Feral Children Research Paper

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Children who are assumed have been raised by animals, in the wilderness, isolated from humans are called feral children. The reason why I chose developmentally disabled is because of the correlation related the wilderness environment described, and some people may assume that those conditions are part of a disabling environment, which refers to environments that are harmful to health. If it is harmful or not is outside the question, even if some people may consider a feral child to be developmentally disabled because of its deviance from what is considered “standard behavior,” the question was not asking about the assumptions of such, but how it is defined in sociological terms, therefore, developmentally disabled is not correct in the context …show more content…

However, in practice, some of the eight steps are combined, executed simultaneously, or even excluded altogether. The first step is selecting a topic, which may come from personal values and experiences, curiosity, funding, or interesting in learning more about a particular topic. The second step consists on defining the problem and it consists on finding a focus within a broader topic. The third step is reviewing the literature, which is useful to identify problems that were already studied, or analyzed, and speculate if a re-analysis can be done, or even if there is a specific area within the topic that was never researched before. The fourth step is when the hypothesis is formulated; the hypothesis is a statement of how variables are expected to be related to one another, often according to predictions from a theory; in other words, the hypothesis is the stipulation of what the results will be, and it consists of a variable – which is a factor thought to be significant for human behavior -- and an operational definition, -- which is the way in which a researcher measure a variable. The fifth step is when the research method is chosen, following by the sixth step which is when the data is collected, which is one of the most important parts of a research, and the data has to valid and reliable. The seventh step is analyzing the results, which can be analyzed in many different ways, this steps is also …show more content…

The fifth method is when sociologists study documents. Documents is defined as the written sources that provide data; in its extended sense, archival material of any sort, including photographs, movies, CDs, DVDs, and so on. The analysis of documents method uses documents as the source to investigate social life, which includes books, newspapers, diaries, bank records, police reports, court records, immigration files, records kept by organizations, and more. It is correct to affirm that the term documents is very broad, and it can be almost any written source of data. Conversely, ethnography would be related to ethnomethodology, which is the study of how people use background assumptions to make sense out of life, in other words, how we make judgments based on our own previously learned assumptions which may differ from one person to another. Conclusively, if a researcher is using diaries to collect information about the attitudes of rape victims, he or she is using documents to collect their

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