Assignment:
Critical thinking skills are needed to effectively study the behaviour of others. Developmental psychologists conduct research studies as a way of learning about the behaviour of children and how behaviour changes over time. They have to think critically about why and how they will ask their research questions, they have to cleverly design studies and analyse the results, and then they must think about how the results will be interpreted and applied. The goal of this assignment is to give you experience as researchers in thinking critically about how you would study the behaviour of children.
Researchers use different methods to collect data about children. In this assignment you will be asked to use only the observational method. The observational method is the most common method used in child development and you have already learnt about it from your textbook. Observational studies assess the behaviour of children by watching how and how often they do something of interest. Researchers observe how the behaviour's occurrence, frequency, or quality changes or doesn't change over a short or a long period time. Giving children or parents a questionnaire to take home and answer is NOT an observational method of collecting data. Interviewing children and parents to get their opinions or memories IS an observational method because you are observing and recording their responses. Recording how fast or how long a child spends in a task is also an observational method because you are observing their behaviour.
Suppose you are interested in early speech and language development and want to know how English-speaking children come to make the "th" sound when they say words like "thirsty." You might decide to conduct a "longitudinal study." You would choose a group of children of the age that you have a reason to study. Note that the observation of one child alone would not be enough to generalize to other children.
You might decide to simply watch and listen (observe) the children in your study for an hour once each month over the course of a year. You would record their voices and determine whether and how many times you heard them make the sound "th". You would attempt to determine whether the sound was present and/or changed over time. By recording their voices, other researchers could listen and verify your results.
Design a mock observational study for children of any age group, **no older than 11 years. Choose one of the 3 possible factors topics:
Categorization
Self-awareness
Scaffolding
1. Design a study- 500 words
- Which factor will you observe and why?
- On what child behaviour will you collect (record) information?
What research design will you choose, and what is your justification for this choice? ( choose one longitudinal, microgeneic, cross sectional)
What age(s) will you observe and how many groups of children will be in your study?
How often will you observe the children and record data?
2. Discuss the possible results - 300 words
Do you expect differences across the ages you observed? (Why or why not?)
Will they be particularly large or small changes? (Why?)
Will changes in the children's behaviour be sudden or gradual? (Why?)
What will your results look like? ( proposed results in graph or table)
Summary of results? ( suspected results? Take home results?)
3. Speculate on the implications of the expected results - 200 words
What are the practical implications of your study? ( how could results assist with professionals or parents)
Only the first 1000 words of your submission will be read and marked.
Word limit DOES NOT include tables, graphs, and citations.?Citations (references) are not required unless the work is directly quoted.