Schaffer and Emmerson (1964) evaluation

Question 1

List an evaluation point

Answer 1

unreliable data - this is due to the fact it was based on mother’s reports of their infants, they may have been less sensitive to their infants protests and less likely to report them
this is a limitation as it creates a systematic bias which challenges the validity of the data as if it were to be replicated in controlled conditions, results may not be the same

Question 2

List a second evaluation point

Answer 2

Biased sample
From a working class population which means that the findings may only apply to that social group. Second the sample was from the 1960s. Parental care has changed since then more women go out to work. and children receive care outside the home and Cohn et al in 2014 found that the number of stay at home dads quadrupled over the past 25 years

Question 3

List a third evaluation point

Answer 3

stage theories are deterministic
they suggest development is inflexible
the use of stage theories may be become problematic if they become a standard by which families are judged and may lead to them to be classified as abnormal

Question 4

Name another evaluation point

Answer 4

There are cultural variations
There are important differences within the ways that people relate to each other. In individualist societies, people are concerned with their own needs or the needs of those within their immediate family group. Whereas collectivist cultures are more focused on the needs of the group rather than individuals. If this is the case, we would expect multiple attachments to be more common in collectivist countries. This is true i.e Sagi et al in 1984 compared attachments in infants based in communal environments with infants based in family-based sleeping arrangements. They found that closeness of attachments with mothers was almost twice as common in family based relationships than in communal environments.