Elizabeth Simmons

March 15, 2021

Richard’s research on the link between childhood caregiver attachment and Borderline
Personality Disorder.

Participate Recruitment: Richard will write a description of his intended research. He will make
a consent form for those that choose to participate in his data collection. Richard will pick clients
from his own caseload, reach out to the local private practice, and the local hospital counselors
for the contact information of clients that have been diagnosed with BPD. Once those clients
have been identified, he will contact them by phone and ask if they would be willing to join his
study. Because there is a chance that the local professionals will have a more narrow population
of clients, he will hang flyers at local businesses like gas stations, thrift stores, and food banks.
He will post on social media platforms asking for volunteer participation. He will also use local
counselors, flyers, and social media to find participants that have not been diagnosed with BPD
as a comparison group. His sample goal for both the diagnosed Borderline Personality Disorder
and non diagnosed groups will be to match that of the population of his town. He will make note
of any participant with a health condition or use of a medication that might impact the answers to
his questionnaires.

Research Tools: Richard will have clear definitions of “attachment” and “caregivers”. He will
make questionnaires ranking caregivers (mother, father, grandmother, aunt, uncle, ect) from 0
being no attachment to 5 being highly attached. The other questionnaire will rank BPD
symptoms (fear of rejection/abandonment, unstable relationships, risky behavior, self harm, ect)
from 0 having no symptoms to 5 having intense symptoms. He will use multiple graphs to plot
the results showing how intense symptoms relate to attachment degree in individuals with BPD
versus those without a BPD diagnosis.