First Blog Post: How to Read Marriage and Family Blogs and Articles!

    I wanted to start my blog by going over how to go about my blog, other blogs and any articles/studies you read. Especially regarding the topic of Marriage and Family. For starters, I am NOT a professional, in any capacity. I am a student who is constantly learning. I do not have a degree in Marriage and Family and what I share on this blog is, for the most part, my own insights and opinions on the subject, not fact. However, there will be times where I cite credible evidence and use sources to back up my posts, but deciphering the validity of the article and my words is up to you, the reader. With some information or articles, it is also just opinion. A good marker of a biased or opinion based article is if the URL ends in ".com" and in some cases ".edu" or ".org." It is absolutely crucial to look for biases in the content you're reading. The more content you read that has URL's ending in ".gov" are fact based and most ".org" or ".edu" websites as well. Sometimes organizations (.org)  or educational websites (.edu) have very valuable content and research but if it is to support their organization or school or etc., it could be biased to favor their take on the matter. 

    This idea is called confirmation bias. It is when studies are done, or articles are written, and it only includes evidence to support their claim. You can find better validity is disproving alternative theories and showing opposing evidence that further supports your theory. It's also very important to separate correlation and causation. Correlation is not causation. And some articles will try to convince you otherwise. There are so many factors that go into any situation that most of the time, there is not one singular cause for an event. 

    After looking at the claim of the article, you need to analyze the data they're presenting. Is their data recent? What is the sample size of subjects? Sample size of who they are testing is very important to the accuracy and validity of a study. If they had a very small sample size, it is very likely to not represent the intended population accurately. Is there a control group or oppositional group? To prove that there is a significant difference between two variables, you must test both for a fair study. If you were to conduct a study about strong father/daughter relationships being beneficial to the outcome of the child, you would need to also study the benefits on a child of having a strong mother/daughter relationship as well. And if the claim still stands, it only furthers the argument. 

  Many things in life are actually not backed up by research, or maybe some, but not sustainable credible evidence. For example, the theory of the five love languages by Gary Chapman. This involves assigning one of five actions like physical touch, quality time, acts of service, etc. to a person and that quality is either something they like to receive or like to give to others. Many people know about this idea and embrace taking it as fact. However, the five love languages are not fact at all. There has been no clinical research to back up that theory. Now, that doesn't mean that we can't incorporate those principles into our relationships, because I do think they are good exercises for couples. However you should not take it as fact, even if most people believe it to be true. 

In closing of me saying a great deal big words and weeding through a lot of internal dialogue, there is a responsibility that comes with gaining knowledge. It is your responsibility to decipher what is fact and what is fiction. And sometimes the lines can become very blurred, but it is incredibly worth it to know the validity of the sources you are reading. 

Quite fitting with the famous phrase, "With knowledge comes power, and with power comes great responsibility."

Happy reading:)

- Chloe

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