My other source is taken from Bughes and Roberts (1995) taken from the book “Lone parents, Community Care”. In this they suggested that certain media influences have influenced many people into divorce through ‘moral panic’. This is due to the media presenting lone parents as a major social problem. Many different child protection agencies have been founded as a result. The research Burghes and Roberts performed reiterated the fact of the number of growing divorce rates. They concluded that the moral panic mentioned earlier played a big role in this. This source influences my own research as they have successfully depicted what they believe to be a main problem. They felt that although there are many different factors affecting divorce and its social stigma towards lone parent families they feel that the moral panic influences a lot of divorce. Social Stigma is a concept describing how divorce is now defined as being socially acceptable. Stigma also links with negative opinions when linked to divorce. Lone Parent Families are those where the mother and father have divorced therefore creating a family structure where a parent (usually the mother) cares for the child in the household by herself.
Word count : 391
Main research methods and reasons
There are three basic approaches that can be taken in research, positivist, interpretivist and realist. It is intended that this research will be conducted using a social attitudes survey/questionnaire approach by using positivist method. This is a similar approach that Murdock took when investigating his “universal society” in 1949.
For this survey to be successful I will need to take many things into consideration. For example, I will need to decide on how many people I believe I will need to partake in the survey in order to gain worthwhile results. Obviously as well I will need to aim my surveys towards a family where there is only one parent at the home of the children.
I will create a shortlist of names of families in the Kent area who are single parent families. Conversely I will also have to include families with both parents in order to compare with single parent families. With this shortlist available I will randomly pick 20 to pursue further for questioning. These will be my sample type and size. However I may have problems through the methodology not being accepted by the people on the shortlist, when I enquire for their consent to take part in the survey.
I will use a positivism approach as I believe that this approach is more precise and reliable that interpretivist and realist approaches. My survey will include a series of questions related to their children and different scenarios. This will enable the results to show if there is an particular difference between children raised by one or two parents. In addition I also believe this type of investigation will assist me best in testing my hypothesis made.
I am also aware of the BSA ethical guideline for research and I will ensure that my research does not infringe this.
Word count : 339
Potential Problems
There are a number of problems I could encounter with my research proposal. I could encounter several different problems when carrying out my questionnaire given to the public. One specific aim is to not include any of my own beliefs or thoughts during the questionnaire as this may influence their answers therefore not giving me good quality results. Consequently I will focus my questions purely on the title presented. My first problem is also apparent that this questionnaire may be presented to people who aren’t affected by lone parent families therefore may answer certain questions very randomly or with little thought incorporated into the question thus giving little impact to my results.
My second problem is that I have also recognised that using only one particular method of research means that I will not have a mixture of data. I could however consider using the method known as triangulation. Triangulation is a method where the researcher would use a mixture of content analysis and an unstructured interview thereby harmonizing one another concluding in quantitative and qualitative data.
My third problem is by using systematic random sampling methods for my questionnaire, this may affect my results, as I may be delivering my questionnaire to members of the public who may not be interested in the questionnaire or worse still just tick and answer in order to complete it as soon as possible. This may have to be greatly considered when evaluating on the results produced as their may be an anomaly present.
My forth problem is when using a questionnaire in trying to gain results, questionnaires give little leeway for the recipients to base their own personal accounts or opinions.
Word count 289