Stay at home moms vs. working mothers 207

“My first paper shows no cognitive effects on the children although the parents may have different life styles”.

 Select two articles from professional journals in your discipline. (Social work) keep the topic and my first written paper in mind.   The articles should be based on a study where data is collected and analyzed using some statistics.  An article which is purely theoretical or descriptive would not apply for this assignment. The next step is to summarize the articles following the directions below.  Each summary should be on a separate page and the summary should take 1 page or 1 ½ pages.

At the top of the page you will need to give a full bibliographic citation for each reference you summarize. It is best to list the bibliographic reference on the top of the page for each summary. List the bibliographic citations using APL format (American Psychological Association).

 ORGANIZING THE SUMMARY:

 The following are some points you should cover.

1.            What is the major theory, thesis or theme of the study?

2.            What is the primary hypothesis being tested?  Hypotheses usually have an “If A, then B structure” to them.

3.            What are the concepts that make up the hypotheses?  For example, if the variable is Child Abuse, how does the author define child abuse?

4.            How were the variables measured?  How did the author measure the concept, e.g., Present/Absent, Absent/Rare/Frequent, etc.

5.            If some of the variables come from other studies, what are they?

6.            What is the sample used?

7.            What are the primary statistical results?  What kind of statistical test was used? Was a statistically significant difference found?  Was the correlation between the two different variables strong or weak?

8.            What does the author(s) conclude?

  You may begin by mentioning the author or authors names and reference it to your references cited section. For example, you might start with something like the following:

Thompson, Caroline and Doornail Jones (1990) Religiosity, Welfare, and Work. Journal of Catholic Social Workers vol. 28:(2)268-281.

Thompson and Jones (1990) tested the relationship between religious beliefs and welfare. Their major hypothesis was that there was an inverse relationship between religious beliefs and activity and time spent on welfare. They theorized that the stronger a person's religious beliefs were, the less time they spent on welfare. The study was conducted in St. Louis. They randomly sampled 200 females between 28 and 30 years of age from the welfare rolls of ward 18 in St. Louis. Subjects were given a questionnaire which contained a religiosity scale, questions on frequency of church attendance, education, and scales on self-esteem. Two measure of welfare dependency were made: the percentage of the last ten years spent receiving welfare assistance, and the longest single continuous period in months on welfare assistance.

 

Thompson and Jones' hypothesis was supported (1990:102-103). There were significant inverse correlations between religiosity and both months on welfare (Spearman's Rho = -.56, P = .02, N = 193) and percent of time on welfare (Spearman's Rho = -.67, P = .01, N = 196). They also found that women who went to church twice a week spent significantly less time on welfare then women who did not. The churchgoers also tended to have fewer children (2.3 versus 4.5 on welfare) and the difference was statistically significant by a t-test.

 

They also conducted a t-test between mothers that attended church once a week compared to mothers who attended more than once a week and years of education.  The results were:

 

Attended once a week                  Mean education years =  14        N= 120  SD=3.4

Attended 2 or more times           Mean education years =  16        N= 80                    SD=5.1

 T score = 6.60    d/f=199                Probability at .05% = .001

 

The major conclusions of the study are that women who went to church twice a week or more then to have fewer children, spend less time on welfare, and have slightly more education.

 

In the paragraphs above the main hypothesis is in italic font.  The Independent Variables are italics and underlined, and the Dependent Variables are in italics.