Treatment Abuse, Behavior Modification, Thought Reform > World Wide Association of Specialty Programs and Schools (WWASPS)
Way more kids praise programs than attack them, why is that?
Joel:
Edited: Wednesday, October 06, 2010
FemanonFatal2.0:
--- Quote from: "Whooter" ---Wow that is a novel, FemanonFatal.
--- End quote ---
Yes, and sometimes I wonder why I bother.
--- Quote from: "Whooter" ---Do you think studies of the teen help industry should be conducted by people who don’t have any knowledge of what they do? Many people here have a hard time with research being conducted by people who have past ties to the industry they are studying.
--- End quote ---
Case and point. No, on the contrary I believe that the only people who would be qualified to conduct such a study, and have the ability and experience to do so in a legitimate manner are licensed psychological research professionals. I would also be interested to see a non-biased team of graduate researchers possibly at a university conduct one as well. I would surely give credit where credit is due if those who were conducting these studies did not have a financial interest that depended on the outcome of the study.
--- Quote from: "Whooter" ---As far as research facilities go, corporations pay these research firms to conduct research on the effectiveness of what they do. This is done every day on thousands of corporations. Other than getting the government to pick up the tab I don’t know who else would work for free. You worked for free when you conducted your study on Facebook but like you said you yourself must be biased because you have connections to the industry so your results need to be tossed out also because the questions may have been biased and the population wasn’t random enough possibly?
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lol, yea of course companies do this all the time, but that is usually to test the quality of their cheese wiz, not to answer such an enigmatic question as "does "Tough Love" work?" I think you prove my point exactly by the mention of this, this is not a serious study, this is simply a company funded consumer report. There is absolutely no evidence of any kind of unbiased control set up to ensure that an appropriate statistic is even reachable within the means of such a generalized study. Not to mention that the populous provided for this endeavor was provided by the company who is funding the project. I'm a little worried that someone who has to be at least half way intelligent wouldn't be able to spot a bought and sold marketing scheme when they see one. Denying the existence of tampering in such a case would be quite naive considering that the amount of effort that would be needed to conduct a proper report in this case is simply outside of the capacity of such a research company. The school provided every bit of information that they wanted the company to consider, and in that regard it is MUCH like fixing an election because it is simply showing the public what they need to hear and omitting those past and present critical issues. In many ways they denied the right of those who may have been hurt or just scammed by this company to provide their side of the story because not one of the participants held a significantly negative opinion of the program. The reporting populous of this study would lead you to believe they don't exist, but we all know that they do, and there are many of them, but were any of them contacted to participate in aspens "research study"? You can ask but I highly doubt it.
--- Quote from: "Whooter" ---So based on your conclusion there isn’t anything we can believe because we are all biased and we shouldn’t take any of what we hear about programs seriously until a proper study is conducted, i.e. Everyone is pushing their own personal story.
--- End quote ---
Sure, if you would like to go that far I would support that notion. From the outside looking in its hard to decide who to believe... generally the kids say one thing and the parents say another. But what I have a hard time understanding is why when I tell my personal story people tend to realize that I have genuine reason to feel the way I do about my experience, but many of those who support the programs tend to push my experience aside as an isolated event while claiming that because they know so many people who had good experiences at their schools so it MUST be completely different. Well what about those people who have said they had a good experience in the same school I had a bad experience in? Does that somehow nullify the abuse I suffered? So what if a few kids say they were helped by the program, does that justify sweeping another few hundred or so under the rug? I can tell you from experience regardless of everyone's level of positivity everyone hated the program when they were in it... now many people have moved on and can attribute that experience to a turning point in their lives but that is surely to be expected anytime a person is isolated from their daily lives and dragged through a traumatic experience.
I'm not going to write another novel, I'll just say this... let's all try to use a bit more common sense and god forbid a little empathy, if we could all just grasp that one little concept this world would be a much better place.
Whooter:
There are a lot of details about the study that we don’t know. Like any study that is done, the raw data is held by the research firm.
There was an independent agency involved to insure there was no financial conflict of interest and to oversee the study (Western Institutional Review Board).
We know that there were about 1,000 families that were surveyed (the kids as well as the parents). Were they a representative cross section? We don’t know. I think everyone assumes it was but we would need to ask the research team how the population was pulled. Maybe they were 1,000 consecutive enrollees. But in any event even if the sample was biased (worse case) they were still able to present 1,000 kids and their families during that time frame to respond and they presented the results.
So what we do know is that the programs are at least effective for some kids and their families. So we are starting to see programs hiring independent firms to study their programs along with oversight from independent agencies to insure the studies are done in conformance to the Department of Health and Human services.
I would like to see some of these Universities come in also, like you said, Femanonfatal, to help confirm some of these numbers we are seeing. But overall the numbers look encouraging and as more and more of these studies are completed we should be able to get a better picture of the program models which are the most effective.
On your other note. I don’t think that the kids who do well outweigh or nullify the ones who claim they were abused. Quite the opposite I think people are well aware that abuse can occur anywhere and typically does. The programs need to just keep working to make the places as safe as possible the same as the public school sector and private school sectors do with a goal of eliminating all abuse.
...
FemanonFatal2.0:
--- Quote from: "Whooter" ---I would like to see some of these Universities come in also, like you said, Femanonfatal, to help confirm some of these numbers we are seeing. But overall the numbers look encouraging and as more and more of these studies are completed we should be able to get a better picture of the program models which are the most effective.
On your other note. I don’t think that the kids who do well outweigh or nullify the ones who claim they were abused. Quite the opposite I think people are well aware that abuse can occur anywhere and typically does. The programs need to just keep working to make the places as safe as possible the same as the public school sector and private school sectors do with a goal of eliminating all abuse.
...
--- End quote ---
See herein lies my point, it may seem that the "numbers look encouraging" because those are the "numbers" Aspen paid for... I don't have any problem with a program conducting an in-house customer satisfaction survey, in fact I'm in full support of such efforts but the only problem is that people like you go on public record referring to these numbers as "facts".
If we paid the same research company to take a poll here at fornits about the TTI I'm pretty sure our numbers would be discouraging, because that is the pool we are fishing those numbers from, and although I side with most of the opinions of my fellow fornitcators I would in no way use this outcome to refer to fact. I would need to have experienced something myself to refer to anything as fact, and that is exactly what I am doing. I don't have any experience with Aspen so you won't see me bashing them, but I do have experience with other programs that operate a very similar program structure and I believe it is a FACT that many of the methods used by these programs are unethical and DO NOT WORK.
I really feel that many people who are claiming the program worked for them are not willing or able to properly identify what techniques can be harmful, and especially those that violate the human rights of the patients. Most of them, parents and kids included blindly trust these programs without having any knowledge of what practices are appropriate for these types of environments. It honestly bothers me that anyone with a degree in psychology could choose to work at one of these places because many of the basic principles of the program go directly against what they should have been taught in college. This is the main problem I have with these places... the system is not based upon the healing type structure of what you would expect a "therapeutic boarding school" to be, instead it focuses on re-enforcing negative energy and controlling people with fear and judgment. You may think that I am biased because I believe all programs are bad, but I don't think that's all true. Actually, If there were a program that ran a completely different kind of "program" than the whole "tough love" model I could actually be in support of families seeking these services, but as it is, I truly believe they have the whole concept backwards. No amount of changes in their "safety policy" would fix the problems the TTI has had since its conception, what they need is to completely abandon their current strategy and be open to creating a whole new one... only thing is, most of these people are in such denial that their particular program is so different or better than the rest they haven't been open to ANY of our feedback. Instead they hate, blame, insult and even come after us legally even though we are simply making our experience with their company available to the public... in that way, Fornits is like the ultimate consumer report.
To be honest, most of us would be in support of complete irradiation of the Troubled Teen Industry because what's even scarier than the program staying the same ol duck factory we know and love, is the thought that these places through their self-moderation are mutating into what's being marketed as a "better program" all the while continuing to turn a blind eye to the fact that their core methodology is terminally flawed. So these places clean up on the surface, enough to convince the mildly suspicious critic and then they are really given free rein to fuck these kids up in ways you can't even imagine. They may instill a hands off policy, but when one form of control is removed from the tough love system they have to up the ante on the emotional and mental control... these are the kinds of things I can really see getting out of hand, as I'm sure they already are.
I can't tell you I have personal experience with every program, in fact it has been 8 years since I was in one, but I can tell you that too often does the evidence of the same program structure reveal itself in even some of the highest rated programs today. That's what we have got to see changing, we can't nitpick and tell them to change this little thing or that, somehow we have to prove that the fundamental principals of the tough love industry need to be changed or there is absolutely NO program that you could trust to treat these children appropriately. Forgive my lack of optimism for the ability of a program to shape up their act, but considering the people I dealt with, abuse and mind control are things so deeply ingrained into their lives that I don't believe they are even capable of coming to the realization of it all let alone be willing to make the appropriate changes.
Joel:
Edited: Wednesday, October 06, 2010
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