Human development can be examined through several types of methods and designs applied during research. Depending on the objective, participants, hypothesis, and research question, researchers can either employ interviews, surveys, longitudinal designs, and various additional designs either based on qualitative or quantitative data collection. In this paper, childhood trauma will be examined in regard to long-term psychological outcomes with the implementation of a cohort study.
Childhood trauma has been shown to affect human development at various stages of life. The aim is to determine whether it impacts adolescents and adults from a psychological perspective, as the findings can add valuable information to the current existing literature on the topic. The method that can be implied is conducting a cohort study, which is a type of longitude design that assists in measuring an impact over a certain period of time (Barrett & Noble, 2019). As a result, children who have experienced trauma and who did not have such experiences are examined over several years. Outcomes are then analyzed according to the life stage of the participants, namely, adolescence and adulthood, which is why the method was selected in the first place. The cohort study as a subcategory of longitude designs is used to perform research by determining patterns through follow-ups which allow researchers to examine the phenomenon. Hence, data on mental health and interviews on overall well-being can be analyzed during childhood, adolescence, and adulthood, which will then be compared between the two groups of participants.
The benefits of the method include the ability to assess patterns and changes over time, the detection of phenomena unique to a particular life stage, and the collection of large data quantities, which minimizes potential research bias. Moreover, the method has already been applied in research examining the effects of childhood trauma on adulthood in regard to psychosis (Croft et al., 2019). However, its disadvantages include difficulties in locating willing participants, the limited resources that are to be allocated for long-term studies, and a change in sample size.
It is also essential to consider ethical considerations when it comes to conducting research. Researchers mention confidentiality, informed consent, and privacy as some of the main factors that are to be considered during study conduction (Newman et al., 2021). Thus, the current approach would benefit from participants and their parents being informed of the aims and methods applied in the examination, given a consent form, and having their personal data securely stored. The researchers can minimize ethical challenges that can arise during research conduction by following the standard procedure which has been mentioned priorly. Thus, all participants and parents, as, in this case, children, are initially examined, are to be aware of the fact that the information collected through interviews or medical records will not be published alongside their names as it is a primacy and confidentiality matter. Moreover, to avoid consent problems, the participants are to be given all the necessary information on the study itself before they decide to agree to participate or not based on their individual preferences and concerns.
The aforementioned research proposal and the selected cohort study design can help support the hypothesis: namely, that childhood trauma leads to issues in psychological development in the long term. The research question will be answered by examining the two groups through follow-ups during different life stages, and the findings will be compared across the participants. Moreover, ethical considerations are to be implemented during study conduction, which will limit certain challenger correlated with the lack of focus on privacy, confidentiality, and consent.
References
Barrett, D., & Noble, H. (2019). What are cohort studies? Evidence Based Nursing, 22(4), 95–96.
Croft, J., Heron, J., Teufel, C., Cannon, M., Wolke, D., Thompson, A., Houtepen, L., & Zammit, S. (2019). Association of Trauma Type, age of exposure, and frequency in childhood and adolescence with psychotic experiences in early adulthood. JAMA Psychiatry, 76(1), 79.
Newman, P. A., Guta, A., & Black, T. (2021). Ethical considerations for qualitative research methods during the COVID-19 pandemic and other emergency situations: Navigating the virtual field. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 20, 160940692110478.