Scholarly vs Popular Media Focus on Psychology - Research Paper Example

Scholarly vs Popular Media Focus on Psychology Introduction Knowledge acquisition, together with information thirst constitutes two aspects that characterize human life in different spheres. People in the world have a passion for information, knowledge, and passion to know something. Information sought and its availability come from different sources and it is presented in different perspectives that may provide needed information satisfactorily or unsatisfactorily. Academic community’s view of knowledge and information acquisition differs largely with perception that may be present in media or other social institutions. Within academic community spheres, information is valid and reliable when its contents can be tested, verified, generalized, and re-tested with ability to achieve similar results. This may be different in society’s institutions like media, which may perceive information to be relevant and valid if it can satisfy consumer passion and thirst in the most appropriate way. However, does this indicate information and knowledge materials from one particular source or area can be regarded appropriate or inappropriate even when their consumption seems to be satisfying or unsatisfying? This is a question to be investigated by analysis of scholarly vs. popular media focus on psychology. Nurturing psychological resilience among teenagers Peer-reviewed Article Kristin D. Neff and Pittman McGehee are two psychological authors of an article titled, “Self-compassion and psychological resilience among adolescents and young adults” published in 2010 (Neff and McGehee, 2010). The authors, through quantitative and qualitative research tools, show that self-compassion constitute an effective adaptive mechanism young people can adopt and develop in dealing with self and personal inadequacies and challenging life situations (Neff and McGehee, 2010). The research was carried out in a sample of 235 teenagers with a mean age of 15.2 and another sample of 287 young adults with a mean age of 21.1 (Neff and McGehee, 2010). Teenagers were drawn from private high schools in southwestern city in USA while young adults were selected from a college in the same city. Consent notice was first send to teens parents before they were selected while young adults were selected based on subject pool and received course credit for participation (Neff and McGehee, 2010). The samples came from middle class as per the social ranking while ethnic composition was as follows: children; 79% Caucasian, 7% Hispanic, 1% Asian, 13% mixed ethnic (Neff and McGehee, 2010). For young adults: 68% Caucasian, 9% Hispanic, 17% Asian, and 7% mixed (Neff and McGehee, 2010). The measurement instruments used included 26-item Self-Compassion Scale that also included subscales of Self-Kindness, Self-Judgment, Common Humanity, Mindfulness, and Over-Identification (Neff and McGehee, 2010). Also used in the study was Beck Depression Inventory tool, which has 21-item questionnaire and excellent psychometric properties that assesses cognitive, affective, motivational, and somatic symptoms of depression (Neff and McGehee, 2010). Overall, results from these study indicated that self-compassion strongly relate to well-being among adolescents as well as adults. In addition, family and cognitive factors are critical in the differences among self-compassion. As a result, recommendation made was that self-compassion could be adopted as an effective intervention target for teenagers who suffer from negative self-views (Neff and McGehee, 2010). Popular media article from Psychology Today: A media article related to the above outlined article on resilience nurturing is titled, “Nurturing resilience: Raising children to be competent and caring” written by Michael Ungar on 25 September 2011 (Ungar, 2011). The author again looks at how young people can develop resilience to various problems they face through specific coping strategies. Ungar observes that feelings of defeat, shame, despair and hopelessness in school and in life generally lead young people to commit suicide. It is the inner feelings of not achieving what one wants or desire that leads to thoughts and gestures of suicide (Ungar, 2011). Moreover, the author appreciates that thoughts and gestures to commit suicide may originate within inner circles of an individual but the social environment also plays a great role (Ungar, 2011). To the author, suicide is the products of feeling shame, disconnected from others and inadequacy that individuals find themselves in and when unable to successfully come out, such individuals resort to suicide as the final option to end their miseries. The author postulate that, apart from internal processes, external relationships do also contribute to suicides among young people (Ungar, 2011). Society need to know that young people lack hope, feel depressed, feel abandoned, and feel unable to face life largely from lack of social mechanisms that can help such young people develop positive aspects upon themselves to live with much optimism. As a result, the author advocates for changes in social structures that young people associate or live in. For example, schools, family and community to impact sensing of belonging among young people through appreciative and help programs. In addition, education programs to be improved to give youth hope in life, streets to be made safer in which young people live, job readiness skills to be taught to youth, integrate young people in community activities in meaningful way and the community to abstain from negative activities that may discourage young people (Ungar, 2011). Although the author largely makes individual opinion based on experience as a counseling psychologist and writer, there are instances where references are made to research works that have been conducted. The major shortcoming is that the author does not go into details of outlining the research methodologies and instrumentation, and generalizability of findings. Pros and cons of each of the two sources Using the above two articles, this section will attempt to look at pros and cons of both scholarly articles and popular media articles. Scholarly articles, which in most cases are peer journals, are favored in academic circles due to the perception that they contain ‘authoritative’ information and knowledge that other sources lack (Solomon, 2007). Schaffner (1994) develops five distinctive areas that make scholarly articles preference choice in academic communities (Solomon, 2007). Preference centers on the role scholarly articles play to; build a collective knowledge base, communicate information in an authoritative manner; they constitute validated quality research, they enjoy wide-scholarly evaluation hence more reliable, and lastly, build scientific communities (Solomon, 2007). The author observes that scholarly articles are the most valid archives of knowledge, that exhibit comprehensive, up-to-date, and authoritative information in any particular field. Information that is relayed for public consumption is normally ‘valid’ since enough time is dedicated to review it among the body of scholars (Solomon, 2007). Therefore, there is always confidence that scholarly articles exhibit high levels of accuracy, quality, reliability and validity, making their application in the wider field relevant and appropriate. Although this may be so with scholarly articles, it should not be forgotten that occasionally, scholarly articles have been found to exhibit numerous errors long time after there publication. Manipulation of research methods, research instruments, and poor setting of research processes have all played to cast some levels of doubt on the thoroughness of reliability and validity of scholarly articles. Popular media articles on the other hand, do not enjoy wide acceptance in scholarly world but cannot be disregarded wholesomely. First, the above media article from Psychology today has been written by a profession-cum-scholar who it can be said that provides reliable information as a result of his experience in the field and scholarly world (Barkway, 2009). The media articles especially written by professional writers exhibit some level of truth and they can be relied upon especially when they emanate from reliable and popular media sources. Moreover, it should be noted that, the condensed state of the materials written is normally aimed satisfying the varied audience the media enjoy which in this case is not only confined to scholars. Therefore, the very nature of the condensed state of media articles does not disqualify them as the most appropriate materials that can be used in scholarly work. Nevertheless, one weakness media articles exhibit is the lack of capturing updates and developments in the field of specialization as compared to scholarly articles. The use of measurement instruments and hypothesis testing in scholarly work usually make it possible to capture updates in the field and cross-analysis of information usually involve wide array of samples. This makes the level of generalizing the information more reliable and acceptable than with popular articles, which in expression usually demonstrate the views, opinion, and sometimes beliefs of the author (Barkway, 2009). Conclusion The above two articles provides two different ways knowledge is acquired and subsequently accepted in the academic world. The peer-reviewed article provides a clear explanation of how the research is carried out to test variables under research. The literature review is conducted to appreciate the already existing work and methodology is clearly stated to show how results will be generated. Tools of analysis of the generated data are explained clearly. All these elements that is linked to peer-reviewed articles provide general perception in the academic knowledge that they can be relied upon and results generated are valid and can still be re-tested in subsequent research work using outline of the methods explained. On the other hand, popular media articles lack basic elements of investigations, hypothesis, and methodology. In most cases, their content may include summaries of other works done but without clear explanation of how the entire procedure proceeded. Nevertheless, the basis of some articles originating from credited professionals and scholarly makes it inappropriate to disregard them for information acquisition and referencing. References Barkway, P. (2009). Psychology for Health Professionals. Sydney: Elsevier Australia. Retrieved October 01, 2011, from http://books.google.com/books?id=1xAd9joCJZUC&pg=PA113&dq=reliability+and+validity+of+popular+media+articles&hl=en&ei=zgyHTsDUH4bwrQfiuITZDA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CEEQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=reliability%20and%20validity%20of%20popular%20media%20articles&f=false. Neff, K. D. and McGehee, P. (2010). Self-compassion and psychological resilience among adolescents and young adults. Journal of Self & Identity, vol. 9, no. 3, pp. 225-240. Retrieved October 01, 2011, from http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=3&hid=110&sid=7ebe701a-31b8-4678-a929-5ebb7ebed364%40sessionmgr112. Solomon, D. J. (2007). The role of peer review for scholarly journals in the information age. The Journal of Electronic publishing. Retrieved October 01, 2011, from http://www.journalofelectronicpublishing.org/about.html. Unger, M. (2011). “Nurturing resilience: Raising children to be competent and caring.” Psychological Today. Retrieved October 01, 2011, from http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/nurturing-resilience/201109/teen-suicide-isn-t-just-individual-problem. Read More