Question

Bossiness in firstborn girls is a research article by Beverly Capofiglia from Southern California Child Study Center. What are the research designs and threats to internal validity of this research?

Answer 1

Beverly Capofiglia chose 40 girls and 40 boys for the research and they were entitled to follow the instructions that were given. They were all firstborn children. While their mothers were talking to their teachers they were busy doing the task. There were groups of girls and boys and only boys, vice versa. He found out that the firstborn girls are bossier as compared to firstborn boys. According to him, they were maturely playing the game. Though the study seems quite a simple one but in general some threats to internal validity were there and it should not be overlooked by some critics. Internal threats are of many types like selection threat, maturation threat regression threat etc. Group threat is also present because there is a comparison group. Also it was said when you only focus on the outcome that you have imagined then it will hamper the actual causes of the problems. Here's who is bossier can't be decided by a 40 minutes play where the social threat indicates that conclusion depends on the real human world not on the specific research or study. It points to the differences between the nonequivalent participants. They may have differences from the start for each other and the result comes out accordingly but considering it as general and natural outcome is a bad thing. Selection process also equally matters.