Description of Proposed Design
500 children raised by parenting styles from group a would be interviewed and observed weekly for five years, as well as 500 children from group B. The research would begin once the child was four years away from his freshmen year of college and include that freshmen year. The researchers would seek to understand how the children from these widely different parenting styles responded to peer pressure, stress, disappointment, temptation and other elements of growing up based on the parenting styles they characterized their parents by.
Proposed research population and how would you draw upon this population for research:
The proposed research population would be taken for convenience and would ideally be made up of male participants from a Jewish high school (or several high schools), and would take participants from the first year class. Researchers might need to open themselves up to including multiple high schools in order to get a more well-rounded sample and so that there were 500 males in each group.
Examples of research Data That May Be Collected:
The types of research data that will be collected will involve opinions and characteristics that the children have and find in their parents. Some of the most fundamental research that needs to be collected before the latter half of the study occurs is concrete findings which determine which specific group (a or B) to place the boys into for research. "Parenting styles convey parents' overall feeling about the child through body language, tone of voice, emotional displays and quality of attention" (Benson & Haith, 2010, p.281). In many ways, labeling a child as originating from a particular parenting style generally describes how the parent feels about the child and feels about being a parent. This will be collected via surveys given to the children so that...
Thus, the research study will also collect information about how the child uses alcohol, when and how often and why and trace those reasons as they adapt throughout life. The measuring tools for this data set will be primarily questionnaires, interviews and through observation.
Social Change Implications:
The implications of this research are enormous. It will give hard data on how the various parenting styles impacts children as they develop, but more specifically how they relate and are more likely to relate to substances: specifically alcohol. This will send a clear warning message to parents and child care providers not to harbor any illusions about what is acceptable and what is not regarding parenting styles and raising healthy kids who turn into healthy adults.
Other Info relevant to a Dissertation Proposal:
The proposed study is indeed lengthy and involved and that's intentional. Researchers are attempting to gain a truly cohesive amount of data regarding how the various parenting styles, and the actions and behaviors attached to those styles impact boys in the Jewish community in clear, verifiable ways throughout some of the most vulnerable periods of their development (the teenage years) ultimately examining how this culminates during the first year of college with alcohol abuse.
References
Benson, J., & Haith, M. (2009). Social and Emotional Development in Infancy and Early Childhood. San Diego: Elsevier.
Comer, R., & Gould, E. (2012). Psychology Around Us. New York: John Wiley and Sons.
Harris, J.R. (2011). The Nurture Assumption. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Levy, K., Blatt, S., & Shaver, P. (1998). Attachment styles and parental representations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 407-419.
