According to the scenario provided, in which the Hernandez family is undergoing the Children Services Program’s Administration, social workers tried to track several factors when drafting the tests. First, the most critical factor was parents’ attitudes towards their children and the nurturing patterns to manage their sons. Second, the question concepts were developed to track parents and children’s psychological states in the context of poor parenting. Third, pretests were designed to identify problematic elements in the context of punishment for misconduct, while posttests were intended to track progress in raising behavior towards their children (Laureate Education, 2013). According to the scenario, Juan and Helena Hernandez do not understand why their attitude towards children is getting attention from social workers. According to them, the methods of punishment used concerning sons were applied by their parents on them.
Juan and Elena’s parents beat them while they were children. Accordingly, the traditional behavioral pattern was passed on to family members from generation to generation. Guided by this rule, Juan and Elena feel that their parenting methods are acceptable. However, as part of the course, it was found that children perceive their father as a threat and a source of violence, which forced Juan to reconsider his views on education. Thus, it can be established that attrition had a beneficial effect, and the parents learned the lessons of parenting. In this study, the most effective will be the use of a quasi-experimental design (Yegidis et al., 2018). This choice lacks random participants because researchers and social workers only turn to those families where some problems were recorded.
Depending on the goals, it is possible to choose whether a control group is needed, which is also possible within the quasi-experimental design framework. Considering the control group, it is necessary to understand that it will directly represent the experiment participants: parents, children, and the family.
In this group research design, the main focus of the research will be on parenting behavioral patterns. Their attitudes towards children, forms of punishment, and rewards will be studied and compared before and after social workers’ intervention. Thus, the experiment’s primary goal will be whether families’ attitudes towards the educational process will change and what kind of atmosphere will be observed directly within the family.
The study of interpersonal relationships, and, in particular, the educational process, has several limitations in terms of generalizability and internal validity. First of all, the impossibility of obtaining completely objective information due to people’s upbringing process’s subjective perception (Plummer et al., 2014). Some individuals will perceive the rude attitude of their parents towards them as a positive effect. Accordingly, researchers will need to take this bias into account. The social worker should be aware that not all participants in the work process will like what is happening. Accordingly, people will try to leave the project. However, in this case, experimental mortality can be reduced or eliminated by explaining to the parents the consequences of such a choice (WaldenULibrary, 2019). In particularly critical cases, refusal can lead to deprivation of parental rights and legal proceedings. Providing participants with all their rights and freedoms will reduce experimental attrition.
A pretest-posttest design is best suited to determine if a parent training class effectively reduces abusive parenting practices in the absence of a control group. Using two surveys at the beginning and end of the program among parents and children, the researchers could trace the dynamics. Depending on the questions posed, it will be possible to measure the overall satisfaction with the program, the respondents’ well-being, and their opinion on the effectiveness of the method. To confirm the findings, the researcher can conduct a second posttest after a specific time. Thus, the correlation between the answers will be more accurate if they match. In the case of different solutions to the two posttest stages, it will be possible to identify problems. Therefore, the study might involve the quality measurement over time if the researchers decide to pick a pretest-posttest design and create a second post-test questionnaire.
References
Yegidis, B. L., Weinbach, R. W., & Myers, L. L. (2018). Research methods for social workers (8th ed.). New York, NY: Pearson. Chapter 5, “Quantitative Research” (pp. 100-125).
Plummer, S.-B., Makris, S., & Brocksen S. M. (Eds.). (2014). Sessions: Case histories. Baltimore, MD: Laureate International Universities Publishing. [Vital Source e-reader].
Laureate Education (Producer). (2013). Hernandez family (Episode 5) [Video file]. In Sessions. Web.
WaldenULibrary. (2019). Find qualitative articles [Video file]. Web.