Development and Illustration of a Research Hypothesis (Research Paper Sample)

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Development and illustration of a research hypothesis
Introduction
Child abuse relates to any form action or behavior by an adult that leads to harm or that allows a child to be harmed in whatever way, physical or otherwise. As such the form of child abuse can be sexual, neglect, emotional abuse or physical abuse. Depending on the state, there are different laws that cover the children abuse offenses and there a myriad of agencies that take the responsibility of protecting children from abuse. There is a close reference between the people that perpetrate these acts and their repetitive behavior. This means that there is likelihood that if a person has been convicted of having maltreated a child in the past, there is a high chance that they are going to do it again. Prior investigations and the rate and likelihood of child maltreatment have thus a relationship. This paper seeks to establish if this relationship actually exists.
Development of Research Hypothesis
In the past, it has been hypothesized that people that are found guilty of these offences, such as pedophiles, they have a high chance of repeating the act given a chance. This is a theory that has been used in most of the cases of crime, as criminals tend to develop a repetitive behavior in crime. It is therefore important to establish, whether in the case of child maltreatment, previous offenders with reference to prior investigations have them same tendency.
Hypothesis: persons with prior investigations have a higher tendency of maltreating children in their care or otherwise.
Literature review
The recidivism debate of child abusers has been around for quite some time. Some of the factions believe that once one has been convicted of having committed such crimes, they are likely to become repeat offenders. However, other feel that the research figures do not indicate recidivism and it is barely coincidental. This is further complicated by the idea that most of the repeat offenders in the child abuse cases, tend to adopt these trends as they are have not been detected, but once convicted that tendencies come down. Due to statistics met out by the published researches, every state now has some form of a law that relates to child sexual offenders. If the state do not have a law covering the same, neighborhoods form child watch teams and develop notification mechanisms against know or convicted suspects.
In reality it is impossible to pin point the exact figure of the children that have been maltreated at any given span of time. This is due to the fact that most of the cases are not reported and those that are reported or happen because professionals, neighbors, physicians and child protection officers bring them to book. It is only safe to assume that whatever number is indicated by the statistics, the figure is much higher and impacts more profound.
Recidivism in child maltreatment is crucial to the element of determining if the perpetrators may repeat the offence. However, the reality is that using the past data to determine the element of repetitive crimes of abuse on children is quite tricky. This is largely due to the fact that most of the offenses are never reported and thus are never recorded and investigated. However, where the records exist of previous mistreatment on children, this is an indication of an even larger complication and one that could mean more deep-seated abuse. Where a parent, relative or a guardian is reported to score highly on N2, they are more likely having a psychological problem which relates to up bringing. Most of the people that have been brought up in violent homesteads tend to develop similar tendencies even in their parenting skills as they mainly do not have other ideas about how best to treat their children.
This is bests illustrated by the prospective study for risk assessment revalidation, carried out by children’s Research Center of California. In the study, of all the 46.4% families investigated and found to have some form of substantive child abuse, more than 20.4%of these families, were later on found to have significant child abuse after two years. ...