Thank Your Parents for Relationship Success or Not…

Young And In Love? Thank Mom And Dad, At Least A Little

1. The article states that, “to be sure, this study looked very broadly at satisfaction with romantic relationships and those between parents and teens. It couldn’t take everything into account.” What other factors are they suggesting that may go into having a successful adult relationship?

2. We know that often times, theory is embedded within research and it can impact the study. Is there a theory that supports this research?

3. This study was taken place in America, if this study was conducted in a different part of the world would you expect to get similar results (assuming that emotionally and physically satisfied would be changed to represent their culture’s ideal of satisfaction)?

Parents Are Poor Judges of Children’s Weight

Parents are poor judges of children’s weight

1. This article does not mention whether these parents are overweight themselves. What about taking parents’ weights into consideration? Would the results look similar or different.

2. The article states that “Parents were most likely to underestimate the weight of 2- to 5-year olds”. In this age range of 2 to 5, does baby fat influence their poor judgements?

3. What about these parents’ mental health statuses? Do mental health issues play any role in these parents poor judgements?

Will I Always be a Product of my Parents?

Young And In Love? Thank Mom And Dad, At Least A Little

1)      The researchers in this article made adjustments for pre-existing depression and self-esteem issues in participants so that they could isolate parental factors.  In what ways would/could this impact the outcome of the study?

2)      How important is it for the audience to understand the verbiage “parent”?  What implications could there be if this was unclear to your audience as well as to this study?

3) What is the consideration of the satisfaction or skills learned from parents? What extent could bad skills be considered acceptable in adult relationships?

Vast Study Casts Doubts on Value of Mammograms

Vast Study Casts Doubts on Value of Mammograms

This is an article about a research study into the value of mammograms over breast exams by a trained medical professional.  This article was published in the New York Times on February 11th.  A link to the study itself can be found within the text of the article.

1) What is the value in a study of the size and magnitude such as this?  Does the size of this study give it more weight within the medical community?  What is the value of this study being longitudinal in nature instead of retrospective or cross-sectional (existing statistics based)?  How might this change its perceived value to the medical community?

2) The results of this research seem to go against mainstream recommendations.  Were there any factors that might have led to the researchers having a bias against mainstream medical recommendations?

3) What was the researcher’s purpose in conducting this study?  Were they trying to evaluate the efficacy of mammograms or promote a change in the medical system?  How might the purpose of the study changed the procedural aspects of the study?

Want to stay lean? Drink whole milk.

The full-fat paradox: Whole milk may keep us lean this article taken from the MPR website.

1. In a nation that is working hard to reduce the rise of obesity and heart diseases, do you think that this article might be harmful or helpful to a regular audience?

2. In this article, the author talks about a study done in Sweden on middle-aged men who were able to stay lean while drinking whole milk and eating butter, giving the readers the assumption that no other activities were necessary to stay lean. Is it an ethical issue if the author omits in her article that these men were farmers, possibly doing manual/hard labor work on their farm for X amount of hours per day while consuming whole milk and butter? Or is there an ethical issue since she did include in her article a link to the summary of the study but does not imply that in her article?

3. Who is the audience in this article? Is the author making the assumption that anyone might be able to drink whole milk and eat butter and stay be lean?

Science and Spirituality

Science and Spirituality

Question 1:  The Persian psychotherapist, Reza Arasteh, working in USA, made the uncomfortable suggestion in the 1960’s that, “The subject of research projects is partly related to the character structure of the researcher. Accordingly, unless the investigator has reached a mature stage of personal development, he or she is unlikely to feel any incentive for researching the topic, or even be capable of fully comprehending it.”  In what ways do we need to our personal development to mature to become competent researchers?

Question 2:  Can research and spiritualism exist in a common lens?

Question 3:  To undertake scientific investigation, you have to start with an idea, with some intuition about what to look into and where you might begin to find answers. Science, in other words, begets creativity.   In what ways does science beget creativity?