Common Misconceptions About Research, Part I
By: Lara on July 30, 2008
Under: aggression, ethics in research, research methods
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Maybe it’s because I’ve collected more data than usual over the past year, or maybe it’s because I’ve met with more teachers and school administrators than usual lately–or maybe I’ve just been unusually chatty about my work. For whatever reason, I’ve found myself having a lot of conversations about developmental research in general and my own research in particular—and I’m noticing some trends in the questions and comments I get. So I would hereby like to initiate a new series of short posts on Mayeux Research—the FAQ’s and Common Misconceptions Series! Without further ado….
FAQ #1: When you ask kids to answer questions about negative behaviors (like aggression), aren’t you giving them ideas about bad things they can do—things they never thought of before?
A: No, and here’s why. There’s a multi-level process involved in creating a study like this, and part of the work at each level involves making sure that the study isn’t going to give anybody any ideas. First, using our expert knowledge of child development, we make our questions age-appropriate. We typically don’t ask young children questions about sexual behaviors, for example. Second, all university-sponsored research studies are reviewed by a committee of faculty and other experts on campus (the Institutional Review Board) to screen for potential concerns. Third, we consult with experts in the field (parents, principals) to make sure that our research methods are a good fit for the kids we’re studying. For example, my students and I recently asked 5th- and 7th-graders to tell us about their acts of relational aggression. We gave them a list of behaviors, and they answered questions about the ones they had recently engaged in. The principal of the middle school felt comfortable with all of the behaviors in our survey, but the elementary school principal did not—at her request, we removed two or three items from the list. Her concern? That most of her 5th-graders had not heard of those particular methods of aggressing before, and that some children might be inspired to give them a try. We trusted her judgment, and she in turn felt more comfortable partnering with our lab for the study.
Many researchers conduct focus groups with children or adolescents before they design a study—to make sure that their surveys capture the typical experiences of their participants, and to prevent the inclusion of material that’s inappropriate.
Beyond all that, I’ve learned that I don’t have a whole lot to teach teenagers about bad behaviors.
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whatsss up? my summmmerrr is grrreatt!!
By: Lara on July 15, 2008
Under: teens and technology
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My thirteen-year-old niece Taylor is spending part of the summer with us. I had no idea how much time teens spend text messaging, IM’ing, and MySpace-ing their friends until she showed up at our house, cell phone in hand and asking to borrow the laptop.
It’s kind of astonishing, actually. On the rare days that we have no need or desire to get out of the house, Taylor can kill twelve straight hours using some kind of technology for social purposes. At first I was appalled— She’s not even talking to us! That phone vibrates every 30 seconds! She’s been staring at the computer screen for three hours! Does she even go to the bathroom anymore? Oh, yes—she just takes the phone with her. I have uttered more “old fogey” comments in the last two weeks than my mother did my entire adolescence.
But over these weeks, I have come to appreciate the constant beeping and buzzing of the cell phone, even the brief snippets of rock music I hear when Taylor loads another friend’s MySpace page. Why? Because, despite hanging out with just her uncool aunt and uncle, her infant cousin, and some pets, she’s not lonely. She hasn’t seen a friend in almost three weeks, yet I haven’t seen a twinge of homesickness. I hear details about her friends’ vacations and about movies they saw and about the boy her cousin recently went out on a date with (“Really cute, but way too old for her!”), as though they’ve all paraded through my living room to share their stories. Taylor is several hundred miles away from her nearest BFF, but she’s connected to them in a way that I’m not connected to even my own friends right next door.
I know, I know, there’s more to all of this technology than facilitating social relationships. My husband forwarded me this article describing a recent study of the presumed side-effects of all this connecting, and it’s sobering. “I don’t care if it is normal for a 13-year-old to spend 12 hours on mindless chatting,” he wrote me. “It’s just not physically or mentally healthy.” I agree with the “physically” part. But Taylor’s mental health seems, well, pretty healthy.
Most days, Taylor and I get out of the house together, even if it’s just to run an errand. We’ve even gone to the gym to run laps together and taken a few yoga classes. And our little family has dinner together every evening. The rest of the time, she’s texting or IM’ing or MySpacing—sometimes, it seems, all three at once. It’s not how I like to spend my free time, but I’m not her and I’m not 13. And I’ve actually been inspired to update my MySpace page for the first time in three years. Maybe I’ll make some connections of my own.
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But will there be a rose ceremony? “Mean Girls” goes reality TV.
By: Lara on June 24, 2008
Under: aggression, peer status
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I like reality TV as much as the next person. But I can’t decide if I love this or hate this: It’s a “reality with morality” show (their words, not mine) called Queen Bees. The premise is that “mean girls”—young women in their late teens who have been nominated by friends or family—vie for the title of “most reformed mean girl” in a presumably life-changing eight-episode experience. The girls are coached by a psychologist; the contestant who shows the most improvement wins $25,000.
The reality-TV-lover in me can’t wait to set the DVR. The aggression researcher in me is less enthusiastic. Are we really to believe that these young women, who have been using mean behaviors effectively for years (everything from self-centeredness to downright nastiness, according to the press release), will suddenly see the damage they’re doing and vow to redeem themselves? Will any change we see be real change, or clever positioning for the cash? Are the producers truly shining a light on meanness in the hopes that viewers will reconsider their bad behaviors, or are they celebrating it by featuring attractive, socially prominent women who may have gotten that way to begin with by being, well, mean?
Can true change even happen for these girls, or are their behaviors too deeply ingrained? Many of the behaviors we think of as “mean girl” behavior peak in adolescence, middle school in particular. Such behaviors don’t disappear, of course, and occur regularly even among adult women, as most people can tell you. But for most young women, there is a decrease in these behaviors across adolescence and into adulthood. (The film “Mean Girls” – which I really liked, by the way – depicts high school aggression among girls who don’t show the typical trajectory. Well, that or they were “Really Mean Girls” in middle school.) Given their levels of meanness and how long they’ve gotten away with it, I wonder how effective a short-term intervention would be, even one led by a famous TV psychologist. These girls have been getting their way for a long time.
Still, I’ll probably tune in, just to see.
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Very Non-Scientific Travel Post
By: Lara on June 3, 2008
Under: Uncategorized
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Please forgive my blog-related lazines over the last few weeks; the usual end-of-semester hullabaloo was followed by a lovely week in Mexico with my husband and daughter, and I am slowly catching up. As I ponder an interesting article sent to me by a friend (thanks, Sophie!) and consider my next post, I’m hoping you’ll accept a plug for a refreshingly baby-friendly hotel on the Riviera Maya.
The staff at the Azul Beach Hotel treated my family (including 10-month-old Lily) like we were their family. Two out of two parents chez Mayeux/Wyro agree: This is one great hotel for parents travelling with their children. The staff doted on our daughter and were so very friendly and warm. The hotel had cribs, pack-n-plays, radio monitors, sand toys, and even Gerber baby food. There’s an activity center for children 4 years and older, with lots of planned activities (bracelet making, anyone?) and experienced caregivers. You can even hire a private sitter for the evening.
With only 97 rooms, the hotel is quiet and intimate, and nothing is more than a few minutes’ walk from your room. Two of the three pools are less than 3 feet deep, and the surf is calm. We plunked Lily in the sand our first day there and enjoyed her giggles as the water gently chased her around the beach. Fun stuff we’ll always remember.
Two thumbs up for this peaceful, beautiful resort.
And now, back to our regularly scheduled child development-related blogging.
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Field Notes
By: Lara on May 7, 2008
Under: schools
Comments: 2
Over the last couple of weeks, my research team and I have been collecting data on relational aggression with two different age groups: 5th-graders and 7th-graders. It has been an incredible experience and we are so grateful to the school staff, parents, and children who are making this research possible.
Something that several of us on the research team keep coming back to is what a very big difference a couple of years make. Two years and a school transition separate the two grades, but as any parent of adolescents can probably tell you, those two years might as well be twenty.
Our 5th-grade participants were still all about ME. They were impulsive, excitable, and quick to smile. It took many of them several minutes to choose a piece of candy from our “Thank You” grab bag; they had to dig through the entire thing to make sure they were choosing the very best piece of candy in the bag. (This drove their peers bananas, but the very children demanding “Hurry up!” were the same ones spending endless minutes choosing their own candy when their turns came.) They asked questions about the research we were conducting and seemed genuinely interested in the answers. Perhaps most endearingly, many of these kids seemed to enjoy our visits (we were in their classrooms, briefly, every day for a week). I saw smiling faces call out greetings to my research assistants in the hallways, and although the greetings usually went something like “Hey, do we get candy again today?” I could tell that the smiles were about more than candy.
Our 7th-graders were a different bunch. They were more suspicious of our intentions, but they didn’t seem to ask as many questions as their younger peers did. (Maybe being curious isn’t cool.) One boy asked me if participating in the study could affect his chances of getting into college later on; it was an easy question to answer, but I wanted to give him a hug along with my reassurances. 7th-graders were way more concerned about how their actions were seen by their peers. No more taking forever to choose a piece of candy; they looked quickly and grabbed what they could see in a second or two, and we heard “Hey, don’t be like that” from kids when their peers took too long to choose. Thirteen-year-olds keep each other in line in interesting ways. And they weren’t as positive about our visits, at least not openly, but they took our surveys seriously and seemed to have an appreciation for what we are trying to do: Understand them.
So what’s going on in those intervening years that changes kids so dramatically—why do they move from being happy-go-lucky to being more cautious, more reserved? We know that the middle school transition is a tough one for kids. We ask children to move from more personal, more intimate classroom relationships with a small group of peers and one teacher to the much larger social world of the middle school, where they have several teachers and interact with many peers over the course of a day. It must feel overwhelming and impersonal, and at a time when kids need to feel connected to trusted adults, they may not feel like they have opportunities to create those relationships. Research by Jacqueline Eccles and her colleagues has documented other differences between elementary schools and middle schools that may be causing trouble. For example, they argue that just as adolescents are craving more autonomy, they enter schools with more rigid, authoritarian approaches to discipline and order. Just when they crave closer relationships with peers, they find themselves among sometimes hundreds of peers, trying to figure out who they fit in with and who they can trust. Social comparison increases, and kids are concerned about how they look to others (and become depressed when they find themselves lacking.) It’s a recipe for trouble, and when I think of my young participants, some about to make the transition and some who have already done it, I’m proud and impressed that most of them manage to handle it so well.
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In the interest of fairness…
By: Lara on April 25, 2008
Under: autism, politics
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A few weeks ago I posted a few links surrounding the vaccines-cause-autism debate, including a link to an article quoting Sen. John McCain as saying there’s “strong evidence” that vaccines cause autism. I was peevish about his seeming “misunderstanding” of the state of the debate, but deep down I’ll admit I was a bit smug–those pesky Republicans, always getting the science wrong.
Well, okay, the other day I came across this post on one of my favorite science blogs, Bad Astronomy:
Obama, Clinton grossly misinformed on vaccines
Now, at the risk of splitting hairs here, neither Obama nor Clinton goes as far as to say there’s “strong evidence” for anything; they both call for more research into a possible link between vaccines and autism spectrum disorders but stop short of claiming that there is a link. (How’s that for smooth sidestepping?) But still, it aggravates me. We don’t need more research on this, not really. There’s plenty. Showing no link. Our research dollars? They should be pointed in the direction of early detection, treatment, finding the real causes of these disorders.
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Does your status need a boost? Beat someone up on YouTube.
By: Lara on April 10, 2008
Under: aggression, peer status
Comments: 5
When colleagues and I study aggression among girls, it’s often of the social/relational kind—gossip, exclusion, the cold shoulder—not because relational aggression is solely the domain of girls, but because rates of more physical kinds of aggression among girls are comparatively very low. (There is plenty of research on physical aggression and violence among girls; some of it is presented in this excellent book edited by Martha Putallaz and Karen Bierman). But researchers (among others) are documenting increasing rates of physical violence perpetrated by girls, and girls, while not exactly closing in on boys’ levels of aggression, are definitely narrowing the gap.
So when I hear a story like this, which was reported on CBS and has been heating up the blogosphere over the past couple of days (like this post on Jezebel), I’m not particularly surprised by the girls’ actions. Girls whaling on each other just isn’t as rare as it used to be. But this case is unusual in its violence, and it’s extremely creepy in that the girls reportedly lured their victim to the scene of the beating with the express purpose of videotaping it and posting it on YouTube.
The thing that struck me as most interesting about this story was who the perpetrators were—cheerleaders, presumably popular girls. Plenty of recent research on adolescent popularity has shown that the most popular students can also be the most aggressive. Beyond that, Toon Cillessen and I will publish a study later this year showing that the combination of being popular and knowing that you’re popular predicts the very highest levels of physical and relational aggression in a given high school grade. It may be that being popular and knowing it (or caring enough about popularity to rate yourself really highly on it) means that you’re also extremely protective of your status—protective enough to hurt other kids who challenge or threaten that status. That’s pure conjecture; we really don’t know why kids who are popular and know it can be so mean. It could be simpler than status maintenance. Maybe popular kids who know their power just feel entitled to kicking people around a little when they feel like it. Maybe they know they won’t really get into trouble for it. Maybe they figure other kids will like them even more when they act like jerks.
But popular kids’ aggression doesn’t usually go as far as it did in this story—in fact, one common assumption about popular-aggressive kids is that they use aggression in savvy, hard-to-detect ways that allow them to manipulate or threaten without being discovered (and punished). The girls in this incident clearly wanted to be discovered: They wanted to create a YouTube sensation! I’m fascinated by this. Do some popular teens feel that they have to show such extreme expressions of physical dominance in order to gain or maintain their status (and if so, why?)? Or is it even bigger than that—Are kids using social media like Facebook and YouTube as vehicles for gaining respect or power, by promoting their mean behaviors on a worldwide scale? I’ll admit it, this scares me a little. The potential for one-upsmanship seems enormous.
I may be overthinking this entire thing; it’s possible that these are just some dumb kids who didn’t think their plan through very well. The six girls involved in the incident (and two male accomplices who acted as lookouts during the assault) have been charged with third-degree felonies. Something tells me this story is being told and retold among their high school peers with a level of awe and respect that would make us cringe.
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Bullying, Part II
By: Lara on March 27, 2008
Under: aggression
Comments: 2
Bully stories abound these days; here’s a heartbreaking one written by Dan Barry for the NYT.
It’s about a high school kid named Billy who is the target of bullying among his high school peers. Not just a target; Barry suggests that he’s the target, at least where physical assault is concerned. He’s assaulted regularly. There was even a Facebook group devoted to hating him for a while, until Billy’s parents alerted school officials and the group’s page was taken down.
Barry, in addition to laundry-listing the many ways in which Billy has been victimized over the last few years, suggests a couple of questions: Why him? And how can the bullies be punished in a way that prevents this from continuing to happen?
Why Billy? Who knows. Really. He was probably the wrong kid at the wrong place at the wrong time. Why is his experience so extreme? (And it is extreme—I’ve never heard of bullying like this, and I ask kids about this stuff for a living.) Something tells me that Billy just doesn’t break. When he gets hit, he probably just shakes it off, gives the little jerk who hit him a level stare, and walks away. The author never mentions retaliation, he never says that Billy cries. Or goes to the principal. Or does anything other than walk away. Billy’s steeliness must infuriate some kids.
Billy seems to have become the school punching bag. If you need to blow off steam, find Billy. If you want to do a little chest-beating to show everyone who’s boss, find Billy. You can hit Billy all you want—nobody’s going to intervene, the punishment is never worse than a few days’ suspension, and girls will still like you. (In fact, girls may like you more. Research by Anthony Pellegrini and his colleagues have shown that teen boys who engage in displays of physical dominance—including bullying and other instances of aggression—are seen as highly desirable dating partners. Our infatuation with The Bad Boy apparently starts pretty early.)
Sigh.
So is there any hope for Billy and kids like him? I think so. And while I agree with Billy’s parents that his bullying peers should be punished, even charged with assault, I don’t think that’s the whole answer. When it comes to adolescents, the peer group is a much more powerful agent of change than angry parents or teachers or even the legal system. It’s up to Billy’s peers to put a stop to the punches.
Research by Wendy Craig and Debra Pepler has shown that when peers intervene in episodes of bullying, about half of the time the bully will stop his (or her) mean behavior within 10 seconds. That’s pretty powerful. But the problem, I think, is that kids don’t realize their own power. They think they have to be “cool” or popular or physically dominant themselves in order to stand up to the bullies on behalf of a peer. And sure, sometimes the bully’s going to look at them like they’re crazy and growl “Get lost” when they do stand up for someone. But if Craig and Pepler’s research tells us anything, it’s that peers are the best chance a guy like Billy has. We need to remind kids of this as often as we can.
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Girls never cornered the market on “mean.”
By: Lara on March 14, 2008
Under: aggression
1 Comment
I’ve spent a lot of time the last few weeks gearing up for a new research study that I’m really excited about. It’s a study of what we call “relational aggression” or “social aggression,” and it refers to those hurtful behaviors like rumor-mongering and social exclusion that are usually thought of as the hallmark of the 13-year-old girl.
There’s something of a controversy in the field as to whether relational aggression really is “girl aggression,” though—some researchers find reliable gender differences favoring girls, while others don’t (or even find that boys are more socially aggressive). I happen to fall into the latter camp. The research some colleagues and I have done shows inconsistent gender differences in relational aggression, especially once you get into the adolescent years. Beyond about 9th grade, there don’t seem to be any differences at all.
I mention all that as background. So here’s the story I can’t stop thinking about.
I was recently told by a school principal that she is seeing more and more boys engaging in acts of social bullying severe enough to warrant a talk with her or the school counselor. This principal explained that it used to be “a girl thing”—but now the boys seem to be catching up. Boys who used to solve their disagreements by duking it out or exchanging some hostile words are now using social bullying, instead.
As a researcher, I’m not surprised that boys are using relational aggression. There’s a lot of research out there that tells us they do. What’s interesting to me is that this particular school is experiencing such a rapid change in the kinds of trouble boys are causing for each other. Why the sudden shift? Are zero-tolerance protocols in the schools forcing boys to become less physically violent and more covert in their attempts to do harm? Are anti-bullying programs, which so often teach empathy and perspective-taking, actually teaching boys how to hurt each other in more emotionally damaging ways? And if that’s the case, what can we actually do to stop kids from hurting each other? Kids are going to get into arguments. They’re going to have enemies, peers they dislike. It seems impossible—maybe even unwise—to remove all potential means of conflict. If you outlaw fistfights, you get mean rumors and the cold shoulder. How do you outlaw that? And should we? I wonder how emotionally sterile we’re making our children’s classrooms, and about the long-term consequences on the kids themselves.
Hmm, I have more to say about this. I think this blog needs a Part Two. More to follow.
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Science propaganda is still propaganda….it just sounds fancier.
By: Lara on March 3, 2008
Under: psychology and the media
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Just days after Larry King’s show featured several celebrity parents insisting that their children’s autism spectrum disorders developed after routine vaccinations, I came across the following post by Jake Tapper, on ABC news’s Political Punch blog:
“At a town hall meeting Friday in Texas, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., declared that “there’s strong evidence” that thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative that was once in many childhood vaccines, is responsible for the increased diagnoses of autism in the U.S. — a position in stark contrast with the view of the medical establishment.”
After the Larry King show aired, I spent hours ranting to my husband and anyone else who would listen about how irresponsible it was to present only one side of the autism-is-caused-by-vaccines “debate.” And now I read that Senator John McCain has come out against vaccines, too.
I won’t spend time here laying out the case against vaccines, or the case against the case against vaccines—that’s already been done thoroughly and eloquently by others, my favorite being Yale neurology professor Steve Novella of The Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe. What bugs me about these very strong statements is that they’re being made by respected public figures in wide-reaching media outlets—and they’re being implicitly endorsed by the hugely influential news organizations that air the programs and print the news stories.
And beyond that, there’s no real attempt to accurately describe the state of the science on the matter. It’s not enough to acknowledge “divided scientific opinion,” as McCain does–which, by the way, is a frustratingly glib misrepresentation in itself. The fact of the matter is, the vast majority of the scientific and medical community does not believe that vaccines cause autism spectrum disorders. But this is not being communicated by the media.
I’m a new parent, and I speak as a mother and as a scientist. When it comes to learning about something that affects my daughter, I’m as guilty of overgoogling as the next parent. But it’s one thing to find some scary websites that insist I not vaccinate her. It’s entirely different to hear it on CNN. I’m lucky—I have access to resources that allow me to go beyond what the news media present. Most parents aren’t so lucky. They need to be able to rely on the media for some factchecking. They’re being let down.
Edited to add: Okay, on second look, the ABC News blog does go into some detail about the vaccine debate. I missed that in my furor. I’m still annoyed with John McCain, though, and CNN still stinks.
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