Social & Community Development Research Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Social & Community Development Research - Essay Example The option of having alternative education programs for prospective delinquent children is something I admire. It was no difficult task choosing my area of research seeing that it has been aptly covered by Cox among other researchers. The research by this particular writer is a bonus for me as it provides a foundation stone for my future research interests. Perhaps the reason for my personal interest in this research area is because I lost an elder brother to jail for delinquency; something that could have been prevented early enough. While searching for this journal, I first developed a search strategy that was very useful in identifying this research. To start with, I first defined the topic that I wanted to cover, or rather my research interest. As stated earlier, my interest in research is in child delinquency. A practical solution to child delinquency is the establishment of alternative schools. In so doing, I came up with the keywords ‘child delinquency’ and ‘alternative schools’. To make my search more wide and varied, I included the keyword ‘assess*’. The asterisk at the end of the word assess was intentional to make the search pick up variations such as ‘assessed’ and ‘assessment’. Since the three concepts, assess, child delinquency and alternative schools are related I used the conjunction ‘and’ between them to ensure the search gave results that had all the three concepts. The work of Cox particularly interested me because of the number of reviews that it had attracted (Conley, 2002, pp. 142). Moreover, the researcher has been involved in other remarkable researches. In particular, his assessment of delinquency related outcomes of alternative education programs stood out because it covered the same field that I was venturing in. The fact that Cox has published those many times (Korn, 1991, pp. 75) makes him an ideal reference point in doing my future research. The main