Assignment One: Thesis and Literature Review. Statement Examples

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Thesis and Literature review
Thesis statement
In 1933, Alabama experienced economic depression that impacted the survival of many families. G was born during this period and together with her 14 siblings depended on their mother and father, yet the former was a housewife while the latter had no stable income. Consequently, she started working as a babysitter when she was in school and continued with the same trend after high school just to help her parents feed the family. Other than poverty, G had to deal with racial abuses from white students while covering the long distance to school. As a result, the content of this interview will be used to demonstrate how poverty and racial discrimination shaped the life of G even after she moved to Cleveland and separated from her husband. Regardless of the misery that she faced (i.e poverty and racial discrimination), the combination of her strong religious faith and a close loving family resulted into protective factors that enabled her to tackle the challenges. This research will employ the Ecological systems theory to examine; groups that directly impact a child (Micro-system), cultural framework of a person (Macro-system), and events (i.e divorce) that impact transitions over the life course of a person (Chrono-system). Since G managed to go through the challenges and even start a family of her own, the paper will demonstrate that her life course was one with relative energy and buoyancy.
Literature review
Religion as a protective factor
Hayward, R. D., & Krause, N. (2015). Religion and strategies for coping with racial discrimination among African Americans and Caribbean Blacks. International Journal of Stress Management, 22(1), 70.
The research explores how various religious aspects are used by African-Americans and Caribbean Blacks to deal with racial discrimination. In the article, prayers, working hard, and sharing the situation with others in a church environment are recognized as important protective measures. The article used the following hypothesis to conduct the research; H1 – religious aspects are mostly used as coping methods (e.g praying), H2 – religious aspects of dealing with racial discrimination are extensively used by African Americans than Caribbean Blacks, and H3 - social identification with the African-American church is strong and distinct from other forms of social identity.
Data was mainly collected in Florida, the District of Columbia, New York, Connecticut, and New Jersey. These areas were selected because they contain large population of black Americans. 86% of the data was collected through face-to-face interviews while the remaining 14% was collected by telephone interviews. The results of the research indicated that social identification within the black church was strong thus praying and sharing with each other were significant protective factors for African Americans and Caribbean Blacks (See appendix A). A major limitation for this research is that it is difficult to differentiate African Americans from Caribbean Americans due to intermarriages. This research is consistent with G’s strong faith that enabled her to tackle racial discrimination.
Poverty shapes our decision making processes
Sheehy-Skeffington, J., & Rea, J. (2017). How Poverty Affects People's Decision-making Processes. York: Joseph Rowntree Foundation.
This article recognizes poverty as a permanent element of our socioeconomic environment and describes how it influences individuals to make poor decisions in their lives. The article defines poverty as way of life without adequate means (education and money) to satisfy basic needs and to engage fully in the social order. On the hand, decision making is viewed from immediate and future goals perspective. The article has the following objectives; to understand decision-making process while living in poverty, the influence of poverty on key thinking processes, the influence of poverty on ways of navigating life’s challenges, and the influence of poverty on appraisals of the social world.
To obtain appropriate data, the authors of the article had a sample size of 38, 808 that was selected from major databases such as World of Science, Scopus, and Zetoc. Through scanning and filtration, the sample size was reduced to 226. To supplement the data, the authors requested unpublished articles from American Psychological Association Committee on Socioeconomic Status and Poverty Network on ResearchGate. The results of the study were as follows; people living in poverty think more about the present rather than the future, and put a lesser weight on personal aspirations and achievement in favor of helping others. This study helps to understand why G decided against joining college but instead chose to work for 2 dollars per week just to help her parents.
Racial discrimination in school environment
Smith, T. B., Bowman, R., & Hsu, S. (2017). Racial attitudes among Asian and European American college students: A cross-cultural examination.
The article explores the dynamics behind racial discrimination in educational settings considering that schools are diverse. Through the calculation of a standardized mean difference on the Social Distance Scale scores, the study found that Black Americans are at greater risk of being racially discriminated than any other race. As a result, all participants from other races were more comfortable engaging with people of their own race than racial groups. Only 6% of the participants were comfortable engaging with people from racial groups different to theirs (See appendix B). Majority of female students and people above 50 years were friendlier to other people regardless of their race.
This research used data obtained from 575 white Americans and 122 learners from Taiwan, China, South Korea, and Japan. The age of all participants ranged from 18 to 56 years. The disparity other racial group’s rating versus the rating of the participant’s racial group was the factor assessed in this paper. The main limitation of the study was that it had an inaccuracy of 5% due to the sensitivity of the topic. This study is important as it helps to understand why G was racially discriminated by white students.
Protective factors of a family
Benzies, K., & Mychasiuk, R. (2009). Fostering family resiliency: A review of the key protective factors. Child & Family Social Work, 14(1), 103-114.
The study defines family as close people who cooperate across various levels in a socio-ecological environment. As a result, the study recognizes that family resilience develop through the application of certain protective factors. Therefore, the objective of this paper was to identify protective factors that lead to family resilience. Data collection and the integrative review used in this study followed the principles of Knafl and Whittemore. Data was obtained from 13 computerized peer-reviewed literature databases. The number of articles selected from every database was documented on a separate database worksheet. The papers chosen were limited to peer-reviewed papers published from 2000 and onwards.
The results of the study show the following protective factors as important to family toughness; safe neighborhood, family organization, family cohesion, stability of the relationship between intimate partners, and caring parent-child relationship. Community protective factors such as peer acceptance and availability of mentors were also identified as essential to developing family resilience. However, family structure is important than other factors as it determines the plan and budget of every family. The study also found out that being born a female in a family is a protective factor on its own. Nevertheless, the protective factors recognized in the study vary from time to time; each protective factor is usually helpful at one point but harmful at another. This study is important in describing how G’s family provided her with protective factors that helped her deal with the challenges she faced.
State of employment and migration during the depression
Boustan, L. P., Fishback, P. V., & Kantor, S. (2010). The effect of internal migration on local labor markets: American cities during the Great Depression. Journal of Labor Economics, 28(4), 719-746.
This article discusses how the great depression impacted labor markets. The impact on labor markets is viewed from changes in unemployment, internal migration, and earnings perspective. The data used in this research originated from the 1940 census that was carried out in the United States (See appendix C). The study focused on 86 cities that had more than 100, 000 people during that period. The article calculated earnings by dividing the total wage bill by the number of employees in that particular sector.
The results show that during the great depression, many people were unable to find full-time jobs and unemployment rates were above 10%. Earnings were low since workers were more than the actual work to be performed. Internal migration was more than foreign migration. Americans from areas that were largely impacted by the depression moved from one town to another searching for jobs. This article is important as in understanding why G migrated to Cleveland and why her husband kept moving from one town to another.
Impact of divorce on parent-child relationship
Kalmijn, M. (2012). Long-term effects of divorce on parent–child relationships: Within-family comparisons of fathers and mothers. European sociological review, 29(5), 888-898.
This article examines how parents and children interact with each other after a divorce. The hypothesis of the research is as follows; there are rising differences between mother-child and father–child association after divorce. The article has three results; children have poor relationship with both their parents after a divorce, divorce increases disparity as the child is likely to have poor affiliation with one parent, the child will have a poor rapport with the parent who goes away but also the parent who lives with her/him since that parent is involved in the life of the child.
The total population used in the study was 17, 721; 11, 814 parents and 5, 907 children. The study used fixed and random outcomes of linear regression to calculate the degree of conflict between and within families. Multinomial Logit Models and conditions set by Booth and Amato in 1994 were used to identify the shift in parent-child relationship; from “both positive” to “all negative” (See Appendix D). This model considers the interaction effect that most mother have with their children. The study is helpful in describing why G had a difficult relationship with her daughter after divorcing her husband.
Relationship between risk factors
Reeves, R., Rodrigue, E., & Kneebone, E. (2016). Five evils: Multidimensional poverty and race in America. Economic Studies at Brookings Report.
This article explores how one risk factor leads to another risk factor. The article uses the five dimensions of poverty to describe that relationship. Limited education, low household income, unemployment, lack of health insurance, and low income area are listed as the five dimensions of poverty. The results show that most African Americans and Hispanics who are disadvantaged on one dimension are also disadvantaged on at least one more. Therefore, if compared to the whites, Hispanics and Black Americans are 10 times to earn less money, live in a segregated area, and reside in an unemployed family (9.6% vs. 1.2%).
This research used the 2014 estimates collected by the American Community Survey as data. The data was primarily based on people between 25 to 61 years old. The selected age group was important because this group is considered as the prime working-age population. The percentage of people falling below each of the five dimensions was then calculated to obtain the results. This research is significant because it shows the relationship between G’s limited education, her father’s unemployment state, and her family’s race.
Social exclusion
Bynner, J. (2010). Risks and Outcomes of Social exclusion: insights from longitudinal data. Institute of Education Univers...