Twenty years ago, Dr. Field, a noted anthropologist, visited the island of Tertia. Using an observation-centered approach to studying Tertian culture, he concluded from his observations that children in Tertia were reared by an entire village rather than by their own biological parents. Recently another anthropologist, Dr. Karp, visited the group of islands that includes Tertia and used the interview-centered method to study child-rearing practices. In the interviews that Dr. Karp conducted with children living in this group of islands, the children spent much more time talking about their biological parents than about other adults in the village. Dr. Karp decided that Dr. Field's conclusion about Tertian village culture must be invalid. Some anthropologists recommend that to obtain accurate information on Tertian child-rearing practices, future research on the subject should be conducted via the interview-centered method.
Write a response in which you discuss what questions would need to be answered in order to decide whether the recommendation and the argument on which it is based are reasonable. Be sure to explain how the answers to these questions would help to evaluate the recommendation
Some anthropologist claim that the research in the future on Tertian child-rearing practices should be conducted via the interview-centered method instead of the observation-centered one, because Dr. Karp’s research via this method has overthrown Dr. Field’s previous conclusion about Tertian village culture by the later. However, they failed to answer several questions to make the unwarranted argument more convincing.
Firstly, one question needed to be answered is that whether the situation in Tertian village remains the same after twenty years. There is a great possibility that, with the fast-speed industrialization, the majority of citizens in Tertian choose to find jobs in big cities nearby for higher salaries. In this case, plentiful of adults have left their children in the hometown, therefore, it is the neighborhoods that take care of their children. Since these children spend less time with their parents than those whose parents work in endemic eras, they would miss their parents more frequently, so that they are more likely to talk about their biological parents than other adults in the village.
Secondly, without ruling out the circumstance that the children who took part in the interview have the similar features in aspects which might affect the results, such as ages, gender and family environments. If the main parts of participants in two researches have significant difference, then it is reasonable to have various conclusions. In addition, if the rate of divorce twenty years ago was higher than nowadays, it is more likely that children in those single-parent families were brought up with the care of whole village, since their parents were separated and offered less family time.
Lastly, the question that whether the disadvantages in the interview-centered approach are salient to influence the reality situation should not be ignored. Although the interview-centered method has several advantages in gleaning data, it is still affected adversely by quantities of uncontrol factors. For example, if the participants are not so willing to provide the real opinions toward their biological parents due to the concern about privacy, they would probably belie something during the interviews, which can dramatically alter the results. Furthermore, the observation-centered method might be more objective, since the researchers portray and follow up the real situation without bothering the children, which enhances the convincing level of the research.
To sum up, due to the lack of considering about the assumptions above, the argument supporting the interview-centered method has several flaws.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 5 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 8 2
No. of Sentences: 14 15
No. of Words: 401 350
No. of Characters: 2191 1500
No. of Different Words: 216 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.475 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.464 4.6
Word Length SD: 3.197 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 166 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 134 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 87 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 56 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 28.643 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 9.618 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.857 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.338 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.593 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.044 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Transition Words or Phrases used:
first, firstly, furthermore, however, if, lastly, second, secondly, so, still, then, therefore, for example, in addition, such as, to sum up
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 16.0 19.6327345309 81% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 7.0 12.9520958084 54% => OK
Conjunction : 3.0 11.1786427146 27% => More conjunction wanted.
Relative clauses : 13.0 13.6137724551 95% => OK
Pronoun: 28.0 28.8173652695 97% => OK
Preposition: 60.0 55.5748502994 108% => OK
Nominalization: 14.0 16.3942115768 85% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2254.0 2260.96107784 100% => OK
No of words: 401.0 441.139720559 91% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.62094763092 5.12650576532 110% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.47492842339 4.56307096286 98% => OK
Word Length SD: 3.27384030773 2.78398813304 118% => OK
Unique words: 223.0 204.123752495 109% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.556109725686 0.468620217663 119% => OK
syllable_count: 679.5 705.55239521 96% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59920159681 106% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 6.0 4.96107784431 121% => OK
Article: 4.0 8.76447105788 46% => OK
Subordination: 9.0 2.70958083832 332% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 8.0 4.22255489022 189% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 14.0 19.7664670659 71% => Need more sentences. Double check the format of sentences, make sure there is a space between two sentences, or have enough periods. And also check the lengths of sentences, maybe they are too long.
Sentence length: 28.0 22.8473053892 123% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively long.
Sentence length SD: 62.1790124707 57.8364921388 108% => OK
Chars per sentence: 161.0 119.503703932 135% => OK
Words per sentence: 28.6428571429 23.324526521 123% => OK
Discourse Markers: 10.0 5.70786347227 175% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 7.0 8.20758483034 85% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 3.0 6.88822355289 44% => More negative sentences wanted.
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 4.0 4.67664670659 86% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.142503736391 0.218282227539 65% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0445832059136 0.0743258471296 60% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.04805017913 0.0701772020484 68% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0780007635478 0.128457276422 61% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0461760824469 0.0628817314937 73% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 19.4 14.3799401198 135% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 34.6 48.3550499002 72% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 15.4 12.197005988 126% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 15.91 12.5979740519 126% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 9.47 8.32208582834 114% => OK
difficult_words: 113.0 98.500998004 115% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 14.5 12.3882235529 117% => OK
gunning_fog: 13.2 11.1389221557 119% => OK
text_standard: 16.0 11.9071856287 134% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 66.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.0 Out of 6
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Note: the e-grader does NOT examine the meaning of words and ideas. VIP users will receive further evaluations by advanced module of e-grader and human graders.