Personal Experience with Research benefits

The best personal experience with research participation of children and families comes from my everyday job working with Healthy Families New York. This program is state funded through research-based approaches. While the main focus of the program is to promote child development and prevent child abuse/maltreatment, there are many other topics of significance that the home-visiting program works toward to benefit family well-being.

Through research identified criteria, families work with the program to learn methods and techniques to establish healthy development and well-being for family members. The data collected at home visits consists of the topics of discussion, based on child development, parent-child interaction, and family well-being. Medical visits, demographic information, and frequency of visits are some of the things that are followed in the research data as well.

Through my experience in collecting information about families, I have come to appreciate the research system. The evidence of a home visiting program that follows families beginning prenatally through age 5 years for the "target child" has provided the proof needed in maintaining grant funding. When I enter the necessary data and view reports of what efforts I have made with families and young children, I am resassured that home visiting programs offer a new opportunity for families to have added support and education they may not have had otherwise. Through collecting this data, I am also making strides in preventing child abuse and maltreatment through following guidelines of information and efforts recommended by the program as proven to benefit the families and children.

I encourage anyone interested to view the Healthy Families America website:

http://www.healthyfamiliesamerica.org/about_us/index.shtml

My Research Journey So Far

The topic I have chosen for my research simulation is on early childhood behavior issues and positive discipline. This topic seems to be one that continues to be a challenge for parents as well as myself to assist parents in understanding and implementing positive discipline. While I have a vast understanding of this topic, I feel as though I am always left questioning what more I can offer to parents and the interactions with their young children. Another reason for choosing this topic is because I often hear parents talking about the ways their parents and grandparents raised them with spanking, hitting, etc. and that they turned out fine. I am interested in researching other ways to broach this topic with parents and help them to understand the unintended consequences of some discipline measures. Also, behavior issues are often part of discipline problems, so I would like more information on behavior issues so I may present this information to parents in way they can fully understand.

The research chart will be very useful to break down information and help me to tackle the information in steps. I am open to any insights or sources that others have on this topic. One of the best resources for more information is through learning from others.