The purpose of this research is to find out the relationship between two variables i.e. dependent and independent variable. In this paper, dependent variable is “substantiated child maltreatment within two years of investigation from an earlier allegation” and independent variable is “age of youngest child in the house”. A proper research methodology has been followed to conduct this research. According to the hypothesis/topic there is a strong and positive relationship between the age of youngest child in the house and sustained child maltreatment within two years of investigation from an earlier allegation. This hypothesis has been assumed keeping in view the previous researches which have been done in the same field or on the same topic.
The California department of social services, in collaboration with child research center (2003), conducted research on California families to investigate the child abuse and neglectance which is being practiced in California. The sample families were kept under observation by the researchers for almost 12 months. The results showed that 91.6 percent adolescents were the victim of child abuse and the remaining youngsters were suspected to be a victim of child abuse in future.
Existing work suggests that people mostly engage in NSSI for emotionally regulating themselves and communicating socially and sometimes they have a sense of aggression or pain. However, what has not been stated and still is very important is that many people use NSSI for the achievement of personal ends rather than engaging in acts of substance abuse or bingeing/purging upon foodstuff (Field & Coulson, 2007).
For example, persons who have already experienced maltreatment during a young age such as repeated insults, excessive criticism, or some form of physical abuse; they might be a victim of inferiority complex in future. This could lead to the growth of a self-critical cognitive style and ultimately manifest in the engagement in NSSI as an extreme form of self chastisement or self-abuse, whenever they disapprove of their own behavior. NSSI is without a doubt, a multi-determined behavior that cannot be explained through one simple pathway but the examination of multiple pathways such as the one proposed here is necessary to commence in order to recognize this dangerous behavior (Baron & David, 1986).
About 85 adolescents aging 12-19 years (M = 17.5, SD = 1.28) were recruited through announcements. Out of these 9 did not complete and pass the assessment session and had to be excluded from the studies. This sample size (N ¼ 86) provided statistical power to detect small, medium and large effect sizes (r) of 0.15, 0.82,and 0.99, respectively, using two-tailed tests with alpha set at 0.05. The 75 adolescents provided data for this study (69 female; age in years: M ¼ 17.03, SD¼ 1.92) self-reported ethnicity as: 73.3% European American,3.5% African American, 7.0% Hispanic, 4.7% Asian American, 11.7% biracial or other ethnicity.
The consent of all the participants was taken who were willing to participate in this assessment activity. The participation’s who were under the age of 18 years were asked to seek for their parental consent in order to take part in the assessment activity.
When all the data was gathered, It was punched into excel sheet and then into SPSS sheet to find the actual correlation between the dependent and the independent variables of this research paper. The result of SPSS sheet showed a positive and very significant correlation between dependent variable which is “substantiated child maltreatment within two years of investigation from an earlier allegation” and independent variable which is “age of youngest child in the house”. The correlation between dependent and independent variable is found to be 22.1%. (SPSS sheet is attached).
Results are highly supporting the hypothesis statement which is “Correlation between age of youngest child in the house and substantiated child maltreatment within two years of investigation from an earlier allegation.” According to the results, if a child is exposed to different ignorance factors like child abuse, emotional blackmail, physical torture and sexual abuse in the early ages, then he is more likely to be the victim of substantiated child maltreatment within two years of investigation from an earlier allegation.
If a child had experienced such ignorance attitude in his early childhood, then he might not be able to live normal life in his adulthood. He is more likely to me emotionally disturbed throughout his life, hence resulting in destruction of his personality. So finally, the purpose of this research have been achieved and positive results show that the research have been carried out by following proper research methodology.
References
Baron, R. and David A. (1986). “The Moderator-Mediator Variable Distinction in Social Psychological Research: Conceptual, Strategic, and Statistical Considerations.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 61(6): 1173-1182.
Field, A.P., & Coulson, H. (2007). The interaction of pathways to fear in childhood anxiety: A preliminary study. Behavior Research and Therapy, 45(12), 3051- 3053.