evaluating a claim
Evaluating A Claim
Bullying is a major problem in schools everywhere around the nation but nobody really knows the effects that bullying has on children in the future. Well, Louis (2013) takes a look into the lasting effects of bullying in her article “Effects of Bullying Last Into Adulthood, Study Finds”. Louis (2013) claims that children involved in bullying whether it be the victim, the bully, or both are more likely to have psychiatric problems going into adulthood. However, the question is whether or not her claim is credible. The aspects that make a claim credible are: if the information given to us has operational definitions, generalizability, a correct data collection method, and shows us that there is causation as well as correlation. I believe that she does explain all of these aspects well making her claim credible. The first aspect of this article that we need to look at is whether or not the experiment defines all the words in her claim. For example, does the experiment define what a child is, what adulthood is, what bullying is, and so on. In this aspect I feel that she has done a good job. Louis (2013) shows us that a child is considered 9-16 years old and adulthood is considered to be 19 to 26 years. She also gives us some examples of what they consider psychiatric problems and what they see as bullying. These definitions are important so that we can see exactly what the claim is saying. There is no grey area where we are trying figure out what the experiment is describing. So, we need to know these definitions in order to know that this is a valid claim and Louis (2013) demonstrates that there are well-explained operational definitions. The next part of the article that needs to be evaluated is if the experiment is generalized. By this I mean that the experiment does a good job of representing everybody. A lot of this has to do with the sample of children chosen for the experiment. In this aspect I feel like she does a decent job of
Bullying is a major problem in schools everywhere around the nation but nobody really knows the effects that bullying has on children in the future. Well, Louis (2013) takes a look into the lasting effects of bullying in her article “Effects of Bullying Last Into Adulthood, Study Finds”. Louis (2013) claims that children involved in bullying whether it be the victim, the bully, or both are more likely to have psychiatric problems going into adulthood. However, the question is whether or not her claim is credible. The aspects that make a claim credible are: if the information given to us has operational definitions, generalizability, a correct data collection method, and shows us that there is causation as well as correlation. I believe that she does explain all of these aspects well making her claim credible. The first aspect of this article that we need to look at is whether or not the experiment defines all the words in her claim. For example, does the experiment define what a child is, what adulthood is, what bullying is, and so on. In this aspect I feel that she has done a good job. Louis (2013) shows us that a child is considered 9-16 years old and adulthood is considered to be 19 to 26 years. She also gives us some examples of what they consider psychiatric problems and what they see as bullying. These definitions are important so that we can see exactly what the claim is saying. There is no grey area where we are trying figure out what the experiment is describing. So, we need to know these definitions in order to know that this is a valid claim and Louis (2013) demonstrates that there are well-explained operational definitions. The next part of the article that needs to be evaluated is if the experiment is generalized. By this I mean that the experiment does a good job of representing everybody. A lot of this has to do with the sample of children chosen for the experiment. In this aspect I feel like she does a decent job of