Lecture: Studying Children: Research, Observation, and Ethics
Lecture script · about 15–20 minutes spoken · Week 3
Opening
Picture a preschool teacher getting ready for a family conference. She has a folder of notes about one child, and the family is about to read every line. Now picture a nurse charting what a toddler did during a checkup, and a social worker writing up a home visit. All three have the same hard job. They have to write down what a child did without judging the child. That's what this lecture is about.
In Week 1, you met the three domains, the periods, and the running case, our illustrative child followed through 8 records from birth to age 15. In Week 2, you picked up the lenses: Erikson, the behaviorists, Bandura, and the rest. A lens needs something to look at, though. This week is about where the evidence comes from, and how to record it fairly. Next week, in Week 4, we start the story of development itself, with prenatal development and birth. From then on, every record you read uses the methods in this lecture.
Here's my plan. I'll walk through how researchers ask questions, then the tools educators use to write a child's behavior down, and then the rules that protect the child. I'll stop after each idea and ask you to try something. Let's start with the question itself.
1. Ask a question the scientific way
You've probably had a hunch about a child. Say you notice that the toddlers at a library story time seem to sit longer when the reader uses puppets. That hunch might be right. It might be wrong. You don't know yet, and that's the honest place to start.
The scientific method is a careful process for answering a question: ask a question, make a prediction, gather observations, look at what they show, and share the result so others can check it. Here, you'd ask whether toddlers stay seated longer with puppets. You'd predict that they will. You'd watch several story times, some with puppets and some without, and record how long each toddler sits. Then you'd compare the two kinds of days. Finally, you'd describe exactly what you did, so someone at another library could try it.
That last step is the one people forget. A result nobody else can check is a private opinion. Sharing the method is what turns your hunch into evidence.
Pause and try this. You've predicted that puppets keep toddlers seated longer. Is that prediction a finding yet?
Hold your answer for a moment.
Here's the answer. No, it isn't. A prediction is step two, and it stays a guess until the observations in steps three and four support it or don't.
2. Describe what children do
Before you can explain a behavior, you need a good description of it. Think of a park bench on a weekday morning. You sit, you watch the slide, and you write down what happens. Nobody set anything up. That's the first of the descriptive methods.
Descriptive methods are research methods that describe what children do without testing a cause; they include naturalistic observation, structured observation, case studies, interviews, and surveys. Naturalistic observation means watching children's behavior in the everyday settings where it normally happens, such as a playground or a family home, without setting anything up. Structured observation means setting up the same situation for every child in a study so that a chosen behavior can be observed and compared across children. Hand every child the same puzzle, and you can compare how they work on it.
Each method sees something and misses something. The park bench shows real life, but the behavior you care about might never happen while you're there. The puzzle makes sure it happens, but a puzzle at a table isn't everyday life. Interviews and surveys reach thoughts you can't see, but people don't always remember well.
Pause and try this. You want to know how families plan bedtime on school nights. Would you sit on a park bench, or ask the families?
Take a second with that one.
Here's the answer. You'd ask, with an interview or a survey. A bedtime plan isn't something you can watch from a park bench.
3. Test whether two things go together
Now imagine a researcher who visits many families at dinner. She records how often each family reads together at the table, and how many words each child uses. Suppose the two go up together. More reading goes with more words.
Correlational research is research that measures whether two things vary together; it can show that they are related but cannot show that one causes the other. That last part is the whole lesson. Why can't it show a cause? Because a third thing might explain both. A family with more free time in the evening might read more and also talk more. Or the direction might run backward: children who already use more words might ask for more stories.
Here's a way to hold it. Two friends always show up at the same parties. That doesn't mean one of them brings the other. Maybe they share a group of friends who invite them both. Correlation is not causation.
Pause and try this. Name one third thing that could explain why reading at dinner and a child's words go together.
Think of the family's evening.
Here's the answer. One good answer is how much free time the family has. More time could mean more reading and more talking, so the reading alone may not be the cause.
4. Test whether one thing causes another
To test a cause, you have to control what changes. That's what an experiment does. Experimental research is research in which the investigator changes one thing and compares conditions that children were randomly assigned to, so that it can test whether that one thing causes a difference.
The key words are random assignment. Random assignment means placing each participant in a study's conditions by chance, so that the groups start out alike and a later difference can be traced to the condition rather than to who was in each group. Go back to story time. Flip a coin to decide which sessions get puppets. Keep the same reader, the same room, and the same length of story. If toddlers sit longer on puppet days, chance didn't pick the calm days for the puppets, so the puppets look like the reason.
You met a classic study in Week 2. Bandura, Ross, and Ross, in 1961, compared children who watched an adult act aggressively toward an inflatable Bobo doll with children who didn't. The researchers set up the conditions themselves, which is the shape of an experiment.
There's an honest limit here. Nobody may randomly assign a child to a harsh home. That's why so much of this field is correlational.
Pause and try this. A study compares children whose families already chose different bedtime routines. Is that an experiment?
Think about who chose the groups.
Here's the answer. It isn't. The families chose their own routines, so nothing was randomly assigned, and the study is correlational even though it compares groups.
5. Add time: longitudinal, cross-sectional, and sequential designs
Development is change over time, so researchers need a way to study time. There are two main ways, and a third that mixes them. A longitudinal design is a research design that follows the same children over time and measures them again and again, so it can show change within the same children. A cross-sectional design is a research design that compares children of different ages at one time; its differences are between groups of children, not change within the same children. A sequential design combines the other two by starting several age groups at once and following each group over time.
Our running case is longitudinal. It follows the same child through 8 records. Record R5 catches the child at 4 years, and record R6 at 7 years. That's 3 years between two looks at the same child. A cross-sectional version would gather a group of 4-year-olds and a different group of 7-year-olds at one time. Any difference there would be between two groups, not growth inside one child.
Pause and try this. Someone finds that 7-year-olds share more than 4-year-olds, in a study done at one time. Does that show that children learn to share between 4 and 7?
Think about who was in each group.
Here's the answer. No, it doesn't. Those were different children, so the study shows a difference between groups, not change within the same children.
6. Choose an observation tool
Now let's move from researchers to the people who watch children every day: teachers and caregivers. They use five common records. A running record is a timed, continuous, word-for-word account of what a child does and says, written in the present tense and in time order, with no interpretation inside the record. An anecdotal record is a brief account of one significant event in a child's behavior, written soon after the event happens. A checklist marks whether each of a list of behaviors was seen. Time sampling records what a child is doing at set intervals. Event sampling records each time a chosen behavior occurs.
Let's write record R4 both ways. The child is 2½ years old, in a childcare center's block area, on Day 1. The running record goes like this. At 9:05, the child stacks a block on a tower, and another child stacks blocks on a separate tower beside them. At 9:06, both children talk quietly while stacking, and neither speaks to the other. At 9:07, a caregiver reaches toward the tower. The child pushes the caregiver's hand away and says, "Me do it." That's 3 timed lines, and 2 minutes of continuous recording.
The anecdotal record keeps only the event that matters most: the child pushed the caregiver's hand away and said, "Me do it."
Pause and try this. What does the running record keep that the anecdotal record drops?
Go back over the three lines.
Here's the answer. It keeps the side-by-side building and the minute-by-minute order. The anecdotal record keeps 1 event and loses that context.
7. Keep description apart from interpretation
Here's the habit this whole course rests on. Picture a page with two columns. On the left, you write what the child did and said. On the right, you write what it might mean. That's it, and it's harder than it sounds.
Objective description is the part of an observation record that states only what the child did and said, in words any observer present would agree on. Subjective interpretation is an observer's reading of what a behavior might mean, written in a separate column as a possibility rather than a fact.
Here's the test. Could a second observer, standing beside you, agree with every word on the left? "Throws the block and cries" passes. "Was angry" doesn't, because anger is a guess about a feeling you can't see. To make agreement possible, define the behavior before you watch. In R4, "pushes away" means using a hand to move an adult's hand off or away from the materials. Then two observers mark the 9:07 line the same way. On the right, Week 2's theories come back as possibilities: R4 may show a wish to act on one's own, which Erikson's autonomy versus shame and doubt describes.
Pause and try this. Someone writes, "The child was annoyed with the caregiver." Which column does that sentence belong in?
Picture the two columns side by side.
Here's the answer. It belongs on the right, as an interpretation. You can't see annoyance; you can see a hand pushed away and hear "Me do it."
8. Protect the child: consent, assent, and the observation rules
Children can't protect themselves from a careless researcher, so research with children has firm rules. The Society for Research in Child Development sets them out in its Ethical Principles and Standards for Developmental Scientists, approved in 2021.
Informed consent is permission to take part in research given by a parent or guardian after the purpose, the procedures, and the right to stop have been explained. Assent is a child's own agreement to take part in research, asked for in words the child can understand; it is separate from a parent's or guardian's consent. Confidentiality means keeping records private so that no child or family can be identified from them. And every child keeps the right to stop.
This course adds its own rules. Your default material is the running case. If you choose a live observation, it happens in a public place where watching children is ordinary, like a park or a library story time, and only from a distance. It can also happen in a licensed program, with written permission. You never interact with a child, photograph one, or record one. You write no names. You never assess or label a real child. Before a program visit, you read a short permission script to the director. It asks for about 20 minutes and makes 4 promises: no interacting, no photos or recordings, no identifying details, and no assessing any child.
Pause and try this. A parent has said yes, but the child turns away and says no. Can the observation go ahead?
Think about whose agreement is missing.
Here's the answer. It can't. The parent gave consent, but the child hasn't given assent, and the child keeps the right to stop.
9. Say the reading in one plain sentence
Every reading of a record in this course ends the same way. You say one plain sentence that names the method, what it kept, and what it left out. Think of it like the last line of a weather report. It doesn't repeat every reading; it tells you what matters and what's still unknown.
For R4, the plain sentence goes like this. The running record keeps the order and the side-by-side building that the anecdotal record drops. The anecdotal record keeps the one event that matters most, "Me do it." Neither record says what the child felt.
Notice what that sentence doesn't do. It doesn't call the child stubborn. A record describes a moment. It never sorts a real child into a type.
Pause and try this. Someone ends a reading with, "This is a stubborn child." What's wrong with that ending?
Listen to what the sentence is about.
Here's the answer. It judges the child instead of naming the method and the evidence. A plain sentence describes a moment; it never labels a real child.
Closing
Let me pull it together. The scientific method runs ask, predict, observe, analyze, and share. Descriptive methods show what children do without testing a cause. Correlation shows that two things go together, not that one causes the other. An experiment changes one thing and uses random assignment, so it can test a cause. A longitudinal design follows the same children, and a cross-sectional design compares different children at one time. Pick the record that fits the question, and keep two columns, one for behavior and one for interpretation. Protect the child with consent, assent, confidentiality, and the course's rules. Then end with one plain sentence about the method and the evidence.
Later in this module, the Readings & Resources page, the lecture tutorial, the practice set, and the quiz give you a chance to use all of this. Next week, in Week 4, Prenatal Development and Birth, the running case begins at its very first record.
Built with The Course Maker · samples.thecoursemaker.com