Field Research Again!

Recall, the reason I started this blog was because certain students were concerned I would be ax-murdered while camping.

Therefore, I've started it up again, and will continue to let students know that I am not a victim of Jason, even though I will be tent-living on Friday the (July) 13th!  Eek!

I have updated the survey to take into account some errors from before that made thing unclear for folks, and to update the language a bit.  When asked about use of religious media, the original survey talks about radio and television. I added "blogs and podcasts" to match changes in media consumption, and to perhaps better reflect what the study population would interact with.  I thought about adding "mythology" to the items that asked about reading of scripture or religious texts, but as I look at the survey, I seem to have changed my mind about that. I have no idea why. (Note for students: This is why I tell you to keep track of these decisions. Definitely a "Do as I say and not as I do moment.")

I was only able to be at this site for 3 days (not including set up and tear down), so I could be home for Comfest. That undoubtedly cut into my survey time, however it saved me from the MAJOR storm that flattened a couple of sites on Thursday.  I ended up getting six usable surveys. (I had to discount a seventh that was filled out by an eleven-year-old.  It went into the shredder.)  Partly that is because I had to leave early, and more people were arriving as I left.  But I think also it just need an extroverted minion to go around and ask people to participate. A friend of mine from Marshall University brings graduate students to events such as this for research, and I am always a little envious of that.

Anyway, here are the pictures! 

The field office!

This was actually a First Quarter moon, but it didn't show up that way on my phone.

The festival was in celebration of the Summer Solstice, and this was the view on Solstice morning.  I'm sure the sun is there somewhere....

This beauty took up residence on my pop up.  I hated to mess it up, but I made sure it was the last thing I tore down.

Berkeley at last!

Very delayed getting this all up....bear with me!

Right before the end of the semester, I had the opportunity to present the research I've been talking about at the International Religion and Spirituality in Society conference, being held at Berkeley, CA. Students and other will probably recognizes this as being Holy Ground for me.  I forgot that I had submitted my GRE scores to graduate school here, but they were apparently not up to snuff. 

I have not as many pictures as I would like, but here are some.

Berkeley was basically ground zero for the Free Speech Movement in the 1960s. We wandered around and did get to see People's Park, or what has become of it. It's overgrown and is "home" to the many homeless people around the area, so not exactly for all anymore.  Those who have taken up residence there are protective of that.  Still, it was cool to see. There was an iconic bookstore at THE corner near the People's Park which had changed names, and was re-closed again.  Still, as seen by the bike racks, Berkeley embraces the history:

I also was able to go to the OTHER Holy Ground, Haight-Ashbury:

I think these are the original street signs, outside a Ben and Jerry's. 

In a lot of ways, both Berkeley and Haight-Ashbury are kind of familiar.  Telegraph Road in Berkeley reminds me a lot of OSU's High Street before Campus Partners came in and ruined it gentrified.  Both of them have a lot of shops that look like Comfest if it were permanently in place. 

THE Corner.

Jim and I at The Corner.

Jim spent a lot of time here.

There were all these sayings on the sidewalk. I only took one picture, to avoid looking more like a tourist than I was already.

We did also hit China Town, but not for as long as we would have liked.  It takes forever to get anywhere, even on the BART,

Oh ... and yes there was the presentation. Here is my photo taken by the spouse on the way to said presentation. It's really fuzzy because of the bright light.  Yes, that is a tie-die long vest I was wearing. Did I mention I was in Berkeley?

The conference was good, my presentation was okay. Note to students: There is a reason I tell you to triple check everything. There is nothing like noticing something is wrong when standing on front of 30 or so of your peers (even though they didn't likely notice).  I also got to meet Professor Dollahite, who's survey I'm adapting for my research. We didn't get to talk very much, as I had to leave on Wednesday.

As I was leaving my presentation this little guy was just sitting in his tree, watching all the people.  I had to take a picture for my dad.

Berkeley Squirrel!

 Finally, we were on our way back to the airport on Wednesday.  What you see in this picture is my failure to capture a SINGLE freeway sign that said 'SAN JOSE'

Now we'll never know the way.

Still relevant

Putting this here for later...UFO research is apparently NOT passe :)


https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/the-military-keeps-encountering-ufos-why-doesnt-the-pentagon-care/2018/03/09/242c125c-22ee-11e8-94da-ebf9d112159c_story.html?undefined=&utm_term=.1bde3811d9d3&wpisrc=nl_most&wpmm=1

Spring break plans!!

Let the good times roll!!!

Sampling

(Note for SOCL 3000 Spring 2018 members: I know I'm behind in posting these, and most of you will have the definitions posting already done for your next rough draft, so I'll skip that one I was planning to do, and get straight to sampling.)

The next task my students are going to have some experience working with is sampling, or how do we get people to participate, and how do we know that they isn't something unique about them?

In lots of cases, researchers can use what is called probability sampling, also known as random sampling, where everyone in the population has an equal chance of being selected. While it's easy to do in theory, it is often not that easy on carrying it out. First you need to have a list of all eligible people in the population, so you can tell how many there are and how many to select.  This can be done, however for a lot of what sociologists study, it's not feasible.

Our students are (I think? We'll need to talk about it) studying Otterbein University students. We could get a list of all students, but then how are we defining students?  All enrolled students? Do we include part time and full time?  What about graduate and undergraduate?  Students who only enrolled this semester, or do we include those taking a semester off?  We could still do that, and we will see if students want to (past students will remember this and probably remember what their decision was, and why).   We typically start off with "Yes, let's do that!" but then once we start down that road, students change their mind to use one of the non-probability samples, usually some combination of convenience and quota sampling.

In my own research, there is no way to use probability sampling.  There is no way to get an appropriate sampling frame for either Neo-Pagans or UFO believers. So I will be using convenience and purposive sampling, which means having to go where one could find some Neo-Pagans and UFO believers. Hence, my sabbatical project going to Neo-Pagan festivals, and my eye on meeting times and dates for our local MUFON group (who takes their time updating their meeting dates on the web). In no way can either of these projects claim to be generalizable to all Neo-Pagans or all UFO believers; but that doesn't mean important information about religious socialization and impression management (the two sociological subjects of interest) can't be found.

Ethics, again

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!) 

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.