Surf Diaries 2006

Well its officially the last week of SURF- 9 weeks flew! I've finished my poster abstract last week.  The poster was a lot more work then I anticipated.  I didn't even think about how much a "smidge" off on the computer screen would be when we blew it up to the massive poster size!  It was also hard to be text friendly.  I just felt like the poster should have everything about my project on it! The graphs were another challenge.  I'm not table/graph friendly- but I'm learning! These next two days I get to finish up the results and discussion of my paper! I'm really coasting!  We present on Thursday and I can't wait!  I'm planning on continuing this research into the fall.  Hopefully I will be able to with everything I have going on! Until Next time'

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So last week was HUGE!  I got results, and I submitted my abstract to the place where I hope to present my research next April, in Boston! My results were very interesting! Children who engaged in behaviors such as touching the bell or prizes, looking at the bell or prizes, and almost ringing the bell in the first twenty seconds were shown to wait significantly less time.  Parents who reported to be more protective had children that engaged in more of these behaviors overall.  Parental behaviors such as valuing child experience, enjoyment of child, and affection towards child are related to a longer wait time.  Children of Parents who reported more inconsistent parenting waited significantly less.         These findings suggest that more consistent parents are and the more they value experience, express affection towards their child, enjoy their child the longer their child will be able to wait by regulating their emotions.  Also it is suggested the protective parenting causes children to push limits when not in direct view of authority.    I really have enjoyed this experience especially getting results or what i refer to as the light at the end of the tunnel!  I'm still a long way from done! I have a new abstract to write, a paper to finish, a poster to make and I get to prepare for my presentation next week! I'm going to be a busy little bee! Until Next time- 

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So this week brings lots of excitement! RESULTS....well hopefully by the end of the week! I've been working on my paper and getting my presentation stuff ready and tieing all sorts of loose ends- I got in my last survey and had to accept the fact that I'm not getting one back, which is still pretty good I guess!Making a movie clip of some good examples of distracting behavior (') and creating pictures for my poster has been quite a challenge...it doesn't help that I know nothign about that stuff! but in short I'm really excited about this week! I'll keep you posted! Until Next time-

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Wheew! This "coding" is a lot of work! I've narrowed the waiting behaviors that I'm coding for down from 7 behaviors on one page , from about 50 behaviors on 7 pages...and 7 is still tons! The hardest part of coding has been getting everything that happens in the 20second intervals.  It is not to bad for the kids that did not wait very long, however it can be SUPER tedious for the ones whoe made it the full 15 minutes!  This is deffinately trial and error and learn as you go!  I'm still waiting on surveys and working on getting photo release forms from parents and I've got to check out some of the survey's I entered into SPSS last week to make sure they are perfecto-mundo! After I finish coding Dr. Parker is going to do a few, and check to see if my coding scheme is ok!  Also after coding I've lost some participants- one due to age,.another's face was covered during the filming of the wating task (trying to be sneaky and hide my camera...I accidentally hid the participant) and possibly another because I thought the camera was off, it was on and I turned it off and I didn't get to film one child!  So a few errors on my part-  and one on others but the show must go on! until next time... I'll probably be coding!

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Now that the data collection part of my research is over, I'm waiting to get surveys back, entering surveys into SPSS (a computer program that will help me sift through my results basically) and preparing to code (watch all of my footage of the children and determing how they distracted themselves for the duration of their wait).  It has really been tedious so far! However Im just really excited to start seeing some results! OHHH and I've gotten all but 3 surveys back...I'm rolling!Until next time- 

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Wheew! Its been a crazy two weeks getting all of my testing done.  I ended up testing 28 children/parent pairs and I've received all but 5 surveys back, they are to be mailed shortly.  I'm really happy with the number of participants I achieved.  I was really worried after that first week of recruitment that my study was going to flop due to the lack of interest in participating.  However, things changed around quick!  Sure 28 isn't the 50 I had my heart set on, but it is much better then I had ever anticipated!  I learned that doing a task like this would be much easier if I had arranged to go to the parents and children instead of them having to come to me.  I'm sure it is hard for parents to get their kids places especially if they have more then one child.  Also I wish I had talked to more parents to inform them about the study one on one.  Every parent I talked to face to face about the study and how much their participation would mean to me usually came and helped out gladly!  I really enjoyed watching the children distract themselves! One girl waited the full time, however she ate two suckers while she was waiting' Hmmm! Well, I'm looking forward to getting the rest of my surveys back and seeing what the survey reveals in the next few weeks! Until next time-

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Today was my first day of collecting data from real participants in my real "mobil lab" setting with real surveys and it went GREAT! 10 children/parent groups participated in about a 3 hour -4 hour time period.  I was so nervous when I was administering the delay of gratification task to my first participant! Luckily Dr. Parker was there which helped calm my nerves!  I'm feeling really optimistic that participation will increase through gradual hear-say in this one horse town!  I'm really looking foward to seeing my participation numbers climb and for the entertainment/experience that lies ahead in the next week and a half!  The children are so funny to monitor! Until  next time-

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I'm up and running, this blog idea is pretty neat! Ok, Background information would be good! I'm an education minor, and a psychology major and out of these two passions, I bore a really interesting project that ties into both areas of study!  I'm basically testing children between the ages of 3-6 to see if they can wait/how long they can wait for a larger prize-tootsie roll popS, or if they'll accept the readily avaliable smaller prize- tootsie roll poP ( also known as delay of gratification tasks ).  Well these types of tasks aren't new by any stretch of the imagination- however their growing significance is what interest me! In privious studies it has been shown that children who can wait longer/delay gratification as small children are more likely to do better academically, socially, emotionally etc. through adulthood (amazing, I know!) SO with this in mind, I've decided to compare parental behaviors with childrens ability to delay gratification to see if their is any strong connection of parental norms that produce children that are more likely to wait for the larger prize or not! Sounds simple...ha! 

Wheew!! It has been a busy two weeks! Last week I was getting everything all lined up to come back to my hometown and recruit for my project! Since I'm testing children, I decided to do my data collection in my home town in attempt to have a better turn out! Last week I made flyers, bought my materials, worked on my survey and tied many other lose ends! This week has been very trying because parents are not very "gun-ho" about letting their children participate in research- however today is the big day...I got my first participants! I'm super excited and I hope the rest of recruitment will be very fruitful! Until next time-

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