Everyday Research Methods

Happier families put kids to bed early

Can the study support the advice to "put kids to bed early?" Photo credit: FamVeld/Shutterstock

Here's a story with a straightforward message: "Happier families put kids to bed early."  The journalist's story begins with this introduction:

Studies are proving that getting kids to bed early isn’t just good for the kids – it’s good for their parents too. While a lot of parents may already know this from first-hand experience, now there is official data to support what they’ve thought all along.

(Note: Somebody should remind this journalist that scientists do not "prove" things; however it is true that they can use "data to support what they've thought all along.")

Here's some more about the study:

The University of New England and the Murdoch Children's Research Institute analyzed the lifestyles and sleep patterns of 3,600 children (all under age nine) .The results showed that teh mothers of children who went to bed early had improved mental health than those with children who went to bed after 8:30pm.

Dr. Jon Quach from Murdoch Children's Research Institute and the University of Melbourne also pointed out to Yahoo Parenting, "These benefits were seen in all early-to-bed kids regardless of whether they woke early or slept late."

a) What kind of claim is it to say that "happier families put kids to bed early?" (Frequency, Association or Cause?)

b) Was this study experimental or correlational? What seem to be the main variables?

c) When the researcher says, "These benefits were seen in all early-to-bed kids regardless of whether they woke early or slept late," he is talking about a potential moderator. What is the moderating variable he is discussing? According to his statement, does that variable a moderator of the core relationship, or not?

d) Apply the three causal criteria to this result.  Can we use it to support the claim that "putting your kids to bed earlier will improve their mental health?"  Why or why not?

The journalist's story goes on to cover a study on sleep times and child obesity. According to the journalist, a study of 2,200 kids found that the ones who went to bed earlier had lower rates of obesity. The researcher was quoted as saying, "The late sleepers were considerably more likely to be obese, have a poorer diet, get more screen time and less physical activity than other kids."

e) Use your consumer-of-information skills to find at least two questionable aspects of the journalist's comments about the obesity study, about which she wrote:

Does this mean that kids that go to bed later will be obese? Not necessarily--more studies still need to be done to prove if there is a correlation between the two. But it's certainly a good reason to stick to a bedtime schedule.

f) Rewrite the above statement using more appropriate phrasing.

 

Suggested answers:

f) I would rewrite the journalist's comment as follows:

Does this result mean that going to bed later will cause kids to become obese? Not necessarily. Although this study does find a correlation between the two, the study may need to be replicated. Furthermore, it's based on correlational data. So while we may be tempted to conclude that we should "stick to a bedtime schedule," we don't know whether the obesity actually came before the sleep patterns, and we also can't rule out outside variables, such as family dynamics, family SES, child gender, and so on.

 

 

 

 

 

Correlates of economic disadvantage in girls and boys

Why might boys be more vulnerable to the psychological correlates of poverty? Photo: Albina Tiplyashina Shutterstock

Some psychologists and sociologists are interested in how children from different socioeconomic conditions develop psychologically. One recent press report in Yahoo started with this sobering but unsurprising summary of past research, namely:

For children, the effects of poverty can manifest in surprising ways. Recent research shows that growing up in stressful economic conditions can disrupt brain development, alter behavior, and challenge emotions. 

Ignoring the causal language for now, you could note that this paragraph indicates three possible target correlations: One between poverty and brain development, one between poverty and behavior, and one between poverty and emotions.

But then, the story notes the following:

But for boys, on the whole, the outcome is worse.

This indicates that gender is a moderator of the relationship between poverty and psychological outcomes. Let's go back to the story to find out more.

Researchers studied the health, academic, and disciplinary records of more than 1 million kids born in low-income households in Florida between 1992 and 2002. They found that boys born to single mothers with little education, living in low-income neighborhoods, and enrolled in poor-quality public schools experienced higher rates of truancy and behavioral issues into middle school compared with their sisters.

a) Based on the paragraph above, make a table of results similar to the moderator examples in Chapter 8, showing how this moderator might have been represented. You'll have to make up some correlations, but make sure they match the results indicated. Hint: Your moderator is gender, and your target relationship is the correlation between poverty and truancy/behavioral issues.

The story goes on in the next paragraph:

[Poorer] boys also showed higher rates of cognitive disability, scored lower on standardized tests, and were less likely to graduate from high school relative to girls. They were also more likely to encounter the juvenile justice system.

b) Make another moderator table (using the one you did in question a as a model) depicting one of the results in the above paragraph.

Why does gender moderate the relationship between poverty and outcomes? Importantly, the answer is NOT because "boys are more likely to be poor" or that "boys are more likely to be truant."   Instead, a moderator is about how the relationship between poverty and truancy is stronger for one group (boys) than the other (girls). For boys, poverty has a stronger effect. In still other words, boys are more vulnerable to poverty.

The researchers cited in the Yahoo story present a at least one guess about why gender is a moderator.  Notice that they use the term "vulnerability," which is a good one to use when you're talking about a moderator.

One explanation for boys being particularly vulnerable in single-mother, low socioeconomic households is that they lacked a father figure in the home. Researchers pointed to existing studies showing that parents typically spend more time with the child of their own sex—mothers with their daughters and fathers with their sons.

Presumably, by spending more time with their daughters than with their sons, moms living in poverty might be buffering the effects of poverty in girls, and leaving boys somewhat more vulnerable.