Research in child development is about how something in the environment is related to something in the child. These two things are called factors. Imagine two factors that might relate to eachother 1) One must be an aspect of the environment and 2) One must be an aspect of the child’s development or behavior. How do you think they are related? Do you think the environmental factor causes positive or negative change in the child? Now form your thoughts into a research question that can be studied. The question must be specific enough so that you know exactly what you are assessing in both the environment and the child. The question should be general enough that you can get variation, meaning differences in the environmental variable between the people you study, for example if you want to know how exercise affects energy level you need to study people who do different amounts of exercise, if they all do the same amount you won’t be able to make any comparisons. Here are some examples of research questions: Do the kinds of conversations parents have with their children between the ages of 3 and 4 affect the children’s language development at age 5? How does watching violent tv at home affect children’s agression levels during recess? Is there a difference in the quality of homework between 1rst graders who are cared for by: parents, a babysitter, or an afterschool program between the hours of 3:00 and 6:00? Each of these questions has specific Variables that can be studied. For example in question 1 the variables are: 1)Parent-child conversations and 2) children’s language development a year later  Can you identify the variables in the next 2 questions? -How does watching violent tv at home affect children’s agression levels during recess? -Is there a difference in the quality of homework between 1rst graders who are cared for by: parents, a babysitter, or an afterschool program between the hours of 3:00 and 6:00? Although these variables have been defined there are other factors besides the variables that may influence the results of the study. These are called confounds. For example in question 1 confounds may include: -The children’s innate language ability -The amount of time the parent spends with the child -Whether the child is enrolled in preschool or other programs and the quality of these programs Each of these confounds could influence the child’s language development at age 5 above and beyond the parental conversations, and it’s possible that parents who have “high quality” conversations also send their children to high quality preschool. In that case the researcher will have to separate which variable is having the greater effect on children’s language development, their variable of interest (conversations) or the confound (preschool). Can you think of confounds that might affect studies of the other 2 questions? Researchers can control for confounds by their sampling, ie: include only children who do not attend preschool in the study, by questionnaire, ie: ask parents if their children attend programs and assess the quality of the program, or by any other method that takes the confound into account. Now it’s your turn: Respond to this lecture in Discussion Board  Answer the following question based on the example above: