Maltreated Children’s Understanding of and Emotional Reactions to Dependency Court Involvement is scholarly research written by Jodi Quas, Ph.D., Allison R. Wallin, Ph.D., Briana Horwitz, M.A., Elizabeth Davis, M.A. and Thomas D. Lyon, Ph.D. and published in the 27th issue of Behavioral Science and the Law. This comprehensive study assumes a scholarly perspective to approach the issue of children and the contemporary legal processes. This is a very important study because it uses a psychological approach to try and get to the children’s minds when involved in dependency courts. Jodi Quas and colleagues resorted to determine how children involved in legal proceedings concerning maltreatment understood the legal process. Secondly, they sought to identify whether the emotional reactions of the children during the court process had any implications on their general comprehension of the legal system. This marks the purpose of this study.
To come up with their data, the researchers identified a total of 94 children who had been undergoing court proceedings for substantiated cases of maltreatment. This sample that involved children aged between 4 and 15 included a mixed gender approach which engaged 49 females of the total population. Of this sample, 40% were of Hispanic descent while African Americans accounted for 23%. To avoid information distortion, no child requiring translation was used in the study. All these children were involved in case proceedings at a juvenile court in Los Angeles.
With permission and assistance from the Children’s Law Center of LA, the researchers carried out a questionnaire which was divided into two parts. The first part involved general questions concerning the understanding of legal terms. The children had to define seven of such terms. Secondly, the subjects were involved in another questionnaire which aimed at identifying the conditions in which the children were living and what they would have preferred to be their placement preference. Thirdly, the children were related to a case study from which several open and close ended questions were asked. The fourth stage involved children being shown drawings of faces showing different emotions that ranged from exaggerated smile to an exaggerated frown. The kids were asked to pick one that they felt represented their state (Quas et al, 2009m p.103).
The next stage of the study came after the hearing and it involved questions about what had happened inside and how the kid felt concerning the same. The drawings of emotional range were reintroduced to the kids and they were asked to pick the one that closely represented what they felt. This represents an efficient process that does not only identify the process before trial but also follows up the whole proceeding until the end hence finding the reactions and understanding of the whole process by the child (Quas et al, 2009, p.103).
With different variables put together, several conclusions were arrived at. One conclusion was that children’s knowledge of the court proceedings increased with age. This was evidenced by older children’s ability to define the legal terms and also make good judgments of the case study questions. In addition, most of the children including the older ones never had a total comprehension of the court decisions. For instance, most of them failed to understand the reasons as to why they had been removed from their parents. In addition, most of them had no knowledge as to what the future held for them because they did not know the court’s plans. However, the longer one had been in the proceedings did not a make him more knowledgeable than others. The knowledge of both were characteristically similar.
La Fountain (2002, p. 53) makes a clear difference between an independent variable and its dependent counterpart. According to him, an independent variable is one that has different variations and can be manipulated by the researcher. On the other hand, a dependent variable is one that comes out as a result of the independent variable. In this study, independent variables included the age of the children involved in the proceedings, the gender of the children, duration of time that the child has been involved in the proceedings and the in the experiment to determine the emotional reaction of the child to court proceedings and the child’s knowledge, the child’s knowledge became the independent variable. In the first part of the experiment to determine whether age, gender, frequency in court and other variables contributed in the knowledge development of the child, emotional reaction became the dependent variable. In the second part of the experiment, legal understanding became the dependent variable.
From a personal point of view, I find the research to be reliable. To begin with, the people involved were credible people who had enough education level to give a scholarly analysis. My suppositions are also supported by the variety of members who participated in the study. For instance, the use of attorneys to assist in the study allows the researchers to have knowledge from both psychological and legal perspectives. In addition, the division of the study into two phases allows the researchers to determine the child’s psychological position before and after the experiment. This is a good approach. Considering the close similarity between different legal structures of different states and countries, I believe that that this research could be applicable to other participants in different times and contexts.
This research topic is very essential in the field of psychology. The psychological stability of the child in question is usually the main focus of a psychologist. If the court process which is meant to help the child escape from a context that exposes him to psychological imbalance due to maltreatment is impaired with, the child might find himself in a worse position. However, the effectiveness of the court process could be inhibited if the child’s response becomes impaired due to the different variables. This topic is therefore relevant to psychologists. In addition, the study can be read by legal practitioners who need to have an understanding of these variables so that they can facilitate their processes of helping children from abusive families.
Based on the credibility of the researchers, the intensive nature of the research design and the relevance of the topic, I can use this study in the references of my future text books.
Reference
LaFountain, R. M., & Bartos, R. B. (2002). Research and statistics made meaningful in counseling and student affairs. Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole.
Quas, J., Wallin, A., Horwitz, B., Davis, E. and Lyon, T. (2009). “Maltreated Children’s Understanding of and Emotional Reactions to Dependency Court Involvement.” Behavioral Science and the Law. 27: 97-117.