Analogue

The Impact of Current Trends on Analogue methodology

A child has to put up with a number of stressful situations, whether at school from peers  or at home where he has to contend with intra-parental conflicts or economical challenges. These have led to changes in the way research studies are now conducted in child psychology.

According to Daniel Lees in, “An Empirical investigation of the motivational theory of coping in middle to late childhood.” dealing with problems and annoyances can potentially facilitate development; they present children and youth with opportunities to develop coping skills and strategies, strengthening their resources and confidence for dealing with future events (Losoya et al. 1998;Skinner and Zimmer-Gembeck 2007).

As a result, researchers have been interested in capturing children’s reactions to stressful events, including, for example, their emotional reactions, appraisals of threat, and ways of coping.

According to Cummings 1995, various dimensions of an event can be precisely specified and presented in the same way across all participants and explicit recordings of responses on multiple dimensions (e.g. Cognitive, verbal, emotional and physiological) is possible, in fact simulations or other constructed representations of actual events; live or recorded on videotape or audio tape are presented to members to obtain their reactions, as one form of laboratory method that can assess children’s reaction to stressful events.

In this procedure, stimuli is presented in a manner that is lively and engaging for the participants so that very young children can be highly motivated to participate and may be highly responsive to the questions asked of them about an event. (e.g. 4-5 year old Cummings , Voger, Cummings & El-Sheikh 1989).The data collected is a better reflection of how participants behave or feel. Using this approach detailed scenarios have been obtained on responses to stimuli even in children less than one year of age.

Summary of the Case Study in

Psychology; Study data from Griffith University update understanding of psychology

The analogue methods of research and assessment have been widely and commonly used in child and adolescent literature to measure stress and coping. According to the article Psychology; Study data from Griffith University update understanding of psychology” which was published in Psychology & Psychiatry Journal. Atlanta.