Donald Knuth

Research Proposal
4/19/16

The obstacles of growing up in a single family household can present many challenges.
The lack of adult supervision on children may lead them down on a path of delinquency and drug
use. These negative factors are even more exasperated when trying to educate troubled children
in public schools. These children tend to be rebellious to authority and show no interest in any
forum of education. The education system cannot fix the problem of a broken family, but it could
aim to find the problem as soon as possible, and supply the child with guidance when they need
it most. This research proposal will show why the public schools system needs to promote a
childs confidence and give guidance to children as soon as they show signs of needing it. Upon
instituting new programs based from my research, it will encourage these troubled children to
stay in school and show them how valuable education really is.
This proposal will investigate the use of certain programs to effectively show that
intervention and education might deter youths away from using drugs. It will also encourage
children to take their education seriously, reinforcing the need to achieve and say in school. The
subject of my research audience will be youths in middle school fifth through twelfth grades, to
build their self-esteem and encourage them to communicate with a guidance consoler about any
problems in the household and with their peers. By building a childs self-esteem from the early
ages, children are more likely to make better decisions and more equipped to handle outside
influences more effectively.

In researching the effects of single family households and juvenile delinquency, I

realized that there are many outside influences that can steer a child into a life of delinquency.
Some of those are caused by youths parenting themselves by lack of supervision. Peers pressure
can cause a child to look to an outside influence for acceptance. Some of these outside influences
are negative such as drugs, gangs and crime. Middle school youths often struggle with selfesteem and fitting in. Those middle grades are when youths struggle with acceptance. In my
research I hope to eventually establish a program instituted nationwide in the public school
system that will help those middle grade children make better decisions by building their selfesteem
There have been programs such as D.A.R.E that have been tried in the past in the public
school system that concentrated on grouping drugs, alcohol and smoking in the same category
and tried to teach kids that all were equally bad on the same level, to the same degree. There was
not enough emphasis on self- esteem and studies showed that there was no difference in the kids
who participated in the program and the kids who did not when it came to experimenting with
drugs (Steven L. West, PhD and Keri K. ONeal, PhD).
Each study's research before mine has reached similar conclusions when linking
childhood delinquency to single parent households. The major contributors to childhood
delinquency are poverty, single parent families, drug abuse, and neglection of the child (Luren
2012). A different study came to the same conclusion family, economic problems, psychological
problems, peer pressure and drug abuse were all concluded to be the top contribution factors of
childhood delinquency (Archana Singh and Dr. U.V. Kiran 2014). Two other studies about single
parent households and public school programs talked about the effectiveness of each program
one being a successes and the other being a failure. The study done for the Head Start program, a

program where children in broken poverty ridden homes are given the resources and supported
need to pressure an education was overall successful (Michael Puma Stephen Bell Ronna Cook
Camilla Heid). The study done about the D.A.R.E program, a program to combat children
against doing drugs was found to be a failure having no influence over the children participating
in the program (Steven L. West, PhD and Keri K. ONeal, PhD). One other study measured the
coloration between the relationships of the parents and the child delinquents. It then expands on
the physiological impact of the child having a single parent (J Abnorm Child Psychol 2009).
What these previous studies have in common is that most credited single parent
households to be one of the top contributing factors to childhood delinquency. The only
exception to this was Steven L. Wests and Keri K. ONeal's study because it regarded a
children's drug awareness program. What I believe these studies did wrong was when they
reached the conclusion that single parent homes are a large contributor to breeding child
delinquents they didn't question at what point did it become a problem. For example, if the child
resorted to crime or hard drugs by ninth grade and lived in a single family home at what point
did they show signs that they were going to pursue this lifestyle. To pin point that fact could lead
us to saving many children from becoming delinquents.
For my study, we will be monitoring and tracking middle school youths in fifth through
twelfth grades in one parent households working fifty hours a week or more, in four states. Those
four states are California, Pennsylvania, New York and Maryland. These states were chosen for
their diversity demographic. To conduct this study we will need to divide and maintain two
groups of children in each elementary school in the four chosen states. The control group will
contain children that live in a two parent house hold and the number of children we pick, will be
based off the amount of children living in single parent households in that particular elementary

school. The test group will consist of children who live in single parent households that have
parents that work over fifty hours a week. To gather data we will have parents and their kids fill
out a survey quarterly asking questions regarding their relationship, what they do in their free
time, and as the kids grow, incorporate more personal questions such as drug use and peer
pressure. The parents survey will remain consistent with its questions and contain all three
categories of questions in full. All surveys would remain anonymous. The quarterly surveys
would be recorded. Once the children have graduated high school we will analyze the data and
search for connections between the parent child relationship and child delinquency. We well
draw conclusions separately based from the school district to minimize the margin of error of
unrelated variables. Once outside variable have been singled out, we will pool all data together
leaving us with a story of the recession into childhood delinquency based off single parent
households. An example of an outside variable is income etc.
Upon comparing the data, a conclusion will be reached to determine whether there is the
likelihood of a single family household rearing a juvenile delinquent youth compared to a two
parent family household. This will give a better understanding into how to approach education in
the public school system and the need to introduce a strategy to combat negative outside
influences. I believe my research will build upon similar research that has been done in this field
before, but it will give clearer cut answers as to why a child felt the need at that exact moment to
resort to a delinquent life style.