Life Skills as a Buffer to the Negative Effects of Adverse Childhood Experiences (Aces) - Free Essay

Research Method and DesignThis research design intends to provide a suitable framework for studying life skills as a buffer to the negative effects of adverse childhood experiences. The study will employ a mixed type of method. It will consist of a set of well-structured questionnaires and an interview with experts on the topic of the subject. Hence, this research will be autoethnography that utilizes a modified electronic Delphi qualitative approach. As Belkhir et al. (2019) indicated, autoethnography is a form of qualitative study where an author utilizes self-reflection and writing to explore personal experience and connect it to the understanding of cultural and social meaning. This study will use a modified Delphi approach to gather experiences from the researcher as well as those of other experts on the topic of the subject. The modified Delphi approach will allow the participants to remain anonymous. This design will offer the researchers a profile of detailed relevant aspects of the phenomena of interest, thus helping in the analysis of the response obtained on the life skills as a buffer to the negative effects of adverse childhood experiences.

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Research Methodology

This research will mainly use a qualitative method and a combination of both primary and secondary sources to address the key research questions, problem, purpose, and objectives. The result obtained will be coded and analyzed using the Delphi method. The study area sampling techniques and data sources will be discussed in this section. The study population will be determined based on a random sampling system.

Data Collection Methods

The qualitative primary sources will entail field observation, interviews, and survey questionnaires. The data will also be obtained from the expert’s opinion concerning life skills’ knowledge as a buffer to the negative effects of adverse childhood experiences. The pretest for interviews, questionnaires, and tools will be conducted to validate whether the tool content is valid or not in the sense of the respondents’ understanding. Therefore, content validity (in which the questions will be answered to the target without excluding significant points), internal validity (in which the questions raised will answer the outcomes of the researchers’ target), and external validity (in which the result will generalize to all the population through essential survey sample) will be reflected.

Secondary data source gives insights into the study area of the current state-of-the-art approach. It identifies some research gap that needs to be filled by the researcher. The researcher will conduct a literature review in both online and offline forms to effectively achieve the research goals and objectives. Literature reviews can be comprehended as content analysis to assess structural (descriptive) and content criteria of qualitative aspects. A literature search will be conducted using the database sources, including websites and scholarly articles, through a meta-ethnographic approach. Meta-ethnography allows for an interpretive synthesis of qualitative research to provide new interpretations such as metaphors, themes, or concepts of the researchers' experiences in published primary qualitative studies.

Methods of data analysis

Qualitative Data Analysis

Qualitative data analysis will use for the triangulation of some quantitative data analysis. The interview and questionnaire will be used to support the findings. Results from the literature review will also be analyzed in this section using the Delphi approach.

Pertinent Literature

Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) relate to traumatic events that occur before age 18 (Kajeepeta et al., 2015). ACEs often include all kinds of neglect and abuse, as well as parental substance use, mental illness, divorce, domestic violence, and incarceration.

Murphey, D., & Sacks, V. (2019) and other substantial research indicated that early adversity, including child neglect and abuse, is associated with diminished health and life skills across the life course and generations. Less well understood is life skills that can act as a buffer to the negative effects of adverse childhood experiences. Assuring the healthy growth of every child is essential for communities seeking to achieve their full health, economic, and social potential (Metzler et al., 2017). Therefore, preventing early adversity (child neglect and abuse) is critical if these goals are to be achieved. This research will identify and discuss life skills that can dramatically improve the outlook for all children suffering from Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs). It will also help individuals learn how their simple actions can buffer against toxic stress and improve the course of children's life.

Theoretical Framework

Current theories link this study to social epidemiology around the social construction of health that seeks to document health outcomes in child abuse and neglect (Berkman et al., 2014). This study will use a conceptual framework developed by the Social Determinants of Health (CSDH) that encompasses multiple interacting approaches (Metzler et al., 2017). These include psychosocial theories that focus on individuals' perceptions and experiences of life skills that can buffer adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). Political and economic theories that concentrate on the impact of structural inequalities on disease and health and ecosocial theories that try to integrate historical, social, biological, and ecological perspectives to develop new insights into life skills that can buffer adverse childhood experiences (ACEs).

Conclusion

The research design and methodology indicate the overall process of the flow of the research for the given study. The data sources and data collection methods will be employed. The overall study strategies and framework indicated in this research design from problem formulation to problem validation incorporate all the parameters. It lays some foundation on how research methodology is devised and framed for researchers.

References

Belkhir, M., Brouard, M., Brunk, H., Dalmoro, M., Ferreira, C., Figueiredo, B., … Smith, N. (2019). Isolation in globalizing academic fields: a collaborative autoethnography of early career researchers. Academy of Management Learning & Education, 18(2), 261–285. https://journals.aom.org/doi/abs/10.5465/amle.2017.0329

Berkman, L. F., Kawachi, I., & Glymour, M. M. (Eds.). (2014). Social epidemiology. Oxford University Press. https://oxfordmedicine.com/view/10.1093/med/9780195377903.001.0001/med-9780195377903

Kajeepeta, S., Gelaye, B., Jackson, C. L., & Williams, M. A. (2015). Adverse childhood experiences are associated with adult sleep disorders: a systematic review. Sleep medicine, 16(3), 320-330. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sleep.2014.12.013

Metzler, M., Merrick, M. T., Klevens, J., Ports, K. A., & Ford, D. C. (2017). Adverse childhood experiences and life opportunities: Shifting the narrative. Children and Youth Services Review, 72, 141-149. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2016.10.021

Murphey, D., & Sacks, V. (2019). Supporting students with adverse childhood experiences: How educators and schools can help. American Educator, 43(2), 8-11. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1218833