Sunday 5 August 2012

What did Paula Rothermel really say about the sociability of home educated children?



I mentioned yesterday a quotation by Mike Fortune-Wood, typical of many which supporters of home education make when citing Paula Rothermel’s research to prove their points. He said:

Home educated children have been shown to be highly social, balanced and to mix well with other children and adults. (Paula Rothermel’s work).’


I then suggested that the sample used to establish this by Rothermel was small and that the instrument used was not in any case an accurate way of measuring the sociability of home educated children. In fact, Paula Rothermel herself agrees with both points; although for different reasons than mine. I don’t want to get drawn into a long debate about the precise numbers tested. There are discrepancies in the figures used, but I want to forget that and adopt a wholly different approach. Let us begin by assuming that the tests used by Paula Rothermel were in fact wonderfully accurate and that the samples she surveyed were perfectly adequate. In other words, I am conceding, purely for the purposes of debate, that we should accept all the conclusions to which this research points. Where does that leave us on the question of how balanced and social the home educated children at whom Rothemel’s work was directed, really were? Let us look at what she actually said.


Here are a few quotations from Paula Rothermel’s findings that you will seldom hear being bandied about in home educating circles:



‘the home-educated children here emerged as mostly 'Abnormal' in terms of their 'Prosocial Behaviour'.’




‘Socially, the SDQ found 61% of the home-educated children to exhibit 'abnormal' social behaviour,’


‘the home-educated sample demonstrated more signs of aggressive behaviours than the schoolchildren from the Rutter et al study, particularly for home-educated girls where aggressiveness was at 22.7% as opposed to 5.3% for Rutter's girls’


‘Theft amongst the home-educated boys was substantially higher than for the schoolchildren’


‘A comparison with the home-educated sample's data and that provided by Ekblad (1990) relating to previous studies, revealed that the home-educated children were more aggressive than the norm and that the girls' levels of anxiety was higher than those found in other studies.’



What has happened of course is that those in favour of home education select bits and pieces from the research which support their own views. It is perfectly possible to do the same if you wish to use Rothermel’s research to denounce home education! For example, she found that a quarter of the home educating sample had behavioural problems; far higher than the proportion found in most surveys of schoolchildren. How Rothermel wriggles out of these uncomfortable findings is a wonder to behold. Having carefully chosen the tests, she then discovers, when the findings are not as expected, that it is the tests themselves which are at fault. Obviously, one cannot expect home educated children to behave in the same way as school children. True, the children came out within the normal range overall on the psycho-social tests, but on purely social aspects, there were found to be serious difficulties.

I said nothing yesterday that Paula Rothermel has not herself said about this research. I drew attention to the small size of the sample and she admits that the sample was small. I queried whether the SDQ would give an accurate picture and she says that it does not. I am busy today, but I shall be writing more on this topic in a day or to. In the meantime, readers should look once more at the quotations by Paula Rothermel which I give above and ask themselves why they are unlikely to see them anywhere other than this blog.

45 comments:

  1. Considering how much negative material you quote, I'm surprised that you home educated your own child. If you really believe home education is as bad as you suggest, your participating in it suggests that either (a) you believe you're markedly superior to every other home educator or (b) you are like the person who marries a known philanderer, assuming you'll be the one who can change their behaviour (again, an assumption of superiority). Either that, or your attacks on home education aren't all that rational.

    ReplyDelete
  2. "I said nothing yesterday that Paula Rothermel has not herself said about this research."

    Except you got the numbers completely wrong, thought an interim report was a final report, misrepresented ethical practice as an error and were clearly confused about the sources of completed questionnaires. No, you got nothing important wrong!

    Now you quote a tiny fraction of a chapter from a much larger work and denigrate others who cherry pick. Of course there will be differences, but the overall picture when the results from all of the questionnaires are combined is not that the differences are not particularly significant. It could also be argued that aggression instead of passivity in girls is not such a bad difference. Certainly your daughter doesn't appear passive!

    With your recent track record of errors it's becoming difficult to take you seriously, and blogger's habit of eating comments is becoming seriously annoying too - it's becoming too much like hard work to add comments these days!

    ReplyDelete
  3. 'Except you got the numbers completely wrong, thought an interim report was a final report, misrepresented ethical practice as an error and were clearly confused about the sources of completed questionnaires. No, you got nothing important wrong!'

    Presumably meant ironically. The figures are unclear and in places contradictory. I did not mistake the preliminary report delivered at Exeter as the final report; I had both in front of me. As far as ethical practices are concerned; this is a debatable point. I was not in the least confused about the sources of the completed questionairres. I explained that 95% of them had been sent only to Education Otherwise and I suggested that those children involved in the SDQ questions were from EO. I have reason to believe this and see nothing in the PhD thesis to lead me to doubt it.


    'Now you quote a tiny fraction of a chapter from a much larger work and denigrate others who cherry pick.'

    I quote the main findings about socialisation. They were submerged in an awaful lot of waffle. I shall look in a day or two at the justifications advanced for ignoring these conclusions. I am unclear as to whether you feel that this was a good study or not. If you do, then presumably you agree that home educated children are more likely to have social problems than those at school. If you do not agree that it was a good study, then I suppose you feel that we can disregard the findings.

    'It could also be argued that aggression instead of passivity in girls is not such a bad difference. '

    Terrible error to confuse lack of passivity with aggression.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. In social and behavioural sciences, 'aggression' can be used to describe acts intended to increase relative social dominance. I don't think I'm confusing lack of passivity with aggression in this instance.

      Delete
  4. 'If you really believe home education is as bad as you suggest, '

    I have suggested nothing; I merely quoted what Paula Rothermel has written about home educated children. If you do not agree with her conclusions, you can hardly blame me!

    ReplyDelete
  5. "I have suggested nothing; I merely quoted what Paula Rothermel has written about home educated children."

    Apart from cherry-pick, out of context, the most negative aspects of her report. Sophistry, smoke and mirrors. Pretty much the kind of thing you complain about from other home educators.

    ReplyDelete
  6. 'Apart from cherry-pick, out of context, the most negative aspects of her report. Sophistry, smoke and mirrors.'

    I must ask you the same question that I asked another person who commented here today. Do you regard this as being a good piece of research, conducted using the correct tools upon a reasonably large sample? If you do, then you will believe that over 60% of home educated children have abnormal social behaviour. You will also think that home educated boys are more likely to steal and that home educated girls are prone to be anxious and aggressive. These are inescapable conclusions from the tests administered.

    If, on the other hand, like me you feel that this was too small a sample and used the wrong techniques, then you might think that this is all a lot of nonsense. If you do think that though, then you had best disregard the findings of this research and accept that we know nothing about the socialisation of home educated children. I am afraid that it is one or the other; but not both!

    ReplyDelete
  7. "I did not mistake the preliminary report delivered at Exeter as the final report; I had both in front of me."

    So if you knew that questionnaire collection was ongoing, why did you say, "Elsewhere though, Rothermel has quoted a figure of 20...It is of course possible that after she mentioned these data, more of the tests were carried out." Obviously more tests were carried out - this was clearly stated in the preliminary report!

    ReplyDelete
  8. "I am afraid that it is one or the other; but not both!"

    Or, given your performance over the last few days, we could just conclude that you know little about research, how it is carried out and how it is interpreted.

    ReplyDelete
  9. 'Apart from cherry-pick, out of context, the most negative aspects of her report. '

    The problem is that few people have actually bothered to read Paula Rothermel’s research in full. They content themselves with reading the abstract, which says things like;

    ‘Some critics have suggested a relationship between home-educated children, social ineptness and behavioural problems. Results confirmed that the home-educated children were socially adept and did not display behavioural problems beyond the norm. ‘

    They then breathe a sigh of relief at learning that home educated children do not ‘display behavioural problems beyond the norm’ If they went on to read the thing though, they would discover that the results actually confirm that:

    ‘the SDQ found 61% of the home-educated children to exhibit 'abnormal' social behaviour,’

    Believe me, over 60% of children at school do not exhibit abnormal social behaviour. It is not I who have been cherry-picking, but those who quote the odd sentence from an abstract and ignore what the findings really show.

    ReplyDelete
  10. '"I am afraid that it is one or the other; but not both!"

    Or, given your performance over the last few days, we could just conclude that you know little about research, how it is carried out and how it is interpreted.'

    A brilliant way of avoiding expressing an opinion about the validity of this particular piece of research. Have you actually read the thing in full? I posted a link to it yesterday. I am not asking anybody to take my word for any of this, but to read it for themselves and make their own minds up. I am still not clear whether you think it was a good piece of research or not...

    ReplyDelete
  11. 'So if you knew that questionnaire collection was ongoing, why did you say, "Elsewhere though, Rothermel has quoted a figure of 20...It is of course possible that after she mentioned these data, more of the tests were carried out."

    It is of course possible that I have so much material here, that from time to time I make an error! It makes little difference, because both twenty and forty are small numbers for work of this sort. Rothermel herself acknowledges this and explains how one family alone was enough to skew the conclusions of the overall test results. This is the difficulty with small samples.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The difference was between 20 and 103, not 40. At one point you claimed that only one of the three questionnaires covered sociability but you have gone on to include all three in other discussions. You can't have it both ways.

      Delete
    2. "It makes little difference, because both twenty and forty are small numbers for work of this sort."

      You've clearly not read much research or you would know that these are fairly typical numbers, often seen in peer reviewed journals. Obviously there are occasionally much larger studies, but they form the minority of research papers.

      Delete
  12. "‘the SDQ found 61% of the home-educated children to exhibit 'abnormal' social behaviour,’"

    Can't even bring yourself to quote a full sentence? This quote in full is:

    "Socially, the SDQ found 61% of the home-educated children to exhibit 'abnormal' social behaviour, whilst only 7.1% of the RRS sample were thus identified. The SDQ 'Prosocial' and 'Peer Problems Scale' portrayal of home-educated children as lacking socially, very much reflected some of the views provided in Chapter 3 Section 3.4.2 (i.e. Shearer 1999; Hastings 1998) and it was easy then, using scales such as the SDQ, to understand how such sentiments could arise, the point being, that diagnosis is definition dependent.

    The home-educated sample had been assessed as 'normal' by CABS analysis of their social skills where such skills have been interpreted by Michelson et al. (1983) as encompassing social behaviour, assertiveness and social competence. However, the Rutter and Goodman instruments (the Goodman questionnaire in particular) appear to take a different approach to social behaviour in that their focus is more on socially acceptable behaviour, ie. behaviour accepted as the 'norm' by school-going society, and this becomes clear through the items included in these instruments. Whilst the Rutter Scale items are broad in scope, the shorter Goodman questionnaire offers, it appears, brevity at the expense of diversity. Judging from the interview data, a number of the Peer Problems and Prosocial items were, for the home-educating families, controversial insofar as the way in which the scores were awarded. The values of the home-educating families differed from those generally expected of school-educating families, where concepts such as sharing, playing in groups and being popular, are vital to the school ethos. Nevertheless, according to the SDQ, whilst home-educated children appeared 'abnormal' in some categories, as a group they rated as 'normal' and actually made up a larger 'normal' sample than Goodman would have expected (92.7% as opposed to the expected 80%)."

    ReplyDelete
  13. 'Can't even bring yourself to quote a full sentence?'

    Here is the difficulty. If somebody did work of this sort with a bunch of EBD pupils and discovered that over 60% of them exhibited abnormal social behaviour, then this figure would be interesting. The researcher would be unlikely in the extreme then to ask whether or not the parents of those children thought that sharing was a desirable thing, that obedience was necessary or that it was desirable or not for a child to play alone, rather than as part of a group. The parents' views would not be relevant.


    In this case, when unpalatable results emerged, special pleading was made, to the effect that we cannot judge home educated children by the same standards as all the other children upon whom these tests are regularly used. If this is so, it makes one ask why on earth this particular instrument was chosen in the first place?

    ReplyDelete
  14. 'The values of the home-educating families differed from those generally expected of school-educating families, where concepts such as sharing, playing in groups and being popular, are vital to the school ethos'

    This is absolute madness for two reasons. In the first place, if we identify a school child as being a bully or thief, then the fact that his parents do not disapprove of bullying or theft does not alter in the least the nature of his behaviour. In other words, when we are trying to find out how many children in a school are disruptive or have poor social skills, then we look simply at the conduct of the children and not the opinions of their parents.

    Secondly, if this test was not suitable for use with home educated children, then there was no point in using it. When my own child was small, I used the Griffiths developmental scale to track her progress. This was done informally and I was well aware that some of the questions were not really relevant to my daughter. I certainly would not have tried to conduct a survey of home edcuated children using this tool; it would have been crazy!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You really did use your child as an experiment, didn't you. You even had a control in the form of an older sibling who went to school.

      Delete
  15. 'You really did use your child as an experiment, didn't you. You even had a control in the form of an older sibling who went to school'

    Brilliant attempt to deflect attention away from an objective discussion of the findings of Paula Rothermel's research!

    It would not have been a very good experiment, anyway. If I were going to conduct a proper test, I would want to use at least two or three pairs of identical twins. I did suggest to my wife after my daughter went off to Oxford, that now would be a good time to adopt a pair of identical twins from some Bogota slum and then send one to school and home educate the other. Oddly enough, she was not keen on the idea...

    ReplyDelete
  16. Objective? You don't know the meaning of the word!

    ReplyDelete
  17. '"It makes little difference, because both twenty and forty are small numbers for work of this sort."

    You've clearly not read much research or you would know that these are fairly typical numbers, often seen in peer reviewed journals. Obviously there are occasionally much larger studies, but they form the minority of research papers.'



    Odd. In the third paragraph of section 9.3.4 of her dissertation, Dr Rothermel observes that, ‘Overall, the number of participants taking these social and psychological assessments was small’. You seem to disagree with her opinion about her own research. Perhaps she knows less about it than you do?

    You do understand what I am saying here? I said that, ' both twenty and forty are small numbers for work of this sort'. Paula Rothermel says, 'the number of participants taking these social and psychological assessments was small’. It strikes me that she agrees with what I said. This is hardly surprising, because I was quoting her.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You said that the number of participants was small for work of this sort. It isn't. Small sample sizes are very common in this type of paper (including those in peer reviewed journals). This doesn't negate the work, but it is something that should be born in mind when considering the results. Many papers include similar comments by authors, as you should know.

      Delete
  18. 'You said that the number of participants was small for work of this sort. It isn't.'

    I can see that we are not understanding each other. When Dr Rothermel described the numbers of participants in these tests as 'small', she was clearly comparing them with something; there being no absolute measure of 'smallness'. So those numbers would be small in comparison with the number of atoms in the universe, but large when compared with the number of Anglican Archbishops in this country. What do you suppose her basis for comparison was in this case? I suggest that it was work similar to that which she was herself carrying out. Otherwise, the statement that the numbers were small would be utterly without meaning.

    ' This doesn't negate the work, but it is something that should be born in mind when considering the results'

    Of course and Rothermel gives several instances of this herself. For example in one of the academic tests, she mentions that the inclusion or exclusion of two children would affect the results by 12%. This is the big problem with small samples, that freak results can distort the figures.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. "Of course and Rothermel gives several instances of this herself. For example in one of the academic tests, she mentions that the inclusion or exclusion of two children would affect the results by 12%. This is the big problem with small samples, that freak results can distort the figures."

      Exactly. That's why the authors of such studies warn readers that the sample is small - small from a sampling and statistical point of view, not in comparison to other studies. They give this warning so that readers are aware that confidence intervals are likely to be wide and that errors are possible. Often meta studies are compiled to gather together the results of several studies in an attempt to bypass this issue. The multimethod approach to data gathering in the Rothermel research was another attempt to ameliorate this issue.

      "This research used a multimethod approach that facilitated the quality and quantity of data necessary in order to gain a comprehensive portrayal of home-education in the UK. It enabled conclusions to be drawn through reference to a multiplicity of sources, methods and theories (Denzin 1989). It was also anticipated that by using different methods, interpretability would be enhanced whilst threats to validity[2] were kept to a minimum (Robson 1993).

      In a discussion about multiple methodologies, Burgess (1982) referred to the process of ‘research triangulation’. This suggests that a field researcher must collect many sets of data, relating to the different phases of the research, the different settings and the different participants. This approach has drawn criticism from Gans (1991) for the vast amount of unmanageable data that can accrue. The quantity of data collected for this research was indeed vast and although it remained manageable, it was nevertheless, laborious to co-ordinate."

      Delete
  19. " I suggest that it was work similar to that which she was herself carrying out."

    A simple search of the literature reveals that the majority of studies like this have similar sample sizes. They are small from a statistical point of view, rather than by comparison too most other research.

    ReplyDelete
  20. 'A simple search of the literature reveals that the majority of studies like this have similar sample sizes.'

    I hardly need to do that. I have many journals here at hand with research in them of this sort. I have just, for example, reached down at a copy of the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders for September 1992. Opening it at random, we find an article on page 375 on Validity and Reliability of the Infant Behavioural Summarised evaluation. It is a study in which N=33 and N=39.

    The point to bear in mind is this. Studies of this sort are done all the time and we can usually assemble a meta analysis, adding together the data from forty such pieces of research. Rothermel's work on home education was a singleton; there is no other research of this sort on home educated children with which to compare it. This means that when we see in the academic tests N=17; that is it. Just seventeen cases to consider. This is a small number indeed for the whole of the academic research into one particular category of child in this country.

    ReplyDelete
  21. "'A simple search of the literature reveals that the majority of studies like this have similar sample sizes.'

    I hardly need to do that. I have many journals here at hand with research in them of this sort."

    So you did a search of the literature you had easily available - hardly a contradiction!

    ReplyDelete
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