Pat and Angel are sociology professors, and parents of an eight-year old child. They have read a lot lately about the effects of screen-time on young children and the potential that playing certain video games can lead to aggression. They decide to conduct a study to explore this relationship.
First, they get a list of all the zip codes in their attendance area and look up census data to get average income and race/ethnicity distribution. Then they get a list of all the elementary schools in their district. From there, they select one-half of the eight schools that best match the characteristics of the entire attendance area. They contact the principals at those schools and ask permission to conduct their research at their schools - their focus will be on fourth, fifth, and sixth graders. With the principals' permission, they send letters to the parents explaining the purpose of the study, the procedures, and ask the parents' if they would be willing to participate. Those who are willing return a signed informed consent form for both their child(ren) and themselves.

The principals' hold a meeting with the teachers of those grades and the researchers who explain the procedures: on a given day, all the students with signed permission slips will stay in the classroom during lunch and recess to complete a brief questionnaire about the playing video games (e.g. what games they play, for how long, or how often; lunch will be provided at no cost to the school for those students who stay); the teachers will read from a script about the purpose of the study, and that all responses will be completely anonymous (no one will ever know who completed which survey; the completed surveys will be deposited in a locked box, like the ones used for elections, and only opened by the researchers); and that the survey should take about 10-15 minutes.

The researchers send a similar questionnaire to the parents of the children who are completing the survey, asking about their child(ren)'s video gaming and about their behavior immediately after playing, specifically whether they exhibited any aggression.

After the researchers collect all the questionnaires, they enter and analyze the data. They also schedule several interviews with students in each grade level at each school, and their parents. The interviews are conducted separately so that the children and parents are not together. Their goal is to gain a better understanding of the data they have collected and to probe farther about the relationship between playing video games and aggression.

The study has opportunity areas in the communication of the ethical guidelines and the benefits the population involved in the study will have or participating in the study. The majority of research studies provide a general report for the population to improve the lives of the participants.

The study presents opportunity areas in the questionnaires provided to the parents because they only study immediate aggressive behavior after the stimuli but they don't follow the impact of the stimuli on the rest of their lie routine and events, without defining aggressive behavior. Also, they don't study the behavior of the children in any sphere of their social spheres.

The study presents opportunity areas in the interview approach to the children and parents. Because it is repetitive and doesn't point out the aggressive behavior patterns that could be learned directly from videogames or other sources.

Therefore is not a well designed study and it will not answer their quesiton.

Explanation:

First of all the preparation of the research study is well developed, because they categorize they gather information to categorize the population by the social, economic, educative, and familiar situation.

Second, they choose the population according to the age of their children so the information would fit their needs.

Third, All the permission and allowance are performed perfectly. Because they ask permission to the parents. However, they don't inform them that the data gathered will be safe under ethical secrecy. So there goes a bad point for it. They not only need to inform the children about it, but also the parents. Before everything starts because that will trigger the number of people willing to cooperate with the research study. This is a very important factor because if you don't say that there could be a perception of the parens that the researches don't have enough ethical foundations to participate in the study.

Fourth the principals` meeting is very well organized but if they had informed about the secrecy ethic foundations before they would have had a bigger number o participants. Also, in this case, the researches should offer the parents valuable learning after the research is performed or example recommendations of the gaming "patterns" that trigger unhealthy responses to avoid them and the positive "gaming" effects on their children to increase them. Because even though research to know is a good thing, well you have to provide a result report to the population about the study. It is their right to know the results of the study after participating in it. Many times there is also a monetary or school-related value provided by the researchers of the team or the school. That is a must-have in social studies research because that way you are offering of value in exchange for their cooperation and their help. Also, it is courtesy.

Fifth, The questionnaire for the students is well elaborated because they are asking questions about the whole variables that could trigger violence in the infant. Genre, time, and frequency. That way they would measure which ones trigger violence and conduct further study.

Sixth, the questionnaire aimed for the parents is not valuable for the research because it would only measure immediate aggressive patterns. Also, because aggressive behavior is subjective. A scream could be aggressive or someone while it can be for somebody else. This is the weakest part of the situation. They are not going to obtain a valuable date from this questionnaire. They should look for fighting behavior in the school and their social spheres. Also, to the games, their children play, how long they play them. How long often they fight with school mates, siblings, non-school friends. And how much they fight with them.

The interview is going to be repetitive they want to know the same information they targeted in the questionnaires so it is futile. They need to focus on the aggressive conduct of their children and how they could be related to videogames. I have conducted many research studies on this topic and the most common variables associated are videogame playtime, aggressive behaviors, frequency of the aggressive behavior, and aggressive behavior patterns of learning, as well as sources. So this is the second weaker point of the study because it is associated with the one before.