Peer competence was defined as a "child being well liked by others and having clearly identifiable, mutual friends. Additionally, others respect her/him, and follow his/her ideas." (Zimmer-Gembeck, et al.) Although teacher may know their students well, there is no guarantee that a teacher is completely accurate in an assessment of something with so many variables.
Based on these measures of peer acceptance and attractiveness, many questions would simply go unanswered. For example, in neighborhoods where crime is rampant, social acceptance may be based on an ability to survive yet in a different atmosphere social acceptance may be based on clothing allowance - when there is cross contamination of these two social settings, is a person still as accepted and therefore attractive?
Subjective Reflection do not want my attempt of presenting an analytical, informative, and critical assessment of this research project to understate my disappointment in the overall project. I was very disappointed in how the information was gathered as well as some more than obvious flaws in thinking by the researchers. Consider that my mother and father are both very big influences in my life. Yet, this research gave too much credence to social setting outside of the home. Parents are only a minor part of this research project.
The involvement of alcohol was also poorly instituted into this work. Like sex, alcohol experimentation has a strong foundation in heredity. If a child is raised in an environment where alcohol is prevalent, than that child is more than likely to also be involved in alcohol experimentation. But just as important, there are many...
Social expectations are far more likely to be the result of the home environment than the peer groupings. This is not to say of course that peers have no affect on adolescence, but it does allow for unanswered questions and holes in this research. This research would need a great deal more thought before I would recommend that it be opened up to a larger population and the data certainly should not be used to generalize a larger population.
Conclusion
In conclusion, this report attempted to provide an insight into a research project conducted by Melanie J. Zimmer-Gembeck, Jessica Siebenbruner and W. Andrew Collins entitled "A Prospective Study of Intraindividual and Peer Influences on Adolescents' Heterosexual Romantic and Sexual Behavior." The objective was review the research findings and to identify aspects of the research design. Then, the work was supposed to evaluate the research as it was presented and to label the flaws, bias and questions not answered. Next, the report presented a subjective reflection of the research by focusing on what impressed me in a favorably and an unfavorably way. And finally, the report attempted to present the methods used as they pertained to this research.
Works Cited
Zimmer-Gembeck, Melanie J., et al. "A Prospective Study of Intraindividual and Peer Influences on Adolescents' Heterosexual Romantic and Sexual Behavior." Archives of Sexual Behavior August, Vol. 33 No. 4 (2004): 381-(14).
Psychology
