Development of Prejudice in Adolescence Attitude of Peers

Preliminary Research Proposal

Purpose of Research Proposal

A research proposal is intended to achieve two things: to present why a research problem is to be studied and to state the most viable ways of conducting the study. Research proposals are conducted per the design elements and procedures established as standards in the predominant discipline in which the problem resides. This creates exacting guidelines by which research proposals are developed. These guidelines, while stricter, are less formal than the guidelines used for developing general project proposals. Research proposals need to provide persuasive evidence of the need for a study. Thus, research proposals contain extensive literature reviews that are relevant to the intended study. In addition to providing a rationale, a research proposal contains detailed information on the methodology to be used in conducting the study and the professional requirements of the discipline or academic field to which the study is relevant (University of Southern California, 2020).

Selected Topic

The topic selected for the current study is "Attitude of Peers and Development of Prejudice in Adolescence," a topic under Developmental Psychology. The critical importance of adolescence in forming attitudes, political values, and prejudicial attitudes has been studied and established through research. Raabe and Beelmann (2011) concluded that based on the results obtained from a meta-analysis on prejudice during childhood and adolescence, the conclusion drawn from the meta-analysis linked the development of prejudice to age in childhood and social influences in adolescence. As research on this development is rare, there is a lack of longitudinal data on this process (Raabe and Beelmann, 2011).

External influences that trigger the development of prejudicial attitudes, as drawn from modern or symbolic racism theories, include influential role models and society. Further findings from these theories maintained that attitudes are also more likely traceable to socialization in the pre-adult years than due to any current racial threat. These theories directly link any prejudice developed to the type of socialization that occurred in early life. Other studies that have investigated the development of prejudice also connected social networks to prejudice but rarely focused on how peers' attitude affects this development. A majority of these studies postulated that social networks' diversity in early life would reduce ethnic and racial prejudices. These works are based on the contact theory and test for the effect of interethnic group contacts on prejudice development. The results of these works reported a decrease in the use of stereotypes and prejudices (e.g., Dhont et al. 2012; Hooghe, Meeusen, & Quintelier 2013). However, these studies did not review the influence of peer attitudes on prejudice development – regardless of race or ethnicity.

Research Question

The research question of this study is:

How does peer attitude influence the development of prejudice in adolescents?

Hypothesis

The average level of prejudice among peers affects individual-level prejudice over time.

Appropriate Research Design

Longitudinal Research Design. Interview and survey methods will be used for collecting data. This study will be conducted for over three years, and the participants will be interviewed and surveyed every year.

Why is this Research Design Appropriate?

Longitudinal studies are ideal for this research as the study participants can be monitored over long periods spanning years or decades by using continuous or repeated measures. Longitudinal studies are suited for observational purposes. It allows for collecting quantitative and qualitative data on any combination of conditions or outcomes without any external intervention. This research design is useful for evaluating the relationship between an incident factor and the effect it causes. Such relationships exist between risk factors and the development of a disease and treatments' outcomes over different periods. The collection of data using this research design allows for statistical testing to analyze changes over time for the individual members of a group or the group as a whole. Several other benefits afforded by longitudinal cohort studies conducted its pure form are:

· The provision of identification and relation of events to particular exposures, and the further definition of the exposures with regards to presence and time;

· An establishment of the sequence of events;

· The monitoring of change over time in certain individuals in the cohort;

· The exclusion of recall bias in participants as data is collected prospectively and will not be influenced by subsequent events, and;

· The possibility of correcting for the cohort effect. Each element in the cohort can be analyzed to include the impact of each individual in the cohort. These elements include the independent time component (the range of birth dates), the period (current time), and age (at the point of measurement) (Caruana, Roman, Hernandez-Sanchez & Solli 2015).

Longitudinal studies are demanding, requiring robust infrastructure, which will last for the duration of the study. To ensure accuracy, data collection, and recording in longitudinal studies have to be standardized to ensure consistency over time in the various study sites. All data collected from the study must be classified according to the information obtained from the individuals involved and at an interval of measure using unique coding systems. In increasing the accuracy of recordings, a recognized classification system is adopted for individual inputs (Caruana et al., 2015).

Ethical issues

In research involving children and adolescents, ethical debates have been held on the appropriate way and time to obtain assent vs. informed consent (for adolescents) and parental consent (Giesbertz, Bredenoord & van Selden, 2014). There are policies and literature that support researchers seeking parental consent and permission from child and adolescent participants. Both the participant and the parent are to decide if to be included in the study. Children's inability to comprehend the risks associated with a research study has been reported in a multi-year longitudinal study. This necessitates the definition of assent as an ongoing process that has to be reaffirmed in research studies involving children and adolescents at more than one-time points (Crane & Broome, 2017).