Effects of military deployments on service members and families

¶ … parent goes to war: Effects of parental deployment on very young children and implications for intervention" by Paris, R., Devoe, E. R., Ross, A. M., & Acker, M. L. (2010). American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 80(4), 610-618. doi:10.1111/j.1939-0025.2010.01066.x

Ruth Paris, Ellen R. Devoe, Abigail M. Ross, and Michelle L. Acker in When a parent goes to war: Effects of parental deployment on very young children and implications for intervention reviewed the effects military deployment cycles have on young children. The effects span intense emotions, attachment patterns as well as behavioral changes. They suggested that military families with toddlers, infants and preschoolers ought to be supported by taking an ecological approach. To explore ways to provide adequate support, Paris et al. reviewed existing literature on the effects parental combat stress had on parenting as well as parent-child relationships. Evidence-informed programs for families and infants were also examined with the goal of identifying the interventions that can help military families. The chosen programs were those programs that are family oriented, have individual treatment for a family member and also work with children and parents together. The programs appreciate the significance of an integrated ecological-attachment approach to the development of humans as well as the parenting methods families adopt. A number of the treatments reviewed were developed to specifically help with dealing with trauma in children while other treatments' focus is parent-child interactions. The article concludes that home-based family focused interventions deserve greater consideration.

Structure and Article Organization

A primary concern is the issue that the paper fails to adopt the usual format of a research paper that includes literature review and methodology. Usually, a researcher reviews the already existing pieces of literature on a topic. This paper lacks a section that mentions how this was carried out. A typical paper would have adopted a systematic literature review as a well as a sound methodology. A systematic review aims at addressing the research problem through the identification as well as critical evaluation and integration of the relevant findings and independent studies. Because a methodological section is lacking, the objectivity, system, replication and transparency of the research can't be guaranteed or even established.

Secondly, no express statement of a particular problem is stated. The objectives of the research are also not clearly defined. The article's introduction makes the reader guess what topics to pay keen attention to and who the target audience is. The absence of the two mentioned important parts of an article makes the identification of the important pieces of information that are critical to answering the intended research questions hard. Generally, the paper fails to define its scope from the start. It is essential that a paper develop specific, clear and answerable research questions.

Thirdly, there is no limitation section. While all research papers have limitations, this one doesn't make its limitations clear. Limitations are those outside influences upon which the researcher has no control. They are conditions, influences and shortcoming that the researcher can't control but which limit his or her methodology and the conclusions he or she makes. A researcher should therefore mention the limitations his or her exercise faces (Denscombe, 2014). Where limitations are not made clear, it is not easy to accurately generalize findings. Generalizability and conclusions of a research are informed to a huge extent by the limitations of the research. With limitations, it would have been easier to know the applicability and scope of this research.

Too Much Information with Very Little Detail

The study seeks to tackle as much information as possible on the topic. This has resulted in it covering a range of issues including information concerning parents, children, service members, parenting, parent-child relationships, mental health and stress. Also covered include the effects deployment has, combat trauma and parental stress for young children, stressors for those parents left behind, developmentally targeted interventions to military families with young children among other topics. Because of this approach, the paper has covered a wide range of issues concerning service members and the effects their service have on their relationships and families. Nonetheless, the wide coverage makes it difficult to go deep into the main issues that are the core of the paper. It is a typical case of one applying himself to all trades and not mastering any. While the title of the research might have warranted such a wide coverage, more attention could have been put on a few effects and so allowing for a deeper, comprehensive and conclusive coverage.

Validity of the Article

Secondary data is heavily relied on in the article. This leads to a situation where the researcher doesn't own a big proportion of the data and so independent authentication is not possible. Where authentication is not possible, validity questions arise. While using secondary data has its own advantages, it has several disadvantages like a researcher having limited access to data and so limiting most efforts at data comparison. A robust use of literature review would have provided data that is relatively easy to access. Information can be found online as in the case of e-journals and authority sites. Books, journal and government records also provide excellent sources (Shipman, 2014). This brings convenience and standardizes methods to be used in collecting secondary data. A reader of the article thus has a chance to follow through and access the primary sources of the data. It is important to note that documents can vary greatly in quality. Some sources are more authoritative than others (Chandra et al., 2010; Alfano et al., 2016).

The differences in quality of secondary data limit data sourcing. Primary data one collects themselves is often concrete and in line with the objectives the research is working to achieve. Secondary sources of data can therefore present one with large amounts of data but only a small portion is useful in pursing the research objectives. The fact that some of the data might have been collected ages ago can make them inappropriate.