The evaluation of bowlby's classic research

Question 1

Evaluation of the methodology and the proceedures?

Answer 1

• it may be tempting too try and draw the conclusion that prolonged seperation may have caused emotional problems that were experienced by many of the thieves, the variable had not further been manipualted. There is only a relationship between the variables that had been demonstrated, as of this there may be other variables that could have caused further emotional problems. For example, discord within the home “caused” prolongued seperation between the mother and the child and also caused the affectionless nature of some of the children. Could be that the affectionless character caused the seperation within some of the cases. This further means that no causual conclusion can then be further drawn.
• He produced a rich record of qualative data on each of his participants, he did this based on interviews with there families and also with there chidren. In total there are over 25 pages in the report which are detailing the case histories of the 44 of the thieves. The data gives an advantage of providing many insights into the event which may caused the child’s problems.
• The data may then be limited because it is based on the views of one person - albiet who was a very experienced pyschiatrist - perceptions could have been based on his own beliefs - for example his believe on the importance within early experiences
• There is a further source of bias in the data that had been collected - case histories are largely based on the recollections of the parents about the events that have happened many years previously - such recollections are very likely to be inaccurate, we would expect such inaccuracy to lean towards potraying the events more positively, which would have lead to a “rosier” picture of there early childhood.
• All of the 88 children within the study had further been emotionally disturbed - may not be apropriate to generalise from this sample towards all of the children - for example: there may be further deliquents who may have no emotional disturbance and the cause of there deliquencey may end up being more social than more emotional. Bowlby suggests that it may have been useful too examine a sample of children who were further appearing in court in order to determine whether all cases of deliquencey have a similar reperesentation