Argument Essay Help!

[cherokeecierra]

 

Hey again everyone! In need of feedback on an argument essay. It's posted below.

 

Prompt:

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.

 

My Response: 

The overall conclusion to use more interview-based data collection, although tempting to accept, is not fully reasonable. Because the nature of anthropological studies is based upon multiple study methods, the comparison of various sets of data, and long term observation, reliance on one form of observation is not a wise scientific decision. Although interviews are a valid form of data collection, the fact remains that interviews alone are not strong enough to draw conclusions such as the one made by Dr. Karp, invalidating information gathered by other researchers.

In order to deem this argument as reasonable, several questions revolving around the reliability and validity of study methods must be asked. First, how reliable is the interview-based method that both anthropologists utilized in their respective studies? Additionally, how many interviews were conducted, how frequently were they conducted, and what types of questions were included? If the interviews focused solely on the role of the Tertian children’s biological parents’ role in child rearing, then the resulting data may be skewed with information biased towards, against, or only pertaining to the biological parents. Similarly, if the interview questions focus on the ways in which the Tertian children’s villages support or stunt their growth, then there may be room for interviewees’ answers to be skewed in favor or against villagers as well. There is not enough information about the interviews’ details to make a conclusive statement that only interviews should be utilized in studies such as this one.

Another question we may ask is whether or not interview-centered methods of data collection can stand on their own as valid. Does an interview need to be coupled with another form of observation in order to be a legitimate way to make conclusive assumptions? Does an interview only provide one piece of the data, whereas long-term observational studies, for example, may yield more detailed data? If a researcher decided to replicate Dr. Field’s study using a year long study in which interviews and naturalistic observational methods (e.g. watching and recording the ways in which villagers versus biological parents teach children important survival skills), then it may be assumed that the coupling of these two methods would yield more conclusive and wholesome data. In other words, it is important to take different approaches to the same problem in order to determine the reliability of a method or the results one collects.

Finally, one might ask whether or not the aforementioned conclusions can be made if there are only two anthropologists who have publicly released their findings. Maybe a study such as this one requires a team of researchers to partake in or replicate the same study in order to compare data. What if another anthropologist, Dr. Sam, completed the same study, but found different results? The children may have simply responded differently to Dr. Sam, or maybe his methods of observation were more reliable or strayed from those of Dr. Field and Dr. Karp. Overall, there are too many underlying questions to answer that make this conclusion unreasonable.

[thisguy2017]

4/6