Question

PART 1:

Critical Thinking

ARTICLE

adapted from:

Low-Income Parents Of 'Difficult Children' Likely To Use iPads To Pacify Kids

2 March 2016, 9:27 pm EST By Angela Laguipo Tech Times

In a world of technological advancement, mobile devices are widely used by people of all ages, including children. A new study found that when children are in tough situations and are having emotional difficulties, their parents are more likely to give an iPad than when the children are behaving calmly.

For some, it may be tempting to hand over mobile devices to a "difficult" child. According to a new study by researchers from the C.S. Mott Children's Hospital at the University of Michigan, parents from low-income families were more likely to give mobile devices to calm children down when they were having social and emotional difficulties. The same parents were less likely to hand over the iPad to reward calm behavior.

Published in the journal JAMA Pediatrics, the researchers recruited 144 healthy children between the ages of 15 and 36 months from low-income families. The researchers asked the parents how often they give or allow the use of mobile device during a variety of situations. Different scenarios include eating, being in public, during chores, when the children are in distress and at bedtime.

"We know that parents of babies and toddlers with difficult behavior disproportionately use television and videos as calming tools. We wanted to explore whether the same might be true for mobile technology like phones and tablets," said Dr. Jenny Radesky, study's lead author.

They found that parents were more likely to use mobile devices as a coping strategy to pacify children who are having tantrums.

"My concern is that parents are using it as a 'let me hand this over to you and let this distract you from whatever distress you were just in,' because kids learn from handling their own distress not by being distracted from it," Radesky said.

QUESTIONS FROM THE ARTICLE:

Thinking Critically About Construct Validity

I do not think that this study clearly demonstrates a relationship between the two variables because there is a method-match issue that prevents a clear conclusion from being drawn. Let's try to fix it for them.

A. Describe the problem with the method-match in the study

B. Briefly describe alternate operational definitions for both the predictor and the outcome variables. Ensure that your suggestions would better address this claim by proposing a strong method-match.

PART 2:

Population

The population of interest to a researcher is comprised of all of the individuals who share a group of characteristics. Researcher may define their population as very broad (e.g., "Human Beings") or very narrow (e.g., "Students currently enrolled in PSC126").

QUESTION:

1.

You are a researcher interested in the factors that affect grade point average (GPA) in California colleges. What is your population of interest? SELECT ONE OF THE FOLLOW:

A. all university of california students

B. all college students in the united states

C. all UCF students

D. all college students in california

PART 3:

Identify the best label for the outcome/dependent variable:

QUESTIONS:
1.

Claim: Gamers don't play as hard if avatar is overweight. SELECT ONE:

A. pay as hard

B. avatar body type

C. play effort

D. overweight

2.

Claim: Happy people are more grateful than sad people. SELECT ONE:

A. gratefulness

B. gender

C. happy people

D. sad people

E. emotional state

PART 4:

Actual Population

We need to very carefully consider our population of interest and our sampling technique. Sometimes in research, the population that we end up drawing our sample from is subtly different from the entire population we are interested in.

QUESTIONS:

1.

A researcher is interested in the types of injuries that occur at a skate park. She sets up a hidden camera at a skate park and watches for people who are injured. Her population of interest is "injuries that occur at a skate park".

What is the population from which her sample was actually drawn? SELECT ONE OF THE FOLLOW:

A. all injuries

B. injuries that occur at a skate park that were serious enough to result in a doctors visit

C. injuries that occur at a skate park

2.

A researcher is interested in the attitudes of enrolled UCDavis students. She asks the registrar for a list of enrolled students. Her population of interest is "enrolled UCDavis students".  

What is the population from which her sample was actually drawn? SELECT ONE OF THE FOLLOW:

A. enrolled ucdavis students

B. american college students

C. enrolled ucdavis students who were on campus that day

PART 5:

QUESTIONS:

1.

Consider the following relationship:

Taller people have more confidence than shorter people.

How are the variables height and confidence related? SELECT ONE:

A. no relationship

B. curvilinear

C. positive relationship

D. negative relationship

2.

Consider the following relationship:

Shorter people have less confidence than taller people.

How are the variables height and confidence related? SELECT ONE:

A. no relationship

B. curvilinear

C. positive relationship

D. negative relationship

Answer 1

There is a method match problem here. The parents are just asked about the hand over of mobiles in various scenarios leaving them, with only two options - give the mobile or not to give the mobile, when it comes to pacifying the child. This is the method match problem.

Other predictors which can possibly pacify the child like engaging it in play, feeding it, music etc are totally ruled out. Parents should be given possible multiple options to choose from to pacify their child and then the numbers would provide the actual true results or link it with the outcome.