Critical Thinking ARTICLE adapted from: Low-Income Parents Of \'Difficult Childr

Question

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:

1:

Thinking Critically About External Validity

When critiquing external validity, consider how these results generalize. Consider how the sample was selected.

This article includes the term 'low-income' in the title. This might lead readers to believe that low-income parents are being compared to parents with higher incomes.

The participants in this study were

SELECT ONE:

A. all low-income

B. all high-income

C. a variety of incomes

2:

These results would likely generalize to

SELECT ONE:

A. all parents

B. higher-income parents only

C. low-income parents only

3:

Thinking Critically About Internal Validity

When critiquing internal validity, consider whether the claim of the relationship between two variables is supported.

Which of the following is the best description of the claim in this research?

SELECT ONE:

A.

"Children of low-income parents are more soothed by iPads than children of high-income parents"

(income level predicts child's response)

B.

"Low-income parents give their children an iPad to play with when they are upset more than they give their children an iPad when they are calm"

(Child's mood predicts parent behavior)

C.

"Children of low-income parents are more soothed by iPads than by parental attention"

(Type of intervention predicts child's response)

D.

"Low-income parents give their children an iPad to play with more than higher-income parents do"

(Income level predicts parent behavior)

4:

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.

Explanation / Answer

Ans 1 Low income families. The study is based on low income families and their difficult children as suggested by the title itself.

Ans 2 This finding will be generalized to low income families only as high income families are not studied here and may behave differently by giving mobile devices all the time or not at all.

Ans 3 answer is B) its the child's mood that predicts parental behaviour. Good mood is ignored, bad mood is rewarded with IPAD.

Ans 4 A) the purpose of this study is to investigate how parents manage children in difficult situations and what are the best strategies. To study this they should include all income parents and children of all age groups rather than just upto 3 years of age.

B) operational definitions could include what bad and good mood could be and situations can also be expanded to say, before homework, after homework, before going to school, after going to school etc.

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