This week in my family relations class we talk about the challenges of actually researching or studying family sciences. There are a lot of challenges you can run into. In family sciences you are sometimes researching emotions, or behaviors, or different mental affects on people. It's hard to find a truly accurate way to measure those things. And with measuring those things, you will often find that your results can be subjective. If one study shows, that a child is more likely to excel if they spend quality time with their family on a daily basis, based on the factors that they were measuring, another study could show that it might cause codependency issues, and they won't be successful in life based on what they were measuring. How do you know what is best? People can be very opinionated when it comes to this stuff, so it's hard to have a solid foundation of what is good, better, and best. The truth is it varies from person to person. You also need to worry about having the right number for your sample sizes. There needs to be a wide variety of families, depending on the study, to ensure the results are fair and as accurate as possible. For example, in class we talked about how the APA brief did not represent the traditional family as they should have. They mostly compared the effects of living with gay parents, to living with single mothers. Without actually comparing the whole spectrum of families, there findings aren't accurate. If you want to prove there are no disadvantages for children living with gay parents, they should have compared it more to the traditional family. There needs to be a stable control, and also different variables. You need to put your bias's aside and focus fully on the facts and research. It can be hard to analyze this kind of information. If you are studying families who drink and compare them to families that don't and the side effects it can have on children, what you do at home, drink or not, should not effect the findings. There are so many different opinions when it comes to family sciences, it's hard to keep your analysis completely based on the predetermined factors, with out having your opinion find a way in. Sadly it happens more than you would think. We have people often preform a study, for the sole purpose of getting a law approved or rejected. They want to prove their side, so they research only the kinds of families that will correlate with the outcoming they want. It is deceitful, but it happens. People want there way, and because the findings of family science research are so hard to measure, and the results can often be subjective, people find ways to use that to their advantage. We should be using the research to be doing good, not for any other agenda. We can really help people through this work. There is no denying that at this time in our world, family sciences have never been more important. With society trying to tear families apart, we need it more than ever. We need to find the best way to protect our families and children. The truth is without a lot of the studies that have happened our understandings of families and the different effects of different circumstances would be insignificant. We need to understand what we are doing, where can we improve, and what improving looks like. It has benefited so many lives, and if we continue to learn and grow we can accomplish so much more.
This is my blog that I will update weekly to address the different topics discussed in my family relations class.
About Me
- Taylor
- I grew up in Arizona and then moved to Idaho in 2014. I'm starting my 1st semester at BYUI.
Saturday, September 26, 2020
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