is organized to communicate a sense of purpose. One more thing needs to be kept in mind in using Citations if any line is directly used from any article. The report should be created in a way such that it is focused on the research question under consideration.

It is of utmost importance to make sure that the study was conducted ethically and scientifically otherwise the essence of conducting the study may get diluted and it may result in an outcome which may not be correct. Thus, it is very important that any study conducted should be done in an ethical and scientific manner. This study could have been conducted unethically by a scientific misconduct. A research can be done unethically if a research fraud or plagiarism is done. A research fraud is done by deceptive data or by lying about the data. Portraying wrong data either done by error or by choice, will result in making the study an unethical one. Plagiarism is another source of unethical behaviour thus if any researcher uses other facts and figures from another study report and does not cite the source it will result in making the research an unethical one.

In short we may say that the any research would be considered to be an unethical if it has bias involved. Another important factor is that the research should be conducted by a competent individual because even though the individual may not be biased but their incompetence may make the research process an unethical one and the same may not be of any good use to make inferences. The research could have been conducted in an unscientific way simply by studying the various works done already by researchers and without actually getting into the whole research process. Thus research which is unscientific may be difficult to prove and also may not give the optimum solution to the study.

References

Johnston, K. (n.d.). Scientific Vs. Unscientific Methods in Business Research. Retrieved August 31, 2013, from Ehow.com: http://www.ehow.com/info_8512344_scientific-unscientific-methods-business-research.html

Neuman, W. L. Understanding Research. Pearson.

Parke, M. (n.d.). Are Married Parents Really Better for Children? Retrieved August 31, 2013, from http://www.clasp.org/admin/site/publications_archive/files/0128.pdf

Hale, J. (n.d.). Understanding Research Methodology. Retrieved August 31, 2013, from http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2011/05/12/understanding-research-methodology-5-applied-and-basic-research/

Usdansky, M. L. (2003). Single Parent Families and their impact on Children. Center for Research on Child Wellbeing Working Paper # 03-04 .

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