Daphne has been a member of a research team studying interpersonal aggression among preschoolers for more than a year. In that time, her team has repeatedly employed a consistent set of techniques and procedures to study preschoolers as they interact in a number of settings. The procedures revolve around volunteer mothers bringing their children to the university child development lab for a "play

Question

session" that is the basis of the formal observations. Settings they have studied so far include: the university pre-school, affluent local day-care centers, and a pre-kindergarten program being offered in the neighborhood school district. All of these settings were fairly racially homogenous.

Daphne has just learned that a friend of a friend can help her gain research access, in the near future, to preschoolers in an unusually racially diverse though impoverished preschool setting.

Daphne decides she has no time to prepare a formal research proposal before embarking on the study. "Besides," she thinks, "this study should go just like all the others we've done."

Is Daphne leaving herself open to problems in this situation, or is she safe moving ahead with no formal proposal, given how familiar she is with the study techniques and procedures?

Answer 1

Daphne is setting herself up for potential problems by skipping the formal proposal. Without the exercise of writing the proposal, Daphne may not stop and carefully think through all the ways in which this study may not be like previous studies. For instance, Daphne needs to consider whether the mothers of the children in this more impoverished setting will be willing or available to bring their children to the lab sessions. She also needs to consider whether the techniques being used to record peer interactions are adequate, given that this sample is more racially heterogeneous than previous samples. There may be additional or different questions that should be added to the study to capture the richness of the new situation. It may turn out that the present design will translate fairly seamlessly to the new setting. But without the detailed planning that the well-written proposal forces the researcher to undertake, it is entirely possible that Daphne will encounter a dearth of research participants and data that do not capture the richness of the interactions among the participants that do volunteer.