Aim: To observe whether Asian and Caucasian preparatory children in one class of a school in Hong Kong (Australia International School HK) has a preference of talking to children of the same ethnicity.
Hypothesis: It is predicted that children will prefer talking to other children with the same ethnicity.
Method
Design:
The design was a covert observational study conducted in a preparatory classroom. An observational study is the most preferable way of conducting this study as the people being studied were in their most natural behaviour and environment. The ecological validity of a covert observational study is very high as the participants were not aware that they were being observed and studied which reduced demand characteristics. Also because children are not mature enough, experiments and surveys etc. aren’t as useful as observation studies since the results may not be as reliable because children may deliberately behave differently. Whereas in a covert observational study the children are allowed to act in their usual behavior, thus results are more reliable.
In order to address ethical considerations, the class teacher of the children was informed about the study. So this study was conducted under the approval of the teacher. Also, the information of the children was kept confidential and there is most likely no physiological or psychology harms posed by conducting the study as the children were simply being observed.
The independent variable was the ethnicity of the children and the dependent variable was whom the children interacted with.
Participants:
The participants were preparatory students from one class of a school in Hong Kong (AISHK). There were 12 participants who were children aged around 5 to 6 because the target population of the study was preparatory children. The sampling technique used was convenience sampling. The participants were from the class whose teacher had time and will for the study to be done. The individual participants were chosen by convenience and the first 12 children that were seen by sight were chosen. However, it was made sure that there were 6 children of each ethnicity.
Apparatus/Material:
Procedure:
The observational study took place in the children’s normal class when they were having free time so they had chances to interact with each other. The teacher of this class was informed beforehand about the study for ethical reasons. 12 children (in a class of 20) were observed for a period of 20 minutes. A tally was made and it was recorded which other children each of these 12 participants talked to. So, for example, whenever one participant talked to a Caucasian child, a tally would be put under the Caucasian tally section. Similarly, whenever the participant talked to an Asian child, a tally would be put under the Asian tally section. The raw data was collected and processed.
Results
The raw data was assembled in one table.
It was observed that there was a mix in who the children talked to and many of the children actually talked to more children with a different ethnicity.
Since there were six Asian children and six Caucasian children, a mean of the number of Asian and Caucasian children they talked to was calculated for each of the six. The mean was calculated because the six participants were equivalent to six trials so the mean helps give an estimate of where the data lies around. Standard deviations were calculated to describe the numerical measure of spread of data and to see whether the mean is a good representation of the data. Results are shown in table below.
Table 1. Mean of the number of Caucasian and Asian children the twelve participants talked to
Table 2. Standard deviations of four sets of data
Graph 1. Mean number of Caucasian and Asian children the twelve participants talked to (data from Table 1 in graphical form)
It can be see from Graph 1 that the error bars overlap each other quite a lot. This means that the four sets of data are quite similar.
Discussion
The results did not support the previous study that this study is based on i.e. preparatory children did not have a preference of talking to other children with the same ethnicity. The mean number of Caucasians and Asians an Asian child talked to is 2 and 1 respectively and the mean number of Caucasians and Asians a Caucasian child talked to is 1 for both. Since the standard deviation for both is quite high, it means that the data is relatively spread out from the mean. The four sets of data are also quite similar to each other as the error bars in Graph 1 overlap each other quite a lot.
Thus the conclusion is that Asian and Caucasian preparatory children do not have a preference of talking to children with the same ethnicity and instead there is a mix between the ethnicities and a few children even talked more with children of a different ethnicity. So, the culture and ethnicity of the children did not affect the people they prefer talking to. This is very different and in fact, completely contradictory to the findings of the research by researchers from Concordia University and the University of Montreal. It also contradicts the study by Sean Mackinnon because children with the same ethnicity did not gravitate towards each other even though they resemble each other more as they look more alike. This suggests that it is possible that either the results of the previous two studies may not apply to all people or this study may not apply to all people. It also suggests that it is possible that the country they are living in and the culture of that country influences this.
There seems to be limitations to this study. Firstly, the convenience sampling most likely caused the sample to be biased since not every layer of the population is represented. Secondly, the nature of the observational study provided little ability to control the independent variable and confounding variables. Thirdly, it limits to gaining results on only Asian and Caucasian preparatory children in one school of Hong Kong so the results may only apply to these people. Furthermore, although demand characteristics were fairly low it could not be guaranteed that the participants did not act in a particular way because the observer was visible to the participants so there may have been a Hawthorn effect. Moreover, a major confounding variable is that there are 20 students in the class but there isn’t an even distribution of Caucasian and Asian children. Since there were more Caucasian children than Asian children, it may have caused them to talk to more Caucasian children than Asian children. In addition, it may have been possible that there were conflicts between the children beforehand, which may have caused some to ignore each other thus affecting the results. Lastly, some children showed signs of communication for example body language but did not speak, but because it was hard to determine whether this counts as an interaction so a tally was not put down. So when situations similar to this occurs, it is hard to judge whether this would count or not.
If this study were to be repeated, it is suggested that the sample consists of a large range ethnicities and cultural backgrounds (e.g. range of people living in different countries) and not limit it to only two ethnicities from one country. Moreover, the sampling technique should be changed to random stratified sampling as the sample size will be less biased and will represent the population more. In order for the researcher to have control over the variables, experiments can be done in addition to the observational study. To remove all risks of demand characteristics, the researcher can make sure that the participants are not aware of their presence at all. Also, in addition to observing whom they choose to talk to, it may be even better to observe how they interact with the people they talk to as well in order to have a more in depth understanding of who and how these children interact.
Reference List
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Mackinnon, S., Jordan, C., and Wilson, A. (2011) cited on Research Digest (Blog). We sit near people who look like us. (2011). Research Digest: Blogging on brain and behaviour. Retrieved May 2, 2012 from
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Nadine Girouard, Dale Stack and Monica O'Neill-Gilbert (2011) cited on Science Daily. Do Kids Prefer Playmates of Same Ethnicity? (2011). Science Daily: Articles in Mind & Brain, Psychology. Retrieved May 2, 2012, from
- Observational Study. (2006). Psych Exchange. Retrieved May 3, 2012 from http://www.psychexchange.co.uk/glossary/observational-study-118/
Appendix
Appendix 1. Raw data table
Appendix 2. Calculation of the mean
Asian Participants (talking to Caucasians):
Therefore Asian participants talked to a mean of 2 other Caucasian children.
Asian Participants (talking to Asians):
Therefore Asian participants talked to a mean of 1 other Asian child.
Caucasian Participants (talking to Caucasians):
Therefore Caucasian participants talked to a mean of 1 other Caucasian child.
Caucasian Participants (talking to Asians):
Therefore Caucasian participants talked to a mean of 1 other Asian child.
Appendix 3. Calculation of Standard Deviations
The standard deviations were calculated using excel.
by
jeellyy96 (student)
