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Problem being addressed by the research study

The main problem being addressed by the research study is whether there exists a strong link between alcohol consumption by parents or guardians and child abuse. This will involve investigating if alcohol is a major contributory factor to child maltreatment. In as much as numerous studies have sought to investigate the existence of such a link, there is a dearth in knowledge that show whether being maltreated as a child is related with increase in the risks of hazardous or harmful drinking later in life, and whether such kids are likely to develop psychological disorders in future.

Refined research questions and hypothesis

Research question: What is the relationship between alcoholism and parental abuse?

The null hypothesis (H0): Children living with alcoholics are less likely no more likely to develop risky behaviors than children living with non-alcoholics (percentage of children living with alcoholics are less likely to develop risky behaviors< 82.2%). Good, as we have not done the research, let’s leave off the percent. By being this specific to outcomes we may limit ourselves…so let’s leave off the percent

Alternative Hypothesis (HA): Children living with alcoholics are likely to develop risky behaviors than children living with non-alcoholics (percentage of children living with alcoholics are likely to develop risky behaviors =82. 2%).

Dependent and Independent variables

IV would be living with ETOH parent vs non

DV would be development of risky behaviors

The independent variables of the research includes: drinking behavior, alcohol venue utilization, as well as alcohol outlet density. Good, very well specified The dependent variables of the study are: childcare availability retail density; degree of physical abuses on children; supervisory neglects; as well as physical child neglects. The study will investigate the relationship between drinking behavior on child abuse traits such as physical abuses, supervisory neglect and physical neglect. In addition, it will also investigate the link between variables such alcohol density and venue utilization on physical child abuse, supervisory neglect and physical child neglect.

Operational definitions

Drinking behavior is the degree to which a parent or guardian takes alcohol. He or she may be a binge drinker, addicted drinker, or social drinker. Alcohol outlet density is the number of alcohol retail outlets such as bars and shops within a given location. Alcohol venue utilization refers to the degree of use of alcohol outlets in terms of the number of clients attending such places. Physical abuse means body injuries and pain inflicted on children. Supervisory neglect means the parents less frequently watch out the behavior of their kids to discipline them. Physical neglect takes the form of food deprivation, insufficient clothing, as well as insufficient entertainment of children.

Who will be included in the sample?

A sample of 100 parents will be surveyed during the research. These parents will be recruited from various local agencies, such as day care facilities, health clinics, as well as social service agencies. These sample population will include males, females, whites, blacks, Latinos, as well as Hispanics. Individuals that will not be included in the survey will be those who are disabled, as well as parents with violent behaviors arising from other psychiatric disorders such as depression, though they consume alcohol. Good, we will also need to make sure we track children longer term, so we may start with a larger sample as a result.

How the recruitment will be done

The sample population will be recruited from wide range of local agencies and sites, such as day care centers, health clinics, as well as social service agencies. Others will also be recruited from bars, wines and spirit shops, and rehabilitation centers. The sampling population will come from different groups and races such as Latinos, blacks, whites, as well as Indians. They will be allowed to consent before inclusion into the research.

Measuring instruments for raw numeric data

Child abuse will be measured in terms of parent-child conflict scale. For instance, physical abuse will be assessed in terms of hitting a child with something, punching, pinching, and slapping. Serious physical abuse will include slapping on the face, beating on the head, kicking, and throwing. This will be scaled between: 0 to 10. Drinking behaviors will be measured in terms of: once in a day, once or twice a week, once and a month or never. Venue use will be measured in terms of frequency of use in a given place such as bars, restaurants, home and parties.

Issues related to informed consent

An explanation of the objectives of the research will be given to the participants, and the expected duration of the subjects’ participation, descriptions to be followed, and the identification of the processes that are experimental. The benefits of the research to the subject will also be explained. In addition, there will be a description of any reasonable foreseeable risks or discomforts to the subject (Somekh & Lewin, 2005). Furthermore, there shall be a disclosure of the appropriate alternative processes or courses of research, if any, that may be of benefit to the participants. Please check out APA guidelines in this area and include a bit more here

Minimizing potential risks

The main risk faced by the participants is the fear of being arrested or prosecuted by authorities if the research was disclosed to children’s rights agencies. To minimize this risk, parents will assured that their identities will be kept anonymous and that the research is purely done for scholarly purposes. The steps taken to keep participants’ information confidential will be explained to them, such as coding (Mitchell & Jolley, 2012).

Threats to validity and how to minimize them

Some of the possible threats to validity include: threats to testing and regression; threats of implementation and subject attitudes, as well as threat of history. To minimize these threats, I will fully understand what is being studied and the general areas in which data are required to answer the research questions. Hypothesis development through the data collection process, and realize that this may need to be changed as additional data are gathered (Gravetter & Forzano, 2015). Good, we will also include a large enough sample, make sure our data is accurate, etc.

Type of statistical process that will be used

Correlation is a bivariate evaluation that investigates the strengths of relationship between two variables. This method has been selected because the study aims at evaluating the strength of the association between alcohol consumption by parents or guardians and child abuse. The values of the correlation coefficients vary between +1 and -1 (Rubin, 2012). Because we are measuring risky behaviors yes/no this is nominal data. We will need to compare a alcoholic parent vs non group. So as a result we Would use a nonparmeteric T test

Behavioral research alpha that I will use to accept or reject the stated null hypothesis

The acceptable alpha level that I will use in the study is 0.05. This means that the results of the research will be considered significant in situation where there are just 5 possibilities out of 100 that the results were due to random error in a given sample out of the population. Because I want this value to be small, I will plan a research so that the sample size is large enough and the decision rule is chosen so that the alpha is 0.05 (Cozby, 2009). Good, very nice

Comments by Professor

Comments:

 HI Steven,

Please see my comments here and attached.   You put a lot of work in here. We need to tweak a few things. The wording of what you are measuring and the general idea needs to be clarified. Are we measuring the adults behaviors, or the children's risky behaviors after living with alcoholic parents or non? Whichever way is fine, just clarify and rewrite aspects accordingly.  Please tweak your hypothesis and clarify your variables as I have indicated. Also consider including a bit more information about informed consent per APA guidelines and in tweaking the stat type here a bit. Your alpha level and description of your sample were well done. Nice work,

References

Gravetter, F., & Forzano, L. A. (2015). Research methods for the behavioral sciences. Boston:

Cengage Learning.

Cozby, P.C. (2009). Methods in behavioral research: tenth edition. New York: McGraw-Hill

Mitchell, M., & Jolley, J. (2012). Research design explained. Boston: Cengage Learning.

Rubin, A. (2012). Statistics for evidence-based practice and evaluation. Boston: Cengage

Learning.

Somekh, B., & Lewin, C. (2005). Research methods in the social sciences. Washington DC:

Sage.