After reading the paragraph below, explain these results as if you were talking

Question

After reading the paragraph below, explain these results as if you were talking with a new parent who has never had a course in statistics (NOT a mathematical answer about how to calculate a correlation, DO tell them “what these results mean”, what the range of possible values is, whether these are small/medium/large, and how the information is important to them as a parent). Be sure to comment on what the difference between a positive correlation and a negative correlation is, using an example of each from the study.

“Parental control of child eating showed a negative association with children’s participation in extracurricular activities () and a positive association with the amount of television children watched (r = .28; p < .05). Parents’ inappropriate expectations of child nutrition also showed a positive relationship with children’s television viewing. Parents who held less appropriate beliefs about children’s nutrition reported that their children watched more hours of television per day ().”

Explanation / Answer

To address these issues, we first have to understand the nature of r, the correlation coefficient. The correlation coefficient measures the strength of the relationship between two variables. Linear relationships can have a positive relationship, such as the relationship between the number of hours you study and the score you get on an exam, or they can have a negative relationship, such as the relationship between the number of hours you exercise each week and the amount of weight you gain.

The correlation coefficient takes on values from -1 to 1, with -1 being a perfect negative relationship and +1 being a perfect positive relationship. A correlation of 0 indicates no linear relationship at all.

Fact (1), given above, shows a positive relationship between parental control over their child's eating and the child's lack of participation in extracurricular activities. This relationship might come about because a parent who exerts control over the child's food intake shows concern about the health of the child. This concern could also translate to other parts of the parent-child relationship, and the parent could be one who spends more time with the child overall, with time spent reading, playing, and doing planned outings. This could lead to a lack of need of the child for extracurricular activities, because the parent is already providing varied activities.

A similar argument might hold for fact (2), which states that parents with less appropriated beliefs about children's nutrition report more television watching by their children. Raising a child takes time, patience, and learning. A parent who knows or who has learned about children's nutrition has invested time and energy into the role of parenting. This attitude could translate into other areas of the parent-child relationship beyond nutrition. This type of parent would tend to spend more time with the child, reading, playing, and doing planned activities. This would result in the child's having less unstructured time that might be otherwise used for television watching. Those parents with less appropriate beliefs about child's nutrition might be the type that are less-than-conscientious about not only their child's diet but also about what the child does, and this could lead to more television watching by the child while the parent does other non-child-related activities.

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