The Ideal Child

"The Ideal Child" Many people have often been asked what they thought their ideal mate should be like. The answer to this question for most is the typical "model" prototype. In the research article "Hong Kong Chinese Parents? Perceptions of the Ideal Child", a study was done regarding parents? ideas of what their "ideal" child would be like. This is a very important topic in that "research findings indicate that parent?s attitudes, expectations, and encouragement influence children?s academic performance and competence in school." This means that what our children do in life could be the results of the attitudes of the parents towards them.

The type of experiment done to study this topic was correlation. This was obviously the better of the choices as they were trying to show that "parents perceptions of attributes of ideal children are closely related to traditional values in Chinese culture". The major variables in this study were traditional Chinese culture and attributes of ideal children. The data that was used in this article was based on a study investigating the relations among family environment, adolescent adjustment, and parental adjustment in Hong Kong.

I believe that the study was done ethically and just. No one was violated in any way private or public. Also the psychologists received permission from the participants before going on with any data collecting. Another reason why I feel this was done ethically was the fact that none of the information as far as I could tell was misconstrued and the conclusions that were drawn were on point with the data.

The methods that were used were valid and reliable. The way in which this study was conducted was by way of collecting 429 families randomly. The researchers then visited the families and gave the parents and child a "self-administered Parent questionnaire." They were then interviewed by way of using both the questionnaires form the child and the parent by a trained interviewer. The data was then collected and it was found that a total of 83 attribute categories were identified.

One aspect of the study that I didn?t really care for was the fact that the study wasn?t really representative of all parties. For example out of the 429 families sampled their were 65 more women interviewed than mean. This could lead a bias in the attributes. Also they didn?t take couple, they only sampled one parent form each household. This could be relevant because a couple might have agreed together what they wanted their child to be like, but when interviewed alone their real thought came out. Another factor could be the fact that the media ages for the parents interviewed was in the 40?s. This is key because the younger generation in parents was completely left out and the way that our society is changing with time so might their ideas on children. The fourth and final problem was the fact that they didn?t specify the gender of the child. Some parents might have different ideas for different kids.

From this assignment I learned all that it takes a lot what it takes a lot to make a study successful. Research takes a lot of time and patience. Form this article in particular I learned that the Chinese culture focuses on filial piety, education, and proper behavior. I learned that Chinese families place more emphasis on the balanced development of their children. This was surprising to me as none of them really focused on the individual growth characteristics of the child. In conclusion, I learned that psychological research is very meticulous. There are many steps that need to be followed in order for it to be a successful study.