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.
Write a response in which you discuss what questions would need to be answered in order to decide whether the recommendation and the argument on which it is based are reasonable. Be sure to explain how the answers to these questions would help to evaluate the recommendation.
The author presents a text, in which the results of two approaches to study a certain culture are compared. In this discussion the decision of the investigator that used the second method to invalidate the first method’s conclusions is posed, followed by the exposition of the recommendation of some anthropologists, that in order to have accurate information on the practices of the culture that is being studied, further research should be conducted using the second method. The way this recommendation is reached is incompletely addressed; hence, it raises several questions regarding its validity:
Could it be that the temporal circumstances of the studies are different? Would, if positive, mean a change in Tertian culture? Indeed, it should be noted that there is a chronological discrepancy when comparing both studies. Dr. Field’s study, the first one, was conducted twenty years before the Dr. Karp’s. Although twenty years might not seem like a lot of time, one should note that in the past two decades our lifestyle has changed deeply: the advent of smartphones, internet or growing globalization are examples of how much society can change in such a small time interval; likewise, there has also been a deep impact in the basis of the culture of populations all over the world, such as in Mediterranean countries, where a major change has been the shift, or perhaps the accentuation of an already existing tendency, towards a more individual-centered society in detriment of a family-centered society. Bearing this in mind, it is easy to imagine that Tertian culture might have changed over the past 20 years. This should be properly addressed, as it might be key to explain the divergent results that are given. If there has been a marked change in Tertian culture the recommendation might not be right, as the difference might not be attributable to the different approaches, but to this circumstance.
But what if the approaches themselves were biased towards one results or another? It is important to bear in mind that the design of a study is one of the most, if not the most, important part of it. For example, clinical trials can result in widely divergent results if one measured the blood pressure of a patient after a certain drug was administered, or asked what he or she felt her blood pressure was. This example shows that the date obtained by interviewing the children could differ significantly from what can be observed from the outside, as they might be reared by an entire village but spend more time with their biological fathers and feel more attached to them. An observational study could exaggerate the former and an interview-based study could do same with the latter. So if the studies’ approaches are indeed biased, the recommendation would not be reasonable.
Even if these questions were answered in a way no temporal or methodological difference would be to blame for the differences that are reported there would still be one question that needs answering to determine how judicious Dr. Karp’s conclusion and the recommendation that appears to stem from it is reasonable and should be embraced. This question is central to science: Have these results been replicated by other means? If by using other methodologies (such as interviewing the parents of the children) or even with the same approaches that have already been used, consistent results are obtained, pointed either to Dr. Field’s or Dr. Karp’s, then and only then, from a solid ground, one could decide about whether the recommendation (and of course, the conclusion), is correct.
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 607, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...everal questions regarding its validity: Could it be that the temporal circumstan...
^^^^^
Line 3, column 743, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...h as in Mediterranean countries, where a major change has been the shift, or perh...
^^
Line 7, column 212, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...estion that needs answering to determine how judicious Dr. Karp's conclusion...
^^
Discourse Markers used:
['also', 'but', 'first', 'hence', 'if', 'likewise', 'regarding', 'second', 'so', 'still', 'then', 'for example', 'of course', 'such as']
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance in Part of Speech:
Nouns: 0.19881305638 0.25644967241 78% => OK
Verbs: 0.172106824926 0.15541462614 111% => OK
Adjectives: 0.0890207715134 0.0836205057962 106% => OK
Adverbs: 0.0459940652819 0.0520304965353 88% => OK
Pronouns: 0.0281899109792 0.0272364105082 104% => OK
Prepositions: 0.111275964392 0.125424944231 89% => OK
Participles: 0.0608308605341 0.0416121511921 146% => OK
Conjunctions: 3.15442079995 2.79052419416 113% => OK
Infinitives: 0.0207715133531 0.026700313972 78% => OK
Particles: 0.0 0.001811407834 0% => OK
Determiners: 0.123145400593 0.113004496875 109% => OK
Modal_auxiliary: 0.0326409495549 0.0255425247493 128% => OK
WH_determiners: 0.0222551928783 0.0127820249294 174% => OK
Vocabulary words and sentences:
No of characters: 3630.0 2731.13054187 133% => OK
No of words: 590.0 446.07635468 132% => OK
Chars per words: 6.15254237288 6.12365571057 100% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.92848004997 4.57801047555 108% => OK
words length more than 5 chars: 0.361016949153 0.378187486979 95% => OK
words length more than 6 chars: 0.289830508475 0.287650121315 101% => OK
words length more than 7 chars: 0.205084745763 0.208842608468 98% => OK
words length more than 8 chars: 0.147457627119 0.135150697306 109% => OK
Word Length SD: 3.15442079995 2.79052419416 113% => OK
Unique words: 285.0 207.018472906 138% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.483050847458 0.469332199767 103% => OK
Word variations: 59.0756114707 52.1807786196 113% => OK
How many sentences: 18.0 20.039408867 90% => OK
Sentence length: 32.7777777778 23.2022227129 141% => OK
Sentence length SD: 156.648866207 57.7814097925 271% => The lengths of sentences changed so frequently.
Chars per sentence: 201.666666667 141.986410481 142% => OK
Words per sentence: 32.7777777778 23.2022227129 141% => OK
Discourse Markers: 0.777777777778 0.724660767414 107% => OK
Paragraphs: 4.0 5.14285714286 78% => OK
Language errors: 3.0 3.58251231527 84% => OK
Readability: 61.7608286252 51.9672348444 119% => OK
Elegance: 1.50602409639 1.8405768891 82% => OK
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.264269453847 0.441005458295 60% => OK
Sentence sentence coherence: 0.131781011399 0.135418324435 97% => OK
Sentence sentence coherence SD: 0.0832354459325 0.0829849096947 100% => OK
Sentence paragraph coherence: 0.519446283238 0.58762219726 88% => OK
Sentence paragraph coherence SD: 0.178127467254 0.147661913831 121% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.105393178578 0.193483328276 54% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0530383168015 0.0970749176394 55% => OK
Paragraph paragraph coherence: 0.513072016414 0.42659136922 120% => OK
Paragraph paragraph coherence SD: 0.0449872813045 0.0774707102158 58% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.192146305037 0.312017818177 62% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0216489790798 0.0698173142475 31% => The ideas may be duplicated in paragraphs.
Task Achievement:
Sentences with positive sentiment : 6.0 8.33743842365 72% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 6.0 6.87684729064 87% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 6.0 4.82512315271 124% => OK
Positive topic words: 3.0 6.46551724138 46% => OK
Negative topic words: 3.0 5.36822660099 56% => OK
Neutral topic words: 4.0 2.82389162562 142% => OK
Total topic words: 10.0 14.657635468 68% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
---------------------
Rates: 58.33 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.5 Out of 6 -- The score is based on the average performance of 20,000 argument essays. This e-grader is not smart enough to check on arguments.
---------------------
Note: This is not the final score. 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.