Article Analysis: The Stories That Bind Us

In the article "The Stories That Bind Us" the author proposes the question of what makes a family resilient and effective. Throughout the article, the author mentions studies and tests to determine the best possible way to become a resilient family. The author came to the conclusion that sharing a common narrative with the children is beneficial for the family. The author does this by conducting studies to further their investigation and comes to their conclusion by comparing the results to psychological tests. Although the author states studies throughout the article, the author's argument is not successful in persuading the reader that families benefit from knowing more about family history. This is because the author never mentions if the studies were scientific or not, the sample size of the children …show more content…
The following quote is when the author introduces the study, "Dr. Duke and Dr. Fivush asked those questions of four dozen families in the summer of 2001, and taped several of their dinner table conversations. They then compared the children's results to a battery of psychological tests the children had taken, and reached an overwhelming conclusion." As stated in said quote the author never mentions any statistics regarding the four dozen families in the study conducted in the summer of 2001. For example, the author never says how many children or how many adults were in each family. The author never states the sample size of children in each family, as well as the author not mentioning if there was a control group of families to compare the results. This is extremely crucial to any study conducted because if a study is not conducted scientifically then there can be variables not accounted for, the study could have been biased, or the conductors of the study can find correlations where correlations don’t actually