Childhood Trauma and its Impact on Self-esteem and the Perception of God

Introductins:

The main aim of this study is to find out how children that have been maltreated view god in later life. The dependent variable for this research is interpersonally and religiosity, as it is something we are measuring and their independent variable, is different forms of child maltreatment as that’s what their condition is. Their research hypothesis is that people that have been child abused in the past and are low in self-esteem has negative view of God (God is punishing) whilst some theorists may disagree with this as they believe people that are being maltreated pray more and ask god for help. Their hypothesis anticipated different types of child abuse and neglect to predict reduced self-esteem for adults and to explain this connection by individual differences in interpersonal issues and religiosity (believing in god). This paper is distinct from earlier studies as there are not many studies involving finding child trauma and self-esteem in relation to the divine god so this fresh research study as prior study only outlined the advantages of believing in the divine god while this study looks at the opinions of god in kids after being abused and neglected. 

Waldron et al. used questionnaires to measure childhood trauma. The children's age is from 5 to 10. At a large university located in Chester, the questionnaires that were created by the university was been distributed among young females. There was a total of 718 women who took part in it. These women were asked about their nationality and their religion and to fill out a questionnaire. In the questionnaires they also asked question on religiosity and spitefulness, interpersonal issues and self-esteem scales. It took them half an hour to complete the full questionnaires so they were encouraged to take breaks in between. The questionnaires were done online. This research method was done using correlational experiments which means exploring and observing variables, which in this case is the view of God after child traumatic incident so therefore these research designs are suitable for the questions that are asked in the study. This is a very big sample and therefore you can generalise to the whole population however it is only done with the people that go university and not people who do not go or who does not have a chance to go to the university and therefore, the result may not be really accurate and thus, may not be able to precisely specify to the whole population. Also, another problem is that the research study is just done in one university, not different universities which may give different results because it might be a deprived area. Furthermore the religious groups are not split equally. Depending on religion people may have stronger believe in the divine and it does not count the fact that people may have got use to maltreatment so they don’t feel anything anymore. However the methodology section showed no ethical issues in this section which is a weakness as the methodology section should contain ethical issues they need to consider before carrying out the study.

Results and Analysis

This study was analysed using correlation tables. They discovered that all variables of child maltreatment were positively associated with the sub-scales of IIP and God as Negative, and substantially correlated with self-esteem score. Waldron et al. found out the emotional abuse and emotional neglect had a significant correlation between the negative view of god and they had low self-esteem where as a child that has been physically abusing they had a positive view on god and doesn’t affect their self-esteem too much. This is backed up by data analyse that is included as charts, regression tables, and correlation graphs. Their alpha level for physical abuse is 0.71 which does suggest the correlation between self-esteem is higher. This means that you can accept the research hypothesis which is that childhood trauma will affect self-esteem.  This clearly showed that for emotional abuse and self-esteem, mediation was supported for God as Negative. 

Waldron et al. concluded that emotional neglect and emotional abuse were significant direct predictors of self-esteem. They found that only Emotional Abuse and Emotional Neglect initially predicted lower self-esteem, after controlling for the effects of Sexual Abuse, Physical Abuse, and Physical Neglect. The conclusions appear to be well supported and backed up by the results, tables, and figures. The conclusion also supports the hypothesis and their research questions are clearly answered in this section. The results can assist inform therapies by raising consciousness of the significance of religiosity and mitigating interpersonal risk factors to assist with self-view. Some of the limitations proposed in this research are:

This research was in nature cross-sectional. Participants were asked to report their child abuse experiences retrospectively and due to the absence of understanding, bad memory, and careless reports such retrospective reports could have been biased. Considering the delicate nature of the issues requested, respondents may not have responded in a truthful manner to find themselves in a more socially suitable manner. These results could benefit religious leaders and organizations as individuals could turn to their religious communities rather than experts in the field of mental health (Waldron et al., 2018, p. 280-282).

Conclusion
I believe it was an excellent study over all this because it had all the facts, figures, stats and charts in it. It is also performed in a large sample and the hypothesis, goals, and issues are being presented and they are being answered obviously. As always, there is something that might have affected the results of such memory or lack of knowledge or lack of understanding of the questions as English may not be there in the first language so that they may struggle to understand what the question is trying to say and therefore misinterpret the question but the strengths of this study are good.