Twenty years ago, Dr. Field, a noted anthropologist, visited the island of Tertia. Using an observation-centered approach to studying Tertian culture, he concluded from his observations that children in Tertia were reared by an entire village rather than by their own biological parents. Recently another anthropologist, Dr. Karp, visited the group of islands that includes Tertia and used the interview-centered method to study child-rearing practices. In the interviews that Dr. Karp conducted with children living in this group of islands, the children spent much more time talking about their biological parents than about other adults in the village. Dr. Karp decided that Dr. Field's conclusion about Tertian village culture must be invalid. Some anthropologists recommend that to obtain accurate information on Tertian child-rearing practices, future research on the subject should be conducted via the interview-centered method.
Dr. Karp criticizes Dr. Field’s research, calling Dr. Field’s research erroneous because Dr. Karp claims to have a more accurate method and conclusion. It may be that interviews are better than observations, however, the explanations he provides are not well-supported enough to be persuasive. He draws incomparable causal relationships, lacks quantification, and makes evasive comments.
First, Dr. Karp assumes that children who talk more about their biological parents are also raised only by their biological parents. It’s true that children might talk more about their biological parents because they spend more time with them, but other adults in the village might also have a hand in taking care of these children as well, just not in direct contact with the children. If rearing a child also means to provide for them, spending more time interacting with and educating the child is not the only means of rearing them. Perhaps other adults are responsible for providing food and other necessities for the children, thus spending less time with the children themselves. Instead of using “time spent talking about biological parents” to determine who rears children, Dr. Karp can provide more direct evidence, such as questionnaires to ask people in the village if they took care of children other than their own.
There is also the question of sampling. How many interviews did Dr. Karp conduct? If he did few interviews, it wouldn’t be sufficiently representative. There is also the question of percentage. Dr. Karp can conduct sufficient research overall in the group of islands, but does little in research of the island of Tertia. If that is the case, the conclusions he made about Tertia would not be accurate. His research will be more conducive with more samples.
Even if Dr. Karp is right about how children are raised by their biological parents now, he cannot determine if Dr. Field’s research is wrong. This is because Dr. Field’s research was done twenty years ago, and changes could have happened during these twenty years. Perhaps children were reared by the whole village in the past due to generally harsh economic conditions, but not recently thanks to a better economy which allows for everyone to concentrate only on their own family. Dr. Karp will need to confirm that the conditions had not changed within the past twenty years with further research, perhaps from other research.
In addition, if Dr. Field’s research is wrong, that does not mean his method of observation is wrong. Dr. Field might have made mistakes during his research that has nothing to do with his method of observation but his process of thought, how he links correct observations with wrong conclusions. The truth is, even if he does make mistakes using observational research methods, that does not rule out its better usage in every kind of research. It does not make observation less ideal for research compared to interviews. For example, if a researcher were to do research on the living habits of a secluded tribe, it would be difficult to conduct interviews without knowing the language. Making direct observations would be easier to understand their culture instead of learning the language.
Dr. Karp will need to evidence his research with a stronger link of causation between his interview questions and conclusions, a sufficient number of samples, and further study that proves how interviews are better than the observation method. Only then can Dr. Karp make his argument more convincing and make better evaluations on whether observation is better and whether Dr. Field’s research is valid.
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Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.0 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 19 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 4 2
No. of Sentences: 27 15
No. of Words: 588 350
No. of Characters: 2958 1500
No. of Different Words: 247 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.924 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.031 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.67 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 212 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 168 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 111 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 59 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 21.778 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 10.214 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.667 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.308 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.536 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.166 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 6 5
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, first, however, if, may, so, then, thus, well, for example, in addition, kind of, such as, talking about
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 28.0 19.6327345309 143% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 17.0 12.9520958084 131% => OK
Conjunction : 13.0 11.1786427146 116% => OK
Relative clauses : 12.0 13.6137724551 88% => OK
Pronoun: 46.0 28.8173652695 160% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 70.0 55.5748502994 126% => OK
Nominalization: 13.0 16.3942115768 79% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 3058.0 2260.96107784 135% => OK
No of words: 587.0 441.139720559 133% => OK
Chars per words: 5.20954003407 5.12650576532 102% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.9222030514 4.56307096286 108% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.79681670038 2.78398813304 100% => OK
Unique words: 259.0 204.123752495 127% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.441226575809 0.468620217663 94% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 887.4 705.55239521 126% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 11.0 4.96107784431 222% => Less pronouns wanted as sentence beginning.
Article: 4.0 8.76447105788 46% => OK
Subordination: 7.0 2.70958083832 258% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 6.0 1.67365269461 358% => Less conjunction wanted as sentence beginning.
Preposition: 2.0 4.22255489022 47% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 27.0 19.7664670659 137% => OK
Sentence length: 21.0 22.8473053892 92% => OK
Sentence length SD: 60.5891061208 57.8364921388 105% => OK
Chars per sentence: 113.259259259 119.503703932 95% => OK
Words per sentence: 21.7407407407 23.324526521 93% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.25925925926 5.70786347227 75% => OK
Paragraphs: 6.0 5.15768463074 116% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 9.0 8.20758483034 110% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 6.0 6.88822355289 87% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 12.0 4.67664670659 257% => Less facts, knowledge or examples wanted.
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.220700115539 0.218282227539 101% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0670236612045 0.0743258471296 90% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.041556868802 0.0701772020484 59% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.124773706801 0.128457276422 97% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0308891843315 0.0628817314937 49% => Paragraphs are similar to each other. Some content may get duplicated or it is not exactly right on the topic.
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 14.0 14.3799401198 97% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 58.62 48.3550499002 121% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 10.3 12.197005988 84% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.94 12.5979740519 103% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.85 8.32208582834 94% => OK
difficult_words: 118.0 98.500998004 120% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 12.0 12.3882235529 97% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.4 11.1389221557 93% => OK
text_standard: 10.0 11.9071856287 84% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 66.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.0 Out of 6
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Note: the e-grader does NOT examine the meaning of words and ideas. VIP users will receive further evaluations by advanced module of e-grader and human graders.