PSYCH219 : Psychology Survey

Several studies have already argued that the parents have different biases and attitude when it comes to provide the prescribed medication for their children for mental health. The issue also cover the attitudes on the regular monitoring system on the medication

Research question

1. What are the views of the parent’s psychotropic drugs and the psychotherapy sessions for the children who have mental illness?
2. How these biasness and attitude changes the behavior of the parents and the medication procedure required for the children?

According to Ross, Bridges, Ng, Wagner, Frosch, Reeves, and DosReis (2015), the likeliness of psychological disorders or mental disorders in the young generation of America is inclined more on while children rather than Hispanic children where the average encountered cases have presented the ratio as 3:1. The cultural background and the social perception play as the major factors behind the attitude and views of the American parents (Schomerus, Matschinger, Baumeister, Mojtabai & Angermeyer, 2014).

Purpose

The purpose of this research is to explore the views of American parents on psychotropic drugs and the psychotherapies prescribed for their children as well as how these perceptions effects the medication procedure of the young generation.

Prediction for Presentation 

As per the literature review and several other secondary sources it can be predicted that most of the parents perceive the psychological treatment a less essential issue. Apart from that, the biased mentality of the parents also implies another prediction that is most of the parents prefer psychotherapy more than psychotropic drugs. Change in social perception is a long term evolution procedure of mankind. Therefore, it can be assumed that newer generation will be more aware of the essentiality of medication and psychotherapy of the psychological treatment. Hence, the third perdition of this research is Younger parents have less believe on psychological treatment than older parents do.

Method

Participants

The participants of this research are selected by the random sampling method. The target participants are aged from nineteen to seventy nine. From the given responses of the participants twenty three responses have been selected for data analysis. The participants have diverse demographical and marital status.   

Materials

The data collection process of this research has used online survey as the tool. The structure of the survey comprised of structured questioners. In this survey both demographical and close ended questions are used with Likert scaling method (Fassinger & Morrow, 2013). The survey session has been conducted though distributing the survey sheets as physical documents to all the target participants.

Procedure

The survey has been conducted in the college campus and the surrounding area of the premises. Some of the participants are even pedestrian. the  Before engaging the participant in the survey session an ethical paper has been provided to the participants that contented of authentication, purpose and rationale of this research (Podsakoff, MacKenzie & Podsakoff, 2012). The hard copies of the survey sheets have been distributed among the participants. After the giving the responses the paper have been collected. From the total responses the sixteen responses are selected for the statistical analysis. In the statistical analysis section the data has been analyzed by SPSS statistical analysis software. In the data analysis procedure, the statistical regression analysis with frequency distribution method and one-way-ANNOVA has been done to formulate the conclusion after justifying the prediction with significant value.

Results

Table 1 describes the age and the risk of mediation based statistics in order to formulate the findings to justify the third prediction that states that younger parents have less believe on psychological treatment than older parents do. From the Table 2 ANOVA presentation and Table 3 coefficients the significant value can be tested for justify that if the younger parent has less believe in medication. From table 4 the mean, median and standard deviation can e obtained to analyse the other predictions through descriptive statistical study.

Discussion

In both coefficient and ANOVA analysis the significant value is larger than 0.05 which is the critical p value. This directly indicates that the prediction on younger parents and their views will not be accepted. In distribution statistics the mean values of all the related questions that indicates the risk medication have scored higher than 3 which was annotated for neutral responses (Englander, 2012). Therefore, the prediction of the negative perception of maximum parents on psychotropic medication was true. From the response regarding alternative method of medication it is clear that almost all the respondents prefer alternative psychotherapy over medication.

Description and interpretation of findings relevant with research questions

After analyzing the view of the parent’s on psychotropic drugs and the psychotherapy session for their child it has been found that most of the parents perceive the psychological treatment a less essential issue. After analyzing the preference of the most of the participens it has been found that, most of the respondents prefer alternative psychotherapy over medication by accusing the risks of psychotropic drugs. After examining the perdition made in the introduction section it has been found that the older parents have less believe on psychological treatment than the younger parents do. Another research question was to find the impact of this changed attitude on the medication procedure. From the analysis and discussion it has been found that, the false assumption and misperception of the parents can also impact the medication procedure of the children as well. In many responses the participants clearly mentioned that they did not believe in medication in terms of psychological treatment.

Future scope

The sample size was very limited where most of the participants are not parents. In next research the sample size can be broader. In further study, interpretivist research can be executed on a small sample size through using the semi structured interview session.

References:

Englander, M. (2012). The interview: Data collection in descriptive phenomenological human scientific research. Journal of phenomenological psychology, 43(1), 13-35.

Fassinger, R., & Morrow, S. L. (2013). Toward Best Practices in Quantitative, Qualitative, and Mixed-Method Research: A Social Justice Perspective. Journal for Social Action in Counseling & Psychology, 5(2).

Podsakoff, P. M., MacKenzie, S. B., & Podsakoff, N. P. (2012). Sources of method bias in social science research and recommendations on how to control it. Annual review of psychology, 63, 539-569.

Ross, M., Bridges, J. F., Ng, X., Wagner, L. D., Frosch, E., Reeves, G., & DosReis, S. (2015). A best-worst scaling experiment to prioritize caregiver concerns about ADHD medication for children. Psychiatric Services, 66(2), 208-211.

 Schomerus, G., Matschinger, H., Baumeister, S. E., Mojtabai, R., & Angermeyer, M. C. (2014). Public attitudes towards psychiatric medication: a comparison between United States and Germany. World Psychiatry, 13(3), 320-321.