Estefania Reyes

Ms. McKoy

English II

25 February 2013

 Why Hurt A Child?

Hypothesis:

Physical child abuse has become a major problem in today’s society. But, do we really know why people physically abuse children? With this survey, I hope to gather some information that will answer my question. My targeted audience will be teenagers. I think my audience will respond that people physically abuse children to discipline them. Also, they will respond that physical child abuse should be stopped and it’s an important problem in today’s society.

Context:

When distributing my survey, I targeted teens.  The teens I targeted where in the age group of 14-20 years old. I chose teens as my targeted group because teens have a different perspective on today’s problems. After receiving very constructive responses from my targeted audience, I would consider my results effective and dependable. I asked a couple of opinion based questions that required the people who took my survey to write out a respond. I can only assume my responses were truthful. I do not think my survey was biased because in my questions I did not influence anyone to answer a certain way. My survey had questions that simply asked for a thoughtful answer. In my survey my questions were kept similar throughout, I felt like the answers I got would help me with my research. The responses I got back helped me answer some of my thoughts of physical child abuse.  I think my survey was pretty comprehendible.

Age Group	Question One “Physical child abuse is acceptable if you are using it to discipline your child.”	Question Two “Check all that apply. Physical child abuse can be in the form of:”
14-20 ( 28 participants)	24 said :False 3 said: True 1 person didn’t respond.	28 said: Beating, Burning, Punching, Kicking, Other types of harm.
Age Group	Question Three “Do you think physical child abuse is an important topic in the United States?”	Question Four “Do you think physical child abuse affects a child’s future?
14-20 (28 participants)	25 said: Yes 3 said: Maybe	26 said: Yes 2 said: Maybe
Age Group	Question Five “Why do you think people physically abuse children?”	Question Six “Check all that apply. Physical child abuse can lead to:”
14-20 (28 participants)	9 said: They were physically abused. 6 said: Discipline their children 9 said: To take their anger out on them or they have problems 2 said: They don’t know 1 said: Because they will be scared in life. 1 said: Yes, but everyone	28 said: Hearing Loss, Vision Loss, Brain Damage, Depression, Anxiety, Withdrawal, Other: Low self- esteem, bullying, suicide, and death
Age Group	Question Seven “On a scale of 1-10, 10 being the highest. How horrible is child abuse?”	Question Eight “Agree or disagree. Physical child abuse should stop.”
14-20 (28 participants)	24 said: 10 3 said: 9  1 Said:8	28 said: Agree
Age Group	Question Nine “How often do you hear a report on child abuse?”	Question Ten “Should people that went through physical child abuse receive therapies when they are older?”
14-20 (28 participants)	12 said: Often 15 said: Not often 1 said: Never heard it.	19 said: Yes 9 said: Maybe

                                                                                        

Data Analysis:

When reviewing my data, I noticed a few trends. The majority of the people answered the same for question two, four, six, and eight. When they answered question 2 they checked majority of the things that applied to physical child abuse. When they answered question four the majority of them said “Yes” when they were asked “Do you think physical child abuse affects a child’s future?” . When they answered question six, the most common answer was that physical child abuse can lead to hearing loss, vision loss, brain damage, depression, anxiety, withdrawal, and other: low self-esteem, suicide, death, and bullying. When question eight was responded, the most common answer was that they agreed that physical child abuse should stop. This is somewhat of what I expected for my response.

Question one helped my research, 3 out of the 28 participants said that physical child abuse was acceptable if you are using it to discipline your child. This question was a true or false statement. Majority of the teens who filled this survey said it was not acceptable. I didn’t expect anyone to think that physical child abuse was ok if it’s used to discipline a child.

Question nine was also beneficial for my research because now I know that child abuse reports happen often. 12 out of the 28 teenagers who filled out the survey said that they hear a child report often. 15 out of the 28 said that they didn’t really hear a child abuse report. 1 out of the 28 said they never heard a report on child abuse.

Questions five and ten helped me gain the most valuable information for my research. Question five asked why they thought people physically abuse children. The responses were somewhat similar; most people said that it was because the abuser went through physical child abuse themselves. Others said that it was to discipline their children or because they had problems and took their anger out on the child. Question ten asked if they thought people who went through physical child abuse should go through therapies when as they grow up. 19 out of 28 teenagers said that they thought children who were abused should and 9 out of 28 said maybe.

Conclusion:

My survey gave me a lot of valuable information for my survey. I was somewhat right from what I thought in the beginning to what my participants responded. My responses made me take a different perspective on physical child abuse. I now know that child abuse cases are common and they are an important issue in the United States, due to my survey results.

Follow Up:

With these survey results I would like to go into deeper research with the side effects of being physically abused as a child and what is done to help them overcome it afterwards. I will prove that physical child abuse can cause the child to become an abuser themselves or become very violent. I want to survey more people so I can have more variety of answers.