Research that Benefits Children and Families

Option1:
 I read an article the other day entitled Children who get spanked have lower IQ's. The article suggested that there had been research done and that research suggests that spanking can do more harm than good. The study, involved hundreds of U.S. children, showed the more a child was spanked the lower his or her IQ compared with others. Straus and his colleague Mallie Paschall of the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation in Maryland studied nationally representative samples of two age groups: 806 children ages 2 to 4, and 704 ages 5 to 9. The researchers tested the kids' IQs initially and then four years later. Both groups of kids got smarter after four years. But the 2- to 4-year-olds who were spanked scored 5 points lower on the IQ test than those not spanked. For children ages 5 to 9, the spanked ones scored on average 2.8 points lower than their unspanked counterparts. The results, he said, were statistically significant. And they held even after accounting for parental education, income, cognitive stimulation by parents and other factors that could affect children's mental abilities.
From reading this I suggest we teach our parents other ways to discipline.  It was a very interesting article.
http://www.livescience.com/7895-children-spanked-iqs.html

My Personal Research Journey

My chosen  general topic for the simulation is Early Literacy. My subtopic that I will be focusing on is what the effects of early literacy have on infants. I chose this topic because I feel that reading is really important and if we start early enough we will be able to give our children a head start in their education. My personal experience with this process was trying to narrow down my subtopic. I had a hard time with that. Early literacy was such a broad topic that I had to really narrow it down, thanks to the help of our Professor I was able to do that. So far from researching the topic I am learning the what early literacy is, which age group it affects. I have found many websites that give information on the topic. Two of the websites were www. early literacy learning.org and Zero to three.org. If you guys have any advice please share with me as our journey begins!!!