Longitudinal Study Essay

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Recommended: The effect of divorce on children

Why the Longitudinal Study is best in Helping Children with Divorce When parents divorce one of the main concerns is the child. Worrying about what kind of impact it will have on them has always been a concern for psychologists and parents alike. Having parent’s divorce can cause stressful situations with the child and their surroundings while trying to adjust to this new situation (Felner Terre & Rowlison 1994). There have been two different studies to research the impact on children and divorce. One of the most widely used methods is the cross-section study which can compare different population groups at a single point in time. The other study which seems to be more suited in studying children and divorce is the longitudinal study. …show more content…

This has a lot to with how old the child is, their gender, and if the child has a hard time with stress and coping. When stressful events are outnumbered by available protective factors, even children who seem to handle hard situations well can develop problems (Werner 1990). Research suggests that parent-child relationships who have problems associated with divorce seem to continue throughout the life course (Amato and …show more content…

4.). They are quite costly and time intensive, which makes this type of study more rarely conducted. The other disadvantage of this type of study is if the child being documenting throughout the years decides they do not want this anymore, the data collected is basically useless. One other disadvantage would be that it is extremely difficult for the same person to conduct the study over the years. This could have an impact on results, being that many different people may be taking over the testing at different times in a child’s

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