Juvenile sexual abuse and the resulting adult sexual offences - Assignment Example

? Research Questions Design number] Introduction Research questions serve a numberof purposes for forwarding a research. Primarily research questions elucidate the purpose of the research and provide direction for the research to proceed (Creswell, 2009). This paper will develop different hypothesis to investigate juvenile sexual abuse and the resulting adult sexual offences. The developed hypothesis will be qualitative, quantitative and mixed research types. Additionally, the specific research approaches undertaken to answer these research questions will also be discussed. Research Questions Qualitative Question One HN: Victims of juvenile sexual abuse do not grow into adult sexual offenders. HA: Victims of juvenile sexual abuse grow into adult sexual offenders. The hypothesis stated above represents a simple research question that can be answered using qualitative research methods. The contention behind this research question is to establish a link between juvenile sexual abuse and corresponding adult sexual offence. Given the qualitative nature of the question, the presence of the human perspective would be undeniable in this research design. This research would be best conducted using the case study approach. A number of respondents who have been victims of juvenile sexual abuse can be interviewed to reveal if they are adult sexual offenders. This investigation would tend to reveal if juvenile sexual abuse is a trigger for adult sexual offence. Question Two HN: Victims of juvenile sexual abuse do not grow into adult sexual offenders due to social stigma. HA: Victims of juvenile sexual abuse grow into adult sexual offenders due to social stigma. The hypothesis stated above looks into the link between juvenile sexual abuse and adult sexual offence through the lens of social stigma. In essence, this research question blames social stigma for juvenile sexual abuse victims to turn into adult sexual offenders. The best possible approach to deal with this qualitative research would be to use a phenomenological study design. The phenomenological study is intended “to understand an experience from the participant’s point of view” (Leedy & Ormrod, 2010). This particular research question would look into social stigma from the victim’s point of view using structured interviews that last a few hours. The contention of the researcher would be to understand and construe the meaning of juvenile sexual abuse from the respondent’s point of view. The reaction of the respondent would tend to reveal if social stigma resulted from juvenile sexual abuse. Sequentially, social stigma would be linked up to adult sexual offence to create a cause and effect connection. Since the study would be qualitative, the presence of the human aspect would be present throughout the data collection and analysis processes. Quantitative Question One HN: Juvenile sexual abuse and adult sexual offence are not related. H1: Juvenile sexual abuse and adult sexual offence are directly related. H2: Juvenile sexual abuse and adult sexual offence are indirectly related. The null hypothesis presented above presents a research question that looks into the very basis of the concept for this research. The first alternative hypothesis (H1) states that juvenile sexual abuse and adult sexual offence are correlated and this relation is direct in character. The second alternative hypothesis (H2) states that juvenile sexual abuse and adult sexual offence are correlated and this relation is indirect in character. These hypothesis put together represent a purely quantitative research design that has to rely on statistical measurements and their interpretation. These research questions can be answered best using a descriptive research methodology. During the research process, the researcher needs to concentrate on the validity and reliability of the collected data since these would affect the correlation coefficients directly (Williams, 2007). In this particular case, the independent variable is juvenile sexual abuse while the dependent variable is adult sexual offence. The relationship between these variables can be investigated using a number of statistical tests such as chi-square, t-test, ANOVA etc. A variety of different statistical tests can be performed on the gathered data in order to see what kind of a test provides the best relationship between the independent and dependent variables. The measure of confidence with each statistical test will reveal the amount of strength that exists in the relationship between the independent and dependent variables. Question Two HN: Ineffective therapeutic measures are not related to transforming juvenile sexual abuse into adult sexual offence. H1: Ineffective therapeutic measures are related to transforming juvenile sexual abuse into adult sexual offence. H2: Ineffective therapeutic measures and social stigma are related to transforming juvenile sexual abuse into adult sexual offence. H2: Ineffective therapeutic measures among other factors are related to transforming juvenile sexual abuse into adult sexual offence. The null hypothesis presented above provides a quantitative approach to ruling out ineffective therapy measures in the process of making a victim of juvenile sexual abuse into an adult sexual offender. This approach relies on the casual comparative research methodology where the researcher takes a number of independent variables and tries to connect them to a dependent variable. In this case, the dependent variable is becoming an adult sexual offender after being a victim of juvenile sexual abuse while the independent variable is ineffective therapeutic measures. Based on data collection, a relationship could be seen to emerge between these two variables in the direction specified. The first alternative hypothesis (H1) states the very opposite of the null hypothesis and can be evaluated accordingly. The same process of data collection and statistical inference can be utilized for both hypotheses. The second alternative hypothesis (H2) expands on the first alternative hypothesis (H1) by including another independent variable which is social stigma. This line of research work will concentrate on relating social stigma and ineffective therapeutic measures to the transformation between victims of juvenile sexual abuse and adult sexual offence. Again a purely statistical approach will be utilized in order to correlate the variables at hand using a number of different statistical tests. These approaches stand in contrast to the third alternative hypothesis (H3) where the primary dependent variable is the transformation in to an adult sexual offender from a victim of sexual abuse while the primary independent variable is ineffective therapeutic measures. In this approach, there may be several secondary and tertiary independent variables such as lack of family support, late identification of juvenile sexual abuse, vengeful attitude towards society etc. This particular hypothesis provides fertile grounds to examine a number of factors that could cause the phenomenon at hand. Mixed Research Question One HN: Social and therapeutic causes are not to blame for transforming victims of juvenile sexual abuse into adult sexual offenders. H1: Social and therapeutic causes are to blame for transforming victims of juvenile sexual abuse into adult sexual offenders. The null hypothesis presented above clearly indicates that social factors and ineffective therapy is not to blame for making juvenile sexual abuse victims into adult sexual offenders. This approach means that other dimensions of factors are responsible for this form of transformation. On the other hand, the alternative hypothesis states that only social factors and ineffective therapy are to blame for this transformation. This kind of research can be best investigated using a sequential exploratory research design (Hanson, Creswell, Clark, Petska, & Creswell, 2005). The contention would be to use qualitative measures in order to discover the various social factors and ineffective therapy measures that cause the subject transformation. Once a list of factors has been drafted using qualitative means, these would be tested by data collection and statistical analysis. Question Two HN: Social and therapeutic causes are not to blame for transforming victims of juvenile sexual abuse into adult sexual offenders. H1: Social and therapeutic causes are to blame for transforming victims of juvenile sexual abuse into adult sexual offenders. The null hypothesis stated above relates social factors and therapeutic inefficacy as not being the causes behind victims of juvenile sexual abuse turning into adult sexual offenders. This research question could be investigated using the concurrent triangulation strategy where qualitative and quantitative data is collected simultaneously. In this particular research design, the social factors can be investigated using quantitative means while the ineffective therapeutic measures could be investigated using qualitative means. This allows for faster data collection and analysis. In addition, this approach provides a corroboration of quantitative and qualitative means that tends to complement each data collection type. This research design also provides for offsetting the weakness of either kind of research strategy (Hanson, Creswell, Clark, Petska, & Creswell, 2005). The qualitative data can be dealt with using a narrative perspective while the quantitative data can be dealt with using statistical analysis methods. Bibliography Creswell, J. W. (2009). Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches (3rd Edition). Thousand Oaks: Sage. A variety of different research methods are explored in this text including qualitative, quantitative and mixed research methods. Hanson, W. E., Creswell, J. W., Clark, V. L., Petska, K. S., & Creswell, J. D. (2005). Mixed methods research designs in counseling psychology. Journal of Counseling Psychology 52(2) , 224-235. Leedy, P., & Ormrod, J. E. (2010). Practical Research: Planning and Design, Ninth Edition. New York: Merrill. Practical research methods are offered in this text along with their advantages, disadvantages and limitations. Various kinds of research methods are explored in detail throughout the text. Tashakkori, A., & Teddlie, C. (2003). Handbook of mixed methods in social & behavioral research. Thousand Oaks: Sage. Williams, C. (2007). Research Methods. Journal of Business and Economics Research 5(3) , 65-72. The subject article presents a number of different research methods that are being used practically. The main traits of various research designs are presented in practical light. Read More