Scenario

Researchers set out to determine what role self-esteem have in children who have speech difficulties.

One hundred and fifty children were chosen out of a group of three hundred and fifty children in the State of Alabama that had speech difficulties. These children were chosen because they were all taking remedial speech classes, did not have cognitive impairments, and were the same age, socioeconomic status and equally represented by race and gender.

The Burns self esteem checklist, a Likert type inventory was given to each child. The students were given sets of questions and were to answer how they felt about them. Possible answers: agree, disagree, moderately agree, moderately disagree and totally agree and totally disagree. Samples of the questions asked were; I feel comfortable talking to people, I feel anxious and nervous when I have to ask a question in class. A Chi- Square statistic was used to determine the results.

They study demonstrated that children that had a healthy self-esteem were less aware of their speech difficulties. These children self reported that they felt loved, had many friends, and were popular.

Moreover, the children that disclosed that they had lower levels of self-esteem reported higher levels of depression and had more intense feelings of loneliness. These children also reported having a higher awareness of their speech difficulties.

Answers

  1. Type of research: This is a descriptive research design because it describes the attributes of a group of people and groups are not being created.
  1. Research hypothesis, objective, or question: The objective of the research was to determine what role self esteem has in children that have speech difficulties.
  1. To what population would you feel comfortable generalizing results of this study? Since the sample was relatively large I feel confident that the results can be generalized to students in the state of Alabama who have speech difficulties. I do not feel comfortable generalizing beyond Alabama to other states.
  1. Identify the strengths and threats in this study.

External

Population validity- the assumption is that this is a non-random sample because there is not evidence disputing it. (Weakness) The children chosen for the study created a large sample. (Strength).

Personological validity- this is strength because the information included in the study would help to interpret the results. The extraneous variables are: race, gender, socioeconomic status, the absence of cognitive impairments, and the fact that these students were all taking remedial speech classes within the school.

Internal

Instrumentation- According to the Mental Measurements, the Burns self-esteem checklist is valid. (Strength) Because of the sample questions offered I feel that this is indicative of its reliability. (Strength)

Appropriate use of inferential statistics- the degree to which someone agrees or disagrees on an issue produces discrete data. If data are discrete the most appropriate statistic is a non parametric. So, accordingly, the Chi square was used appropriately. (Strength)

  1. Ethical problems. No ethical problems because no harm was done to the participants.