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 argument claims that even though Dr. Field concluded, as a result of observation-centered approach, that children in Tertia are generally supported by not only their parents but also the other people in the village; Dr. Karp resulted differently as a result of his interview-centered approach. Stated in this way, the claim of argument suffers from leap faith, poor-reasoning and ill-defined terminology. The conclusion of argument relies on assumptions for which there is no clear evidence. Hence, the argument remains unconvincing and has several flaws.
First, the argument claims that Dr. Field is a noted anthropologist. However, there is no detailed information about Dr. Karp except he is an anthropologist. There are some questions regarding the credibility of Dr. Karp since no detail related his competence in these areas is specified. For example, there might be the case that Dr. Karp is not a credible researcher and he might desire to become famous by attacking to the ideas of a famous anthropologist, Dr. Field. If the argument had provided information about the background and achievements of Dr. Karp in his field then the argument would be much more convincing.
Second, although Dr. Karp is a credible researcher, he conducted his experiment in several islands not only in Tertia but he asserted that the result of the experiment renders the conclusion of Dr. Field’s experiment invalid. This is again very weak and unsupported claim since the argument does not demonstrate correlation between the Dr. Field’s result regarding Tertia and Dr. Karp’s claims as a result of his experiment .To illustrate, Dr. Field’s experiment was conducted only in Tertia but the argument does not provide any clear statistic and results regarding Tertia that based on the conclusion of Dr. Karp’s experiment. In addition, even though the asserts of Dr. Karp is valid for many islands, it might not be the case in Tertia. In Tertia the children might include information regarding their society as well as their families in their interviews. The argument would be clearer if it demonstrate specific conclusions that only take Tertia into consideration.
Finally, the argument asserts that there should be additional experiment should be conducted in Tertia to achieve certain results. However, there is no information related with the accuracy of interview-centered method. The results of this experiment might depend on the age level of sample since children’s ability to notice the issues around them and to express themselves might develop as they get older. Moreover, imagination of children might affect the credibility of results since children might explain unreal things as if they are real. Furthermore, the researcher might reach the conclusions he desired by directing the children with his questions. Hence, interview-centered methodology might not be the best one to reach reliable results. Without convincing answers to questions related with the accuracy of the interview-centered method, the argument remains as more of a wishful thinking rather than substantive evidence.
In conclusion, the argument is flawed for the above-mentioned reasons and therefore it is unconvincing. The argument would be much clearer if it provided information regarding the credibility of Dr. Karp. To assess the merits of a certain situation, it is essential to have full knowledge of all contributing factors. In this case, credibility of interview-centered method and age levels of children in the sample.
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flaws:
No. of Words: 549 350
Argument 1 -- NOT OK. out of topic.
Argument 2 -- OK
Argument 3 -- OK
Correct arguments:
1. whether or not Tertia and the surrounding island group have changed significantly in the past 20 years
2. the exact locations where Dr. Karp’s interviews took place. --'children living in the group of islands that includes Tertia'
3. we would also need to learn more about the interview questions that Dr. Karp’s team used.
4. how to prove 'conclusion that interview-centered methods are inherently more valid than observational-centered approaches'?
Attribute Value Ideal
Score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 25 15
No. of Words: 549 350
No. of Characters: 2908 1500
No. of Different Words: 218 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.841 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.297 4.6
Word Length SD: 3.202 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 222 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 172 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 125 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 85 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 21.96 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 12.098 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.76 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.323 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.511 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.15 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5