Literature Review and Children Article Critique

parent goes to war: Effects of parental deployment on very young children and implications for intervention" by Paris, R., Devoe, E. R., Ross, A. M., & Acker, M. L. (2010). American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 80(4), 610-618. doi:10.1111/j.1939-0025.2010.01066.x

Ruth Paris, Ellen R. Devoe, Abigail M. Ross, and Michelle L. Acker in When a parent goes to war: Effects of parental deployment on very young children and implications for intervention reviewed the effects military deployment cycles have on young children. The effects span intense emotions, attachment patterns as well as behavioral changes. They suggested that military families with toddlers, infants and preschoolers ought to be supported by taking an ecological approach. To explore ways to provide adequate support, Paris et al. reviewed existing literature on the effects parental combat stress had on parenting as well as parent-child relationships. Evidence-informed programs for families and infants were also examined with the goal of identifying the interventions that can help military families. The chosen programs were those programs that are family oriented, have individual treatment for a family member and also work with children and parents together. The programs appreciate the significance of an integrated ecological-attachment approach to the development of humans as well as the parenting methods families adopt. A number of the treatments reviewed were developed to specifically help with dealing with trauma in children while other treatments' focus is parent-child interactions. The article concludes that home-based family focused interventions deserve greater consideration.

Structure and Article Organization

A primary concern is the issue that the paper fails to adopt the usual format of a research paper that includes literature review and methodology. Usually, a researcher reviews the already existing pieces of literature on a topic. This paper lacks a section that mentions how this was carried out. A typical paper would have adopted a systematic literature review as a well as a sound methodology. A systematic review aims at addressing the research problem through the identification as well as critical evaluation and integration of the relevant findings and independent studies. Because a methodological section is lacking, the objectivity, system, replication and transparency of the research can't be guaranteed or even established.

Secondly, no express statement of a particular problem is stated. The objectives of the research are also not clearly defined. The article's introduction makes the reader guess what topics to pay keen attention to and who the target audience is. The absence of the two mentioned important parts of an article makes the identification of the important pieces of information that are critical to answering the intended research questions hard. Generally, the paper fails to define its scope from the start. It is essential that a paper develop specific, clear and answerable research questions.

Thirdly, there is no limitation section. While all research papers have limitations, this one doesn't make its limitations clear. Limitations are those outside influences upon which the researcher has no control. They are conditions, influences and shortcoming that the researcher can't control but which limit his or her methodology and the conclusions he or she makes. A researcher should therefore mention the limitations his or her exercise faces (Denscombe, 2014). Where limitations are not made clear, it is not easy to accurately generalize findings. Generalizability and conclusions of a research are informed to a huge extent by the limitations of the research. With limitations, it would have been easier to know the applicability and scope of this research.

Too Much Information with Very Little Detail

The study seeks to tackle as much information as possible on the topic. This has resulted in it covering a range of issues including information concerning parents, children, service members,…