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.
According to the reading passage, there were different results from the study about children-rearing practices between Dr. Field, who used an observation-centered approach, and Dr. Karp, who utilized an interview-centered approach. While the former researcher reported that Tertia’s children seem to be reared by a whole village, the latter concluded that they are dominantly reared by their biological parents and considered the former is inaccurate. Within the discrepancy of the research result, Dr. Karp suggested that an interview-centered method is superior to an observation-centered one. However, in order to evaluate whether the recommendation is valid, several questions have to be answered.
Firstly, were the interview questions significantly including the word, parents? Although they were wary not to confine the questions within the children’s experiences with their biological parents, the researchers might mistakenly mention the word, parents, when they were conducting interviews. In this case, the interviewees might answer the questions limited to the examples of playing with their genetic parents. Hence, according to the biased data, the researchers would have concluded that the children are reared majorly by their biological parents rather than an entire village. If then, the result of the interview cannot be trustworthy, as result, the recommendation cannot hold water.
Secondly, did they call other adults in the village mother or father although they are not their biological parents? Probably they do not distinguish how to call the adults in the village from their genetic parents. If then, the interviewer could have not caught which are about their biological parents, and which are not, so they just classified all the answers with the words, mother or father, as evidence of being reared by their genetic parents. If it happened, the study cannot be considered valid, and the recommendation becomes absurd.
To sum up, the recommendation, as it stands now, is not reasonable due to its reliance on unwarranted assumptions. If the one who suggested it cannot answer the doubts about the study stated above, it will not be able to be persuasive.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.0 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 2 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 5 2
No. of Sentences: 15 15
No. of Words: 335 350
No. of Characters: 1799 1500
No. of Different Words: 163 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.278 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.37 4.6
Word Length SD: 3.208 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 136 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 103 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 71 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 52 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 22.333 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 7.972 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.667 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.348 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.561 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.083 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 4 5
Transition Words or Phrases used:
first, firstly, hence, however, if, second, secondly, so, then, while, to sum up
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 20.0 19.6327345309 102% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 9.0 12.9520958084 69% => OK
Conjunction : 6.0 11.1786427146 54% => More conjunction wanted.
Relative clauses : 10.0 13.6137724551 73% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 25.0 28.8173652695 87% => OK
Preposition: 38.0 55.5748502994 68% => OK
Nominalization: 9.0 16.3942115768 55% => More nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1866.0 2260.96107784 83% => OK
No of words: 335.0 441.139720559 76% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.57014925373 5.12650576532 109% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.27820116611 4.56307096286 94% => OK
Word Length SD: 3.28707277144 2.78398813304 118% => OK
Unique words: 170.0 204.123752495 83% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.507462686567 0.468620217663 108% => OK
syllable_count: 557.1 705.55239521 79% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59920159681 106% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 1.0 4.96107784431 20% => OK
Article: 9.0 8.76447105788 103% => OK
Subordination: 10.0 2.70958083832 369% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 3.0 1.67365269461 179% => OK
Preposition: 6.0 4.22255489022 142% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 15.0 19.7664670659 76% => 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: 22.0 22.8473053892 96% => OK
Sentence length SD: 53.1021656809 57.8364921388 92% => OK
Chars per sentence: 124.4 119.503703932 104% => OK
Words per sentence: 22.3333333333 23.324526521 96% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.33333333333 5.70786347227 93% => OK
Paragraphs: 4.0 5.15768463074 78% => More paragraphs wanted.
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 3.0 8.20758483034 37% => More positive sentences wanted.
Sentences with negative sentiment : 4.0 6.88822355289 58% => More negative sentences wanted.
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 8.0 4.67664670659 171% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.213224283841 0.218282227539 98% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0697103027423 0.0743258471296 94% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.095623832555 0.0701772020484 136% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.122689579322 0.128457276422 96% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.125613350411 0.0628817314937 200% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 16.0 14.3799401198 111% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 40.69 48.3550499002 84% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 13.1 12.197005988 107% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 15.32 12.5979740519 122% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.97 8.32208582834 108% => OK
difficult_words: 90.0 98.500998004 91% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 15.5 12.3882235529 125% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.8 11.1389221557 97% => OK
text_standard: 16.0 11.9071856287 134% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
Rates: 79.17 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.75 Out of 6
---------------------
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.