Research Foundations of Human Development and Family Science

Science versus Nonsense

Kathleen D. Dyer

• Éditeur: Routledge
• Année: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781000528824
• Édition: 1
• Sujet: Psychologie
• Sous-sujet: Psychologie du développement

Human Development and Family Science (HDFS) is an interdisciplinary and applied field that draws from developmental science, family science, and other social sciences. Research Foundations of Human Development and Family Science is a textbook that provides an introduction to the diverse scientific research methods that form the foundation of scholarship and practice in HDFS.

In Part I, Kathleen D. Dyer explores science. She distinguishes empirical scientific research from common sense and from knowledge gained from personal experience. This section also includes a discussion of the strategies used by pseudoscience to exploit the well-deserved credibility of science, providing relevant examples. Part II examines systematic empiricism through sampling and measurement. HDFS scholars use a wide array of measurement tools, including self-report (interviews, questionnaires, and self-report tasks), observations (participant, naturalistic, and structured), objective tests, physiological measures, and several types of archival records. Part III introduces the use of study design to achieve falsifiability in scientific research, including an overview of various orientations to time used in research as well as four different study designs: qualitative, prevalence, correlational, and experimental. Finally, Part IV addresses the public verifiability of science, including how scientific consensus is developed, the use of literature reviews to identify convergence of evidence, and how scientific literacy translates into evidence-based professional practice.

Illustrated throughout with studies foundational to the discipline as examples of the strategies described in the text, Research Foundations for Human Development and Family Science is a comprehensive, accessible core textbook for undergraduate research methods classes in HDFS. It introduces the discipline of HDFS and challenges students to understand the limitations of common sense and the threat of pseudoscience for those work professionally with children and families.

Part I Human Development and Family Science

DOI: 10.4324/9781003179078-1

This book is about the scientific study of human development and family relationships. These are topics that can be considered through the lens of art, literature, philosophy, or religion. But here, they are considered through the lens of science. I wish that it was not necessary to start with a clear statement that HDFS is a scientific discipline, but I’m afraid that it is.

We begin in Part I by carefully considering what that means: how exactly the scientific study of development and relationships is different from common sense about those subjects (chapter 1) and how personal experiences can lead us to incorrect conclusions about them (chapter 2). Then we move on to a definition of science and how it works in practice in HDFS (chapter 3), and how to identify pseudosciences in HDFS and how they attempt to fake the appearance of science (chapter 4).

Before we delve into those specific topics, however, let us consider the long history of the scientific study of human development and family relationships, as well as the types of scientific questions that we pursue in HDFS.

History of HDFS as a Scientific Discipline

HDFS emerged piecemeal in three different scientific disciplines (home economics, developmental psychology, and family sociology), all of which use scientific methods to study the everyday lives of ordinary people. They have, over time, merged into HDFS.

Home economics emerged in the United States in the late 1800s during the Industrial Revolution in response to the astounding effectiveness of science at improving things like manufacturing and medicine. Could science be applied to everyday life as well, to make people's lives better? Obviously, cooking, sewing, and child-rearing had been done adequately for millennia, as evidenced by the expansion of the human species across the globe. But the early home economists believed that science could be used to improve these areas of life, such that persistent problems related to the health and happiness of the general population could be addressed through science (Elias, 2010). Home economists focused on how to use the methods of science to make food production and preparation in the family home safer and more nutritious, how to make textiles and clothing construction in the family home more efficient and cost effective, and how to make child care and family relationships more successful. They were scholars intent on applying the methods of science to everyday life. The early home economists were frequently women, and were excluded by gender discrimination from working as academic scientists in male-dominated scientific disciplines. Thus, they founded academic departments of home economics, and set to work studying the application of science to the everyday lives of ordinary people.

At the same time that home economics emerged in academia, the study of the family as an important social unit was emerging within sociology, which historically had studied larger social groups. Frederick LePlay, considered by some to be the first social scientist (LaRossa & Wolf, 1985), believed that the family unit produced social stability. He studied how families managed the economic uncertainties of the Industrial Revolution, and he did so using methods of study that were obviously scientific (LePlay, 1871). Decades later, sociologists Thomas and Znaniecki published The Polish Peasant (1918–20), a study of immigration and assimilation through the unit of the family, a book that helped to create the sub-discipline of family sociology. In 1917, a family sociologist (Ernest Burgess) offered the first family science course at the University of Chicago, and the first college textbook about family science appeared a decade later in 1927 (Hamon & Smith, 2017). These early sociologists were using the methods of science to study the everyday lives of ordinary families. Family sociology remains a vibrant sub-discipline within sociology, but much family science occurs outside of the professional identity of sociology. Family science is the scientific study of families and close, interpersonal relationships (NCFR, n.d.).

Meanwhile, in the 1880s, G. Stanley Hall, the American psychologist who founded the American Psychological Association, was one of the founders of the child study movement. He was instrumental in the development of the scientific study of children, and of psychology more generally. He promoted the idea that we should empirically test our ideas about children and how they develop and that we should use the methods of science to study how ordinary people change and grow over time. He published one of the very first studies of child development in the psychological literature, entitled “Children's Lies” (Hall, 1890). This impetus grew into the modern field we recognize as child development, and its founding is part of the origin story of developmental psychology more generally. Like home economics and family sociology, it was fundamentally a scientific endeavor. Within psychology, the sub-discipline of developmental psychology remains vibrant, and is sometimes referred to even more generally as developmental science to recognize the contributions of sciences other than psychology to the study of human development. Developmental science is the study of systemic and successive change over time in human beings (Lerner et al., 2011). Developmental science is mostly situated as a sub-discipline of psychology, although developmental science has a multidisciplinary nature (Kretschmer, 2007), and developmental science is conducted outside of psychology.

There was a natural overlap in the interests and research methods of home economists, developmental scientists, and family scientists in that all were studying the everyday lives of ordinary people. Through the years, that affinity led to a great deal of multi-disciplinary work involving scholars in these related areas, and others. In fact, some argue that this work is not just multi-disciplinary, representing the contributions of multiple disciplines. Instead, it is inter-disciplinary, a merger of those original disciplines into one that is distinct from what came before.

Home economics as a self-standing discipline survived for about a century. Several components of home economics developed enough to branch off and become their own disciplines (e.g., food science and nutrition, personal finance, and fashion merchandising). The child and family components did not disappear, but instead blended with developmental psychology to become developmental science, and with family sociology to become family science. When home economics began to disappear from universities, the academic departments that had been called “home economics” gradually adopted the HDFS identity. Currently, HDFS exists in the form of interdisciplinary departments that contain both developmental scientists and family scientists collaborating to study development and relationships. Human Development and Family Science (HDFS) is, therefore, an interdisciplinary field of scientific study and applied practice that encompasses the related disciplines of developmental science and family science, and draws on the scholarship of several other disciplines as well.

The interdisciplinary nature of HDFS includes scientific work grounded in anthropology, communication, women's studies, criminology, and other social sciences. It also includes scientific work grounded in counseling, child care, education, social work, and other health and human service disciplines. HDFS is therefore an interdisciplinary social science.

In addition, HDFS is an applied science; meaning scientific research focused on solving practical problems that are directly relevant to the everyday lives of ordinary people. HDFS works toward the scientific understanding of development and relationships, and toward professionalizing these areas of expertise. It is a discipline that has clear, direct applications to everyday life and to human service providers in many related fields. The scientific study of development and relationships allows for professional applied practice in multiple areas.

Make sure you can answer the following questions:

• Name the three disciplines from which HDFS emerged.
• Why have these three disciplines merged into HDFS? What do they have in common?

Types of Scientific Questions in HDFS

The interdisciplinary nature of HDFS has produced an eclectic array of scientific methods that are utilized in the field. Because development and relationships are almost inconceivably complicated, and deeply contextualized, and because of the ethical implications of studying human beings in the most intimate contexts, scientific research in HDFS is incredibly varied and complex.

To explore the research foundations of the discipline, let us first consider some of the types of research questions that are studied scientifically in HDFS. These types of research questions correspond to study designs that we will address later in the book, but, for now, let us consider the range of questions. Please note that these questions could not reasonably be answered with common sense or personal experience alone.

1. Insight: Some scientific research in HDFS seeks to gain insight about a topic to help us organize our knowledge about it. These questions are usually about subjective personal experiences, and help us to broaden the way we think about a topic. Research designed to answer insight questions uses a qualitative design. Examples might include the following:
   • What do children think makes someone a friend? How do children conceptualize betrayal? Loyalty? Why do friends sometimes forgive each other, and sometimes choose not to?
   • What do people want in a dating partner? In a marriage partner? What are “deal-breakers” in committing to a relationship?
   • For what reasons do people decide to become parents or not to do so? How do people feel about these decisions after the fact?
   • How do adults cope with breakup? Divorce? Loss of a child? How do they make sense of these experiences? Whom do they blame, if anyone? How do they face the future?
     Please notice that insight questions do not have correct or incorrect answers. They are fundamentally subjective in nature; they examine the experiences/beliefs/perspectives of people. They tend to be open-ended questions that lend themselves to exploration with an open mind. They are also helpful for organizing information, which is the process of theory-building.

2. Prevalence: Other scientific research in HDFS seeks to identify how often something happens, or how many people have a given experience or have a given opinion. Research to answer prevalence questions is designed to count something. Examples might include the following:
   • What percentage of children experience parental divorce? Child abuse? Bullying?
   • What is the birth rate in a particular place? The infant mortality rate? The marriage and divorce rates?
   • At what age do most babies roll over? Crawl? Walk? Talk?
   • What is the average age of first sexual experience? Of first marriage? Birth of first baby? Menopause? Are those average ages changing over time?
     Please notice that prevalence questions are all about counting something. In that sense, they are objective in nature. The result of each question is a number. The number is not a matter of opinion.

3. Correlation: Other scientific research in HDFS is to find out if two or more things are associated with (or correlated with) each other. Research to answer correlational questions is designed to identify relationships between naturally occurring things. Examples might include the following:
   • Do parents who sleep with their babies get more or less sleep than parents who do not?
   • Do children of different racial or ethnic backgrounds have different experiences with law enforcement? With school teachers? With neighbors and friends?
   • Is divorce more or less likely when couples are far apart in age? When they have different religious beliefs?
     Notice that these questions always ask about two or more things because this kind of research is all about whether things are related to each other. These questions only ask about whether things are correlated with each other; they do not ask for an explanation for that correlation. These questions simply deal with the existence of a relationship, not its reason. That may seem like a strange limitation, but it is because explanations are much more difficult to determine than correlations, and often they require very different research methods. Furthermore, notice that these questions...

Table des matières

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface
• PART I: Human Development and Family Science
• PART II: Systematic Empiricism Through Sampling and Measurement
• PART III: Falsifiability Through Study Design
• PART IV: Public Verifiability for Evidence-Based Practice
• Index