Social Media and Parent-Child Relationships
Social media has made an immense influence on our social lives. Typically, how we refer to individuals online influences how we relate to individuals offline or in real life. One very interesting question will be: What is the influence of social media on the relationship between parents and their children when all of them are involved on social media? Do the advantages outweigh the adverse ones and will a parent and his/her child really be online and offline friends?
Analysis Techniques
Any analysis techniques may be used to perform this report. Self-report inventories of their online conversations with their children or parents as well as their offline conversations could be filled out by the selected respondents. Interviews could also be done on the respondents as a more direct approach. A researcher could also do a direct field observation by going to the environment of the parent and the child and observing how they relate to each other. Where necessary, and with the permission of the respondents, a researcher could analyze online conversations between the parents and their children as well as their reactions to what each of the posts online. This would be very useful in creating an accurate picture of how their relationship is online and enable comparison with the observed offline relationships.
Ethical Considerations
Self-report inventories are perfectly ethical since they give the respondent a chance to filter the information they provide whether the researcher is guiding them or not (citation). Interviews, although they may make the defendant more nervous and influence his or her response, are a proven research tool that is mostly ethical as long as the researcher does not force their take on the respondent to get their desired response. A direct field observation of the relationship between the respondents (both parent and child) may tend to be a little bit intrusive but would still be considered ethical since the permission of the interviewees has been sought and given. However, going through online conversations would be regarded by many as a serious invasion of privacy. Although this method would provide very accurate information, it is rather unethical even with the permission of the respondents.
Daily-Life Study
This study would involve a complete and unbiased study of the daily life of the respondents hence it qualifies to be classified as a daily-life study. If you were to compare this type of research to a reality TV show, too many differences would exist which would then disqualify reality shows from being considered as daily-life studies. Reality shows tend to have a commercial aspect which actively affects the behavior of the subjects as well as the decisions of the producers. Producers can directly influence the behavior of the subjects of the show, and for this reason, reality shows cannot be considered as real daily-life studies.
References
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2011). Handbook of research methods for studying daily life. New York, NY: Guilford Press.
