Choose either question 1 or 2 and post an initial 200 word response to your selected question by Day 4 (Thursday) and respond to other students' postings in the question you did not answer by Day 6 (Saturday). Your response post must add something new to the discussion. Title your posts and include the name of the author of the reading you are addressing.
Your posts must be in accordance with theUniversity’s Threaded Discussion Guidelines.
Q1. Cherlin Reading: When is a Fact and Fact?
Andrew Cherlin cautions us to understand where "facts" come from in social debates about families. He provides two examples to show how facts from social science research can be misused. The first is The Heritage Foundation's 2008 claim that children living with two parents were doing better than children living with one parent or with stepparents. The second is the widely accepted claim that legal marriage confers 1,049 federal benefits and rights to a married couple that are not available to unmarried couples.
Based on this reading, complete the following:
Discuss why bias is a problem in research and what researchers do to overcome the problem.
- Identify one example of misused data discussed by Cherlin, explain the example and show how the data were misused.
Describe what we can learn from the example to make us better able to assess the validity of what we read and hear.
Q2. Coontz Reading: Families in History
In the readings for the week, Stephine Coontz uses historical analyses to show how notions of the “traditional” family have changed over time.
Based on the Coontz reading, complete the following:
- Identify the broad changes that have occurred in what it means to be a family over the last four hundred years, including those that have affected sexual behavior, family sentiments, and the position of women and children in the family.
- Describe some of these factors and reflect on what was most interesting/surprising to you.