The article under review is about the impact of poverty on children's mental, emotion, and behaviors health. The article's full citation in the American Psychology Association is as follows. Yoshikawa, H., Aber, J. L., & Beardslee, W. R. (2012). The effects of poverty on the mental, emotional, and behavioral health of children and youth: implications for prevention. American Psychologist , 67 (4), 272.
The article lacks the authors’ biographies. However, there is a glimpse of their academic achievements. For instance, Hirokazu Yoshikawa is a formers student at Harvard University, while Lawrence Aber is a former student from New York University. Finally, William R. Beardslee is from Harvard Medical School/Children's Hospital in Boston. Such qualification speaks of the level of education for each of the authors. However, their areas of study could have shed more light on their experiences and skills in their field of choice. Unfortunately, the article lacks such vital information.
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In this article, the aim is to understand or link poverty and its impacts on the mental, emotional, and behaviors health of children. The view is to understand various strategies that are present as poverty prevention mechanisms and determine the best that can be of benefits to children's health. In this sense, the authors hypothesize that a better understanding of the magnitude to which poverty impacts the children's mental, emotional, and behavioral health is a road towards defining a better intervention mechanism for those suffering in poverty.
The authors mention cognitive behavior and attachment theories to explain more on the interaction between poverty, environment, and the child’s health. From the article, stress resulting from the economic situation is one of the factors that affect children's mental health due to poverty. The authors use cognitive behavior theory to explain this matter. Further, as parents strive to provide for the children, they lack emotional attachment and care for the children. The situation leads to behaviors, emotional, and mental health issues. The authors use attachment theory to explain this matter.
To some extent, the authors are neutral in their judgment and the manner of writing. Take, for example, an instance where they justify the need for their research, and also justify the gap they intend to bridge by this research article. The authors use facts from other resources and also acknowledged the effort by the other researchers whose work majors on this topic. However, they claim that due to insufficient evidence and few numbers of research on this topic, they would like to bridge the gap in research.
The term poverty is of significant interest to the authors. The authors thus begin by clarifying to the audience the meaning of poverty and how understanding the meaning is useful in understanding the entire article. Their emphasis on defining poverty as a "lack of means” sets the ball rolling for the audience to understand the context of the article.
The total number of citations in this article is 92. The number suggests the intensity of the research in this article. Further, it indicates the credibility of the research in the article. Most of the articles are scholarly with few being non-scholarly. National surveys on economics are also other articles in the study. The year range is between the years 1980 to 2012.
The research, in this case, is a literature review research whose aim was to define the gap in research and try to bridge the gap by making the audience understand poverty and its impact on children. In this sense, instead of the number of participants, the authors major on numerous past studies on this topic and assess different methods, and results from such studies. Instead of methodology, the authors have their conceptual framework, which has numerous variables through which guide the authors until the conclusion section. The variables thus act as the measures in the study. Further, it does not have clear strategies for understanding and measuring results; instead, it relies on the variable as an apparatus for measuring the extent of thorough research by other scholars on the topic. In the end, their results match their hypothesis as they come up with numerous flaws and also recommendations on the next step as far as the topic is of concern.
The research in this article is a literature review. The authors use numinous research articles and past studies in this case. There are meta-analysis, government policies, case studies, and also previous economic surveys on the topic. The intent is to use such studies to make the audience understand the gap in research. The aim is also to recommend ways through which the new proposals can work better to come up with an excellent strategy to reduce the impact of poverty on children's mental, emotions, and behavior's health.
The conclusion is that better strategies for preventing poverty in America and other parts of the world should strive to eliminate matters that increase the vulnerability of children to emotion, stress, and behavior's which are harmful to their health. Such initiations must be critical in boosting the mental, emotional, and positive behaviors in children rather than enhancing them.
Defining the cost of such strategies that are recommendable for poverty elimination in a manner that is friendly to children’s health is areas that need more research, according to the authors.
In general the article was interesting to read and understand because of many subheadings that were critical in directing the reader. The language was also simple and easy to understand. However, there were some challenges too. The conceptual framework was easy to understand but difficult to relate to the article's main topic. Further, there were some meta-analysis research studies that were challenging to understand and to relate to the main issue. Also, the article is critical in social science and economic research as well as psychological research because poverty affects the country. Understanding poverty from a health point of view is a step towards coming up with an intervention that can be of good use for the government and policy formulators. However, as the authors have understood, it is critical to have more research on the cost of such interventions. Note that the resources are scarce, and allocating them well is a challenge. Understanding the value of a good intervention thus could be a step toward pressing the government to make a proper decision on this topic.
