One Fest Down....

For those students concerned, I have successfully avoided being ax-murdered thus far :)

Trying to decide how to convey the research experience.  It really isn't as interesting or exciting as Indiana Jones movies make it.  I placed around 30 surveys in a water-proof box in a common area of the event grounds, and then announced it at every opportunity.  In doing so, I got 26 surveys completed.  A couple of people sent me messages asking about them via Facebook after I left (I had to leave before the event was over), so I will be sending those out.  One woman offered to take them to her group members that were unable to be there, so I sent her the PDF.

Every evening, I'd grab the surveys to take back to my tent, take out the completed ones, and replace them with new ones.  There's some drinking that takes place at night, so I didn't want anything to happen to them accidentally (or on purpose, but I wasn't too worried about that).  I had the benefit at this event of knowing people well, and so asking for people to fill them out was fairly easy.  This will not be the case at future events though, so we shall see.

Here's what my home sweet home for the long weekend looked like:

Please note the bow-legged-ness of the pop up.  That's because it's a very old one and is on it's last legs, somewhat literally.  It was pretty hot the whole weekend, but given that usually this particular event is very cold, no one was allowed to complain about the heat.   Of course, what happens when it gets really hot?  It thunderstorms...and thus illuminated that not only should the pop up be replaced, but so too should the tent behind it.  I got a bit of water in the tent (the laptop and the surveys were safe though), and had to re-engineer the  which goes over the whole thing (that you can't see from this angle).  I figured at that point, I needed to replace the tent OR the pop up (or possibly both), before something truly tragic happened and all sorts of water became a problem.  Fortunately, the re-engineer worked and a later rainstorm did not make anything worse inside.

Before I left, I rolled a bunch of pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters and bought this:

This piece of awesomeness is the Cabela's Deluxe Camp Kitchen.  That bit in the middle has an actual sink in it.  It definitely made life easier, despite taking up more of the trunk than I had anticipated.

One thing that I don't think I ever talked about in class was what to do if unexpected guests stop by:

That is some sort of bee.  It could have been a hornet or yellow jacket.  I'm not allergic, but that doesn't mean I needed to get stung.  (The massive amount of mosquito bites I got was plenty....they laughed at all manner of insect repellent).  I don't think I've ever covered this particular research problem in class, but maybe I will next year :)

I have a new hand-me-down tent from a friend, so that's handled.  I have 26 surveys to code and enter, and then see if any of them wanted to be contacted for more indepth interviews.  But there are still other ongoing tasks. The literature review persists, and I just ordered about 25 more articles and maybe 10 books.  The next event is June 18 to 26ish (or whatever that Sunday is).

Welcome!

First, welcome to my research journal!

It is kind of a weird place to put the "Welcome" message, as there are three to four posts before this one!  Those come from the research journal I've been keeping along with the ones I require of my students in Research Methods class.  I've been more successful some semesters than others.  The first few entries below this one are just copied and pasted from that journal.

Because I was doing a lot of foundational work for my sabbatical research, I talked about that process in my Research Methods class.  One day, a few of my students became concerned about my safety.  Maybe.  Maybe they were just having a bit of fun at their professor's expense.  Maybe they were just trying to avoid talking about course content for a few minutes.  Either way, as a part of that discussion, I agreed to keep a research blog so I could check in and they can be assured that I was NOT at Camp Crystal Lake, and would not be suffering the same fate as those folks.

You can click on the links to the side to get caught up with where I'm at.  (I am not sure why the font is messed up on those. I'll try to fix it so you can actually read it without highlighting it.)

Hopefully there will be funny stories along the way..

Right now, I'm finishing up getting ready for the first event at which I will be handing out surveys.  I am hoping to finalize the formatting, and then get them printed tomorrow, and then we'll be all set.  I'm still waiting for formal permission from the events themselves; I've sent requests to about half, and gotten mildly favorable responses from about half of those, but nothing formal from anyone.

I also need to set about purchasing the voice recorder for the interviews, and maybe get something waterproof to put everything in.  If I don't get one, it will rain buckets the entire time.  If I do, maybe that will keep it from raining so much.  In fact, I have a long running list of "Things I need," some of which have to do with the research itself, and some just are about general living supplies.  I just recalled my rain boots had holes in them at the end of last year, and I had thrown them out.  Those are not covered in sabbatical funding, however.

Ready to get started

Originally posted in the SOAN 3000 Research Methods blog on Blackboard on April 4, 2016

I have been remiss in updating this, but that's because not much has been happening. Juggling teaching, research, and service responsibilities is a lot like you guys juggling coursework, organizations, employment, etc.  Add family and other obligations in and...whew!

However, PROGRESS HAS BEEN MADE.  Since I last posted I have: 

• Written the questionnaire
• Written the interview
• Done the consent forms for both
• Written the letter requesting permission from events to conduct the research
• Written the IRB.

In the immortal words of Ric Flair...WOOOOOOoooooo!! (Bonus points if you respond in the comments with who that is :) )

Now is the time of getting a little nervous.  I have to send this letter out to 7-8 events and hope they say yes.  I also kind of asked for advertising in their event programs, which is a cost I hadn't thought of when I submitted my proposal.  I don't know if it will cost money or not, and if it does how much.  I'm not sure if I can submit the amount (if there is one) with my expenses once I am back, either, since they weren't on the original budget.

(I am also tangentially wondering if I can include the costs of laundry, since I'll be gone two-three weeks at one point...)

This little thing should serve to advise you that even if you plan very carefully, things come up.  Some of them might be incidental, and some of them might be larger than that, but one must be flexible.  Otherwise, research can just stall (especially if it is big) and then you don't get anywhere.  And when you have a report on why your university gave you half a year off, you do kind of have to tell them something. :) 

Ethics

Originally posted in the SOAN 3000: Research Methods blog on Blackboard on February 12, 2016

I'm a little behind...so I will try to get caught up.

The next topic I need to address is 'ethics.'  As a person and a sociologist and an instructor who wants to lead by example, I need to work on my own IRB for my project.  

The MUFON project is tricky, and as I'm still in the musing about stage for this, I won't be going forward on that just yet.  What I've learned from watching Hangar 1 is there's a significant amount of paranoia among people who believe they've seen things or been abducted, so I don't even know whether I should identify myself as a researcher.  

The religion project is a little less dicey, but still not without its difficulties. There will be way less paranoia...I think :)  but other problems may surface.  One thing I've been able to glean from earlier, informal interviews, is that within this community there's a concern that religion may play a roll in employment and custody issues, among other things.  There have been tales of people being fired and losing children in custody battles because of their religion.  Not just urban legend-type friend-of-a-friend tales either.  They could name names and locations and everything.  Therefore, I definitely have a special responsibility to make sure that I maintain the anonymity and confidentiality of my respondents.  Even if they say I can use their names, I don't believe I will.  What if someone could be connected via association with a known name, and loses a job or children because of THAT?  

The other ethical situation, which I did not talk about much, is making sure my own biases (from my political and spiritual slants) do not influence the writing of my questions, the manner in which I address respondents, or interpret results.  We'll probably talk/read more about this when we discuss qualitative research, but it is a concern...the interviewer does not want to lead their respondents.  Think about how lawyers aren't allowed to lead the witness.  Neither should researchers.

Please feel free to pose questions, make comments and suggestions whatever :) 

Things I'm thinking about

This was originally posted in the SOAN 3000: Research Methods blog on Blackboard on February 3, 2016

Still haven't found time to actually read...

Did you know UFOs come from under water in addition to outer space?

(I discovered that there was an entire series on-line on the History channel that was allegedly from the files of MUFON, which is another potential research topic of mine...)

Okay, seriously.  Given the project I'm talking about, on neo-Pagan religious transmission, it probably falls in line with Inductive theorizing.  I don't know of any existing theory that could be used to explain things, and I don't really know what kinds of things I'll find.  I have a guide from some of the things I've read, but they seem, in retrospect, fairly atheoretical.  Meaning, there's a lot of "here's what's happening" but a lack of "here is why it is happening."

It's possible this means that what I'll actually be doing is something called "grounded theory." It's a sub-set of inductive reasoning where, instead of making observations and seeing if there's an existing theory to explain them, you use the observations and relationships to create a new theory.  I think ideally then, others test that theory (deductively)... but, to be honest, I don't know if that actually happens.  Maybe it does?  One thing we'll talk about is that while replication is one of the goals of scientific research, we are only human, and like to do something new.

I'm a little nervous about the whole thing, because it's been a while since I've done ANYthing like qualitative research, and it was on a much smaller scale.  But, it's fun to learn new things.

Getting Started

This was originally posted to the SOAN 3000: Research Methods Blackboard site on January 24, 2016

Usually every year I go through my litany of ideas and research projects.  But there really is just one this year.  I am interested in studying how families transmit 'doing religion' to their children, when they have no structural supports.  What the heck does that mean, Dr. Kern?

What that means... if people are Christian (as 77% of our society claims to be), and they have children, there's a ready made establishment for them to socialize their children into their faith.  There are physical buildings and churches, staffed by people in the role of spiritual teacher.  There's a common scripture and more or less common interpretation of that scripture.  There's Sunday school, and Vacation Bible School in the summer, and basically an entire industry devoted to producing resources to facilitate this.  In addition, it is the dominant religion of the culture, so talking about one's efforts to raise children in the faith is normal as well. For other religions, this can still be the case (for example, Judaism).  However, a number of alternative faiths do not have either the cultural support or the institutional structure in place to support parents. Many of these religions fall under the umbrella of "neo-Paganism," a set of fiercely decentralized religions that have no central structure, no governing body, and very little in the way of what we would call structural resources.  Misunderstandings about the religions also remove cultural support. So, how do parents who want to raise their children in the faith, accomplish this?

What I hope to do at first, is to find out exactly how much neo-pagans practice their faith in the their day to day life.  That is the point behind using the FAITH scale that I showed you.  My sabbatical will be administering the FAITH scale and some other survey questions, and then asking those who want to talk more in-depth about it to sit for a longer, and more in-depth interview.  (This is my sabbatical project!)

So I am a bit ahead of you all with your projects, but I sort of feel I have miles to go.  I have a stack of journal articles (I mentioned) and a paralyzing fear that I'll miss some HUGE chunk of theory or something, but won't know until it is too late ;)

I need to do my IRB, write my survey, and do all the things you guys are doing too.

I'll be sharing my drafts with you all as well.  It's only fair :)

Also you can ask questions or make suggestions in the comments :)