I previously posted ethical discussion about my projects here. Sorry about the font color, I don't know what that's all about.
I don't really have much to add, for student-purposes. The MUFON paper is looking more certain, as they moved their meetings to Westerville. It's like the universe is saying "Hey, research this! It's in your backyard!" I will at some point have to think about how to do all that though.
With the Religion in Society paper, I do have an update. It occurred to me that either at festivals or in the process of interviewing, I might have opportunity to observe parent/child interactions in terms of religiosity. So I contacted the chair of the IRB and we worked out an addendum to add to the original proposal for approval (which I received). As my students know, children as subjects require extra special care. To be honest, while I could have just included them later, ethics is not a situation of "beg forgiveness, not ask permission." It is always better to have another set of eyes look at the situation and see if they see anything that you don't. Remember the film Quiet Rage. Dr. Zimbardo was blind to the ethical quagmire he was in. Even though the IRB exists to protect the university from liability, it still serves that very important function of making sure we remain the ethical people we like to think we are.
(Although....I just did some nosing around, and he DID get approval from their Human Subjects Committee!)
Monday, January 29, 2018
Saturday, January 27, 2018
The Nexus of Theory and Research
Note: I don't know who all is following this, but lots of the next several posts are going to be those that are related to the prompts I am asking my students to journal. '
We just ended the third week of classes and normally I'd feel pretty good about the pace of the semester, however, I was derailed by a fairly bad cold at the beginning of the week. Next week should be better though, and hopefully I can get back on track for where I want to be with my classes then.
I'm also still fairly irked the the FBI has decided that keeping track of how many arrested individuals are male and how many are female is somehow not important after 86 years of record keeping...but whatever.
In research methods, we're discussing and thinking about the relationship between theory and research. (Well, I am, anyway). So, in applying that to my own projects right now, I'm seeing that talking about it in the abstract is not like doing it in the "real world" (which, likely, many of my students have already realized as well).
For "further along" project, I do not know what theory will best explain the results. I am not well-versed on the types of theories that are prevalent in the sociology of religion, although thinking of the three major paradigms, I would imagine some type of either structural-functionalism or symbolic interactionism could be useful. Although, that may be premature; the research is almost strictly exploratory and descriptive. It may be that I can use that to suggest future research of a more explanatory nature though. Right now, the focus is developing what I call "theory-with-a-small-T." Are some denominations more actively religious than are others? Are families with children more or less religiously active than are families without children? There may be other questions I decided to explore as well. Perhaps from that, then, I can come up with my own "theory-with-a-capital-T," as in grounded theory, or the patterns are observed would follow what is predicted in an already developed theory. For students, this is an example if inductive research.
For "new" project, I think this would best be classified as deductive research. Even though I started with a topic, my co-research and I immediately though of Goffman's theories of impression management and stigma (falling under the umbrella of the symbolic interactionist paradigm). That has the benefits of providing readily available concepts to look for; however it can be somewhat restrictive. What if some things are discovered in the course of the research that don't fit neatly into that theory? Do we ignore them? Slightly revision the theory itself? Toss the theory away? All can and do happen in research. It just depends upon the best way to answer the research question.
We just ended the third week of classes and normally I'd feel pretty good about the pace of the semester, however, I was derailed by a fairly bad cold at the beginning of the week. Next week should be better though, and hopefully I can get back on track for where I want to be with my classes then.
I'm also still fairly irked the the FBI has decided that keeping track of how many arrested individuals are male and how many are female is somehow not important after 86 years of record keeping...but whatever.
In research methods, we're discussing and thinking about the relationship between theory and research. (Well, I am, anyway). So, in applying that to my own projects right now, I'm seeing that talking about it in the abstract is not like doing it in the "real world" (which, likely, many of my students have already realized as well).
For "further along" project, I do not know what theory will best explain the results. I am not well-versed on the types of theories that are prevalent in the sociology of religion, although thinking of the three major paradigms, I would imagine some type of either structural-functionalism or symbolic interactionism could be useful. Although, that may be premature; the research is almost strictly exploratory and descriptive. It may be that I can use that to suggest future research of a more explanatory nature though. Right now, the focus is developing what I call "theory-with-a-small-T." Are some denominations more actively religious than are others? Are families with children more or less religiously active than are families without children? There may be other questions I decided to explore as well. Perhaps from that, then, I can come up with my own "theory-with-a-capital-T," as in grounded theory, or the patterns are observed would follow what is predicted in an already developed theory. For students, this is an example if inductive research.
For "new" project, I think this would best be classified as deductive research. Even though I started with a topic, my co-research and I immediately though of Goffman's theories of impression management and stigma (falling under the umbrella of the symbolic interactionist paradigm). That has the benefits of providing readily available concepts to look for; however it can be somewhat restrictive. What if some things are discovered in the course of the research that don't fit neatly into that theory? Do we ignore them? Slightly revision the theory itself? Toss the theory away? All can and do happen in research. It just depends upon the best way to answer the research question.
Friday, January 19, 2018
New year, new class, new progress...new project?
The new school year started with a 2-hour delay due to weather. That first week ended approximately 2-hours early, also due to weather.
I have a new batch of SOCL 3000 students (*waves hi*) to follow along, and hopefully the alumni who inspired me to start this are still hanging in there. Because I have new students that I'm practicing the art of research with, this will be a bit more regular in the postings.
First, an update on the neo-paganism and family religiosity paper. It was accepted for presentation at the Religion in Society conference at UC Berkeley in San Francisco. I'm going to try to not wear tie-dye the whole time, but cannot promise to go without flowers in my hair and be a complete hippy geek at the corner of Haight and Ashbury.
On that front, I will be finished entering the surveys I have so I can do some preliminary analysis. I have started doing interviews and I will likely not have as many of those done, but that is okay. I am presenting it as a "working paper," so it doesn't have to be as final as most papers.
***********
For the new students, as always, I am trying to work along with them, so I've chosen to resurrect the research on something related to belief in UFOs. I am not sure whether the alien abduction angle (which is where this idea started) is broad enough, so at this point, the planning stage, I'm going to broaden it out. I find it interesting that this still is something that people do believe in, but I'm not sure why they do, and if they do, do they share that information with others, especially if they think they've seen a UFO or an alien, or even been abducted.
In thinking about this, it seems that some people may be more likely to have these beliefs than others. I know women are more likely to believe in alternative spiritualities (from my other research) so may be they are more likely to believe in aliens too. I also know the stereotype of the 'drunk redneck' who sees the UFO, so I wonder if social class matters. There was also an article I found that suggested that political affiliation and religion matter too (Swami, Furnham, Haubner, Stieger, and Voracek 2009). So those might all be variables I would want to look at.
If I had to make a prediction right now, I would probably guess that women, members of lower socioeconomic classes, politically liberal, and people who not religious would all be more likely to believe in aliens than would those who are not in these group.
REFERENCES
Swami, Viren, Adrian Furnham, Tanja Haubner, Stefan Stieger, and Martin Voracek. 2009. "The Truth Is Out There: The Structure of Beliefs About Extraterrestrial Life Among Austrian and British Respondents." Journal of Social Psychology 149:29-43.
I have a new batch of SOCL 3000 students (*waves hi*) to follow along, and hopefully the alumni who inspired me to start this are still hanging in there. Because I have new students that I'm practicing the art of research with, this will be a bit more regular in the postings.
First, an update on the neo-paganism and family religiosity paper. It was accepted for presentation at the Religion in Society conference at UC Berkeley in San Francisco. I'm going to try to not wear tie-dye the whole time, but cannot promise to go without flowers in my hair and be a complete hippy geek at the corner of Haight and Ashbury.
On that front, I will be finished entering the surveys I have so I can do some preliminary analysis. I have started doing interviews and I will likely not have as many of those done, but that is okay. I am presenting it as a "working paper," so it doesn't have to be as final as most papers.
***********
For the new students, as always, I am trying to work along with them, so I've chosen to resurrect the research on something related to belief in UFOs. I am not sure whether the alien abduction angle (which is where this idea started) is broad enough, so at this point, the planning stage, I'm going to broaden it out. I find it interesting that this still is something that people do believe in, but I'm not sure why they do, and if they do, do they share that information with others, especially if they think they've seen a UFO or an alien, or even been abducted.
In thinking about this, it seems that some people may be more likely to have these beliefs than others. I know women are more likely to believe in alternative spiritualities (from my other research) so may be they are more likely to believe in aliens too. I also know the stereotype of the 'drunk redneck' who sees the UFO, so I wonder if social class matters. There was also an article I found that suggested that political affiliation and religion matter too (Swami, Furnham, Haubner, Stieger, and Voracek 2009). So those might all be variables I would want to look at.
If I had to make a prediction right now, I would probably guess that women, members of lower socioeconomic classes, politically liberal, and people who not religious would all be more likely to believe in aliens than would those who are not in these group.
REFERENCES
Swami, Viren, Adrian Furnham, Tanja Haubner, Stefan Stieger, and Martin Voracek. 2009. "The Truth Is Out There: The Structure of Beliefs About Extraterrestrial Life Among Austrian and British Respondents." Journal of Social Psychology 149:29-43.
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