It is important to note that an individual’s or household’s socioeconomic status or SES can serve as a key indicator of the many underlying issues causing the breakdown of major functional aspects of a family unit. The emphasis of the study is to understand the interconnectedness of SES with the set of factors associated with broken households, which include domestic violence, divorce, and mental health issues as well as addictions.
The current literature clearly indicates the fact that domestic violence, which is a core part of the broken household factor, contributes to emotional trauma and disruptive behaviors (Lloyd, 2018). The latter factors result in poor educational outcomes and experiences. Another study suggests that “SES increases the academic achievement gap from age 7 through 16” and “SES affects academic achievement through pathways other than intelligence” (Von Stumm, 2017, p. 57). In other words, SES directly impacts a child’s future socioeconomic status, but not always due to intelligence factors. Children, who were sexually, emotionally, abused physically as well as neglected had a higher risk of childhood trauma, which led to binge drinking, substance abuse, depressive symptoms, and PTSD symptoms (Machisa et al., 2016).
In conclusion, the quantitative research design needs to focus on correlational methods since the goal is to find whether or not there is a relationship between IV: broken households and DV: socioeconomic status. The objective is to maximize the sample size by recruiting as many participants as possible. The design needs to use surveys, questionnaires, or interview format depending on the plausibility. The selected tool needs to include close-ended questions only, focusing on current SES elements, such as income, and past broken household experiences, such as experiencing abuse, witnessing abuse, violence, current addictions, and mental health factors.
References
Lloyd, M. (2018). Domestic violence and education: Examining the impact of domestic violence on young children, children, and young people and the potential role of schools.Frontiers in Psychology, 9, 1-18. Web.
Machisa, M. T., Christofides, N., & Jewkes, R. (2016). Structural pathways between child abuse, poor mental health outcomes and male-perpetrated intimate partner violence (IPV).PLOS ONE, 11(3), 1-15. Web.
Von Stumm, S. (2017). Socioeconomic status amplifies the achievement gap throughout compulsory education independent of intelligence.Intelligence, 60, 57–62. Web.