sfl assignment #1

Joy Marie Prior
Assignment 1
SFL 290
Sampling

Choose one of the research questions below.

5. You are a family scientist. You would like to do a study on the effects of childhood sexual abuse on marital adjustment.

1. What will your research question be? If an individual was sexually abused as a child and obtains a higher level of education they are likely to have a more positive marital adjustment than an individual who was sexually abused as a child and did not continue their education.

2. Describe how you will measure (operationalize) your variables. Marital satisfaction is the ability to complete tasks while under pressure with positive results for all participates involved. Higher level of education is to pursue a formal education and obtain a certificate; that included vocational certificates (hair school) and university degrees.

3. What level of measurement will you use? To measure marital satisfaction the participants would participate in three different tasks every two weeks for the period of 4 weeks. The first task would focus on sacrifice, the second would focus on dependency, the third task would be improbably to complete in the given amount of time. The observers would watch each of the tasks preformed and record how compatible they believe the couple to be. Prior to the doing the tasks the participants will fill out a questionnaire that asks them questions about their spouse and how compatible they feel towards their spouse. After the tasks are completed the couples will fill out an identical questionnaire. To measure Marital satisfaction To measure the level of education the participants would simply be asked in the questioner section of the study what level of certificate they have obtained, and to specify were they graduated and their chosen degree or field of study.

4. What is your population? Sexually abused children (categorized by themselves on how severe they believe their sexual abuse was and the amount of time they were sexually abused) who have latter grown up and been married for less than one year. What method of sampling would be best suited to your research question and the population? I believe that in this situation I would have to use snowball sampling because it would be difficult to locate a large enough sample of sexually abused children who have sense been married without breaking privacy laws. So I would have to begin to ask around at various support groups and such to find a sample size.

Reliability/Validity

Determine whether the researcher is assessing reliability or validity and what kind:

1. Dr. Olson does a study where he has adolescents complete questionnaires about their moral development. A month later the same adolescents complete the same questionnaires again. He is assessing _______reliability___ test-retest______.

2. Dr. Day is interested in marital conflict. He asks adolescent children about their parents’ marital conflict, he talks to their parents about their marital conflict, and then he tapes the parents discussing a subject that is controversial to the couple and then codes it for marital conflict. He wants to know if these measures assess the same construct. He is assessing __validity__ criterion/concurrent____.

3. You read a journal article where they say that Cronbach’s alpha was .89 for a measure of prosocial behavior. What is being assessed? ___reliability__ internal consistency_____
Is .89 a good number for this coefficient? _reliability that is acceptable is above .7 this is a higher level and is considered acceptable_

4. Dr. Walker is interested in children’s altruistic behavior. She develops an altruistic behavior questionnaire & then has several of her colleagues in the department look at the items to see if they are “good”. What is she assessing? _____validity____ content_____

5. Dr. Coyne found that scores on the Stanford Achievement Test in 5th grade will predict success in high school. What is being assessed? _____validity____ criterion/predictive_______

6. Two people code aggressive behavior of children (using a preset coding scheme) to determine the type of aggressive acts children engage in. They then compare their scoring. What is being assessed?______ reliability___ inter-rater_____

What statistic might be reported in a journal article?__ validity __construct ____