methods

							Sara Kyles

Professor Harrison

English 202

23 March 2010

                                             Methods

       Young African-American males who have been in foster care were targeted; the long

term affects of their experience. More specifically for this research, only one subject was used; a

19 year old African-American male who was a foster child until the age of 18. Thorough

interviews with the subject about his experience followed the decision to create a story based on

his life. Doing this doesn’t only show the long term affects, but also gives insight as to why the

long term affects came about the way they did. The subject and I came to an agreement that

everything presented in the story is real with the exception of the characters. The story explores

the vivid types of abuse the subject experienced from multiple foster parents; how this affects

him surfaces throughout the story as it progresses.


       Researching the different experiences of this specific group of foster children and

presenting facts is beneficial, but there’s nothing more compelling than a personal story.

Personal experience breeds knowledge that can’t be acquired from researching and analyzing

general findings. The affects stemmed from the experiences presented throughout the story can

be added to the field of knowledge that already exists on child maltreatment in foster homes.

This is even more significant because young African-American male foster children have the

highest rate of developing negatively as a long term affect due to this maltreatment, but there are

very few research studies done on just this specific group.