What an interesting week it has been. I feel like it has been one of the very best weeks for the development of my project; with all this meeting with professors and filling out course contracts in addition to all the work on the proposal and the IRB application. I feel like my plans are a little bit firmer now, and I'm throwing out the idea of measuring elite opinions. I think I'll be able to do that better by interviewing people anyway. If I can spend more of my time visiting religious meetings, conferences, and churches, and trying to talk to religious leaders, I'll probably be able to find very relevant information from individuals who deal with the religiousness or non religiousness of the people every day. On the other hand, I may be able to find well known individuals such as university professors or leaders from secular societies who would gladly explain their views in an interview. The kind of answers they would give would be more detailed anyway, and then I can decide what questions to ask (which could be good and bad...but mostly good). As for the survey, I'm determined to find out how good a survey conducted by me could get, and if I'm not satisfied, I'll content myself with small scale stuff - a survey of whites in a certain neighborhood, surveys handed out in museums or parks, or a case study of pub owners in highly religious and highly secular parts of London. I don't know, really, but those are a few ideas.
I feel like my proposal has improved a lot though, and although it still needs a bit more work I find it easier to articulate what I want to do now that I've spent time explaining the project to several different people, each with different areas of expertise and levels of experience. The more I do research on religion the more multi-faceted the issue becomes. I thought I had a handle on it when I read my very first source, the 28th British Social Attitudes Survey from 2011, but now I realize how much more there is to understand. History, popular culture, modern entertainment and distractions, the influence of science and liberal attitudes, influential writers and published books, theories, foreign wars, and economic performance--all of these seem to have an influence on religion in some way. In the end, though, it's good to know and appreciate, even if it will all only give me a better context within which to conduct my interviews and case studies.
Showing posts with label Research Design. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Research Design. Show all posts
Monday, March 12, 2012
Monday, February 27, 2012
Journal Entry #20 - 2/27/12
So I took the Myers Briggs test today. You know? It was really fun to take. But I don't think it really taught me anything. Mostly because the answers to the questions depend far to much on the specific situations that they apply to. I found myself split right down the middle several times. Take a look at my results:
Your Type is
ENFJ -- Extraverted Intuitive Feeling Judging
You are:
moderately expressed extravert
moderately expressed intuitive personality
moderately expressed feeling personality
moderately expressed judging personality
Wow. So I am really moderate, hehe :) To be honest though, I think the test is better at measuring those who are at the extremes. However, would I be wrong to say that many people take each situation in turn and measure their reactions according to what they believe would be most effective? Being extraverted has it's benefits, as does being thoughtful and alone. Being the center of attention or working with a large group of people can be just as important as taking a side-line role or working in a small group. To me, they're just apples and oranges. Some days I like apples better than oranges. Sometimes I like bananas better than either (because they're easier to eat :). Some situations call for a hammer while others call for tweezers. As a result, it's hard to generalize how I react to each situation because the reality is I react in the way that I believe is most likely to bring about the desired result, just like a mechanic uses the tools he believes will help him fix the car.
And speaking of using the correct tools, I'm back to thinking about my research project again. There are a lot of nuances of religion in the United Kingdom that could be studied. Today I found a fascinating article on the differences in attitudes toward suicide between students in religious education and students in secular education in Turkey. As it turns out, religious students are less likely to commit suicide, but they are also more accepting of individuals who do commit suicide. That seems almost backward, but nevertheless demonstrates that those in secular education are more likely to think negatively about the decision of other people to commit suicide than their religious counterparts. It is interesting to me how some secular groups advocate the need for equality between those who express secular views and those who express religious views in a way that could be interpreted as a lack of tolerance for religion. Could the group that seems to be constantly calling for tolerance actually be more intolerant?
For example, this is is from the website of the National Secular Society (in Britain):
Secularism seeks to defend the absolute freedom of religious and other belief, and protect the right to manifest religious belief insofar as it does not impinge disproportionately on the rights and freedoms of others. Secularism ensures that the right of individuals to freedom of religion is always balanced by the right to be free from religion.
These groups don't just want atheism to be accepted, they want to remove religion and religious symbols completely from the public sphere. While those with secular views are not condemned for advocating "freedom from religion", how quickly would they condemn organizations seeking "freedom from atheism"? And why is it that while research concludes again and again that religiosity is correlated with positive social indicators (including tolerance toward those who make choices completely against the values of the religion, as in the case of the religious students in Turkey toward close friends who commit suicide), speaking openly in support of religion in the public sphere receives so much criticism?
Interesting. But, moving on to the different tools I could use while I'm doing research in London, while I was talking to Dr. Christensen on Friday, I became rather convinced that a comparison study of elite attitudes about religion to the attitudes of the masses would make a very interesting addition to the debate going on the in country between those supporting the role of religion (David Cameron and Sayeeda Warsi in particular) and those who oppose it. If the opinions expressed by elites are indeed more secular than those of the general public, such would provide considerable justification for the policies of the current British government. On the other hand, if the general public agrees with elites, more secular policies are bound to gain support in the country.
This is a topic that is narrow, relevant, and possible to answer while I'm in London. It's an analytical question too, and I think that's best. It'll be tough work to come up with a good research design to test it, but I think it will work. My only worry is that, unlike the mechanic, this tool may not actually fix anything.
(error note: I said on an earlier post that Sayeeda Warsi was the first Muslim elected to Parliament. That's wrong on two counts. First of all, she was not elected because she is a peeress in the House of Lords. Second, she is the third Muslim elected to Parliament and the first female Muslim in Parliament. Sorry about the error there.)
Your Type is
ENFJ -- Extraverted Intuitive Feeling Judging
You are:
moderately expressed extravert
moderately expressed intuitive personality
moderately expressed feeling personality
moderately expressed judging personality
Wow. So I am really moderate, hehe :) To be honest though, I think the test is better at measuring those who are at the extremes. However, would I be wrong to say that many people take each situation in turn and measure their reactions according to what they believe would be most effective? Being extraverted has it's benefits, as does being thoughtful and alone. Being the center of attention or working with a large group of people can be just as important as taking a side-line role or working in a small group. To me, they're just apples and oranges. Some days I like apples better than oranges. Sometimes I like bananas better than either (because they're easier to eat :). Some situations call for a hammer while others call for tweezers. As a result, it's hard to generalize how I react to each situation because the reality is I react in the way that I believe is most likely to bring about the desired result, just like a mechanic uses the tools he believes will help him fix the car.
And speaking of using the correct tools, I'm back to thinking about my research project again. There are a lot of nuances of religion in the United Kingdom that could be studied. Today I found a fascinating article on the differences in attitudes toward suicide between students in religious education and students in secular education in Turkey. As it turns out, religious students are less likely to commit suicide, but they are also more accepting of individuals who do commit suicide. That seems almost backward, but nevertheless demonstrates that those in secular education are more likely to think negatively about the decision of other people to commit suicide than their religious counterparts. It is interesting to me how some secular groups advocate the need for equality between those who express secular views and those who express religious views in a way that could be interpreted as a lack of tolerance for religion. Could the group that seems to be constantly calling for tolerance actually be more intolerant?
For example, this is is from the website of the National Secular Society (in Britain):
Secularism seeks to defend the absolute freedom of religious and other belief, and protect the right to manifest religious belief insofar as it does not impinge disproportionately on the rights and freedoms of others. Secularism ensures that the right of individuals to freedom of religion is always balanced by the right to be free from religion.
These groups don't just want atheism to be accepted, they want to remove religion and religious symbols completely from the public sphere. While those with secular views are not condemned for advocating "freedom from religion", how quickly would they condemn organizations seeking "freedom from atheism"? And why is it that while research concludes again and again that religiosity is correlated with positive social indicators (including tolerance toward those who make choices completely against the values of the religion, as in the case of the religious students in Turkey toward close friends who commit suicide), speaking openly in support of religion in the public sphere receives so much criticism?
Interesting. But, moving on to the different tools I could use while I'm doing research in London, while I was talking to Dr. Christensen on Friday, I became rather convinced that a comparison study of elite attitudes about religion to the attitudes of the masses would make a very interesting addition to the debate going on the in country between those supporting the role of religion (David Cameron and Sayeeda Warsi in particular) and those who oppose it. If the opinions expressed by elites are indeed more secular than those of the general public, such would provide considerable justification for the policies of the current British government. On the other hand, if the general public agrees with elites, more secular policies are bound to gain support in the country.
This is a topic that is narrow, relevant, and possible to answer while I'm in London. It's an analytical question too, and I think that's best. It'll be tough work to come up with a good research design to test it, but I think it will work. My only worry is that, unlike the mechanic, this tool may not actually fix anything.
(error note: I said on an earlier post that Sayeeda Warsi was the first Muslim elected to Parliament. That's wrong on two counts. First of all, she was not elected because she is a peeress in the House of Lords. Second, she is the third Muslim elected to Parliament and the first female Muslim in Parliament. Sorry about the error there.)
Friday, February 24, 2012
Journal Entry #19 - 2/24/12
So this afternoon I met with Dr. Ray Christensen, my professor for Political Science 200: Political Inquiry, and told him about my project. After explaining to him a little bit of the history about the field study project and how it was the reason I decided to take Political Science 200 this semester, I told him about my research project and how I would be studying religion this summer while I'm there.
During our approximately twenty-five minute discussion, we accomplished a great deal. First of all, Dr. Christensen confirmed my observation that a descriptive study of opinions about religion would attract significantly less attention than an analytical one, and I should probably change my research question to reflect that. That, alone, is a pretty big change. He suggested that I study the difference in opinions of the elites about religion and compare those views to the opinions of the general population in England. I explained to him my concept idea for a survey that would ask Londoners to choose how many trends in the country listed on the survey they considered to have a negative effect on the nation. I would have a control group where "declining religiosity" would not be included, and a test group where it would be included. At that point, Dr. Christensen explained that surveys are extremely hard to use because it is so difficult to make them random. Call centers try to do the job by randomly calling numbers and talking to the people who answer, and although that isn't a perfect system either, it's as good as they can get. Since I can't do that, we decided that I could analyze the census data for the whole country and for London, and choose maybe three or four or five districts in London that have an ethnic, social class, and religious makeup that is fairly representative of the whole country. I could go to those districts and ask people to take the survey myself, perhaps knocking on every fifth or tenth door, or asking one man and one woman per bus, or something like that. It would be arduous work, but the payoff would be very interesting. He suggested having a research question with a dependent and independent variable - for example, the secular opinions voiced by elites in the United Kingdom have caused decreasing levels of religious affiliation in the United Kingdom in the last decade. He said I could possibly measure the opinions of elites by searching the Times for the last 5 or 10 years for all references to religious affiliation or secularism and cite how many times secular views were expressed by these elites. I suggested that I could look up comments given about religion by elites in the last year and compare how many positive statements were given as opposed to negative ones. Or, I could find a published list of "the most influential people" in the United Kingdom, or something of the sort, and then study each person on a case by case basis to see what kinds of views they have expressed about religion. Then I could compare that data to the data collected in my survey to see how the views of the elites line up with the views of the masses.
Another idea that I've had just thinking about it now would be to ask people to rate how favorably they feel about a statement made by a well-known person in society without telling them who said it, and include statements that were positive about religion and others that were negative about religion. I could compare how favorably people responded to these statements. I'll have to ask Dr. Christensen to get a better idea of how to do that though.
Anyway, overall, it was an incredibly productive conversation, and I recorded most of it on my iPhone so I can go back and listen again to remember some of the things we discussed. Dr. Christensen said that although he wouldn't be able to collaborate with me for a class over the summer, he would gladly be my faculty mentor. Also, I decided while we were talking that I would do my second Research Design assignment in the class on the topic chosen for the Field Study project, and Dr. Christensen agreed that it would definitely help. I'm more excited than ever about doing this project, and even though it's still pretty frightening, I think it could really make an impact on the debate in the country if it is very well-written and has a good research design. This will be some trip to London ;)
During our approximately twenty-five minute discussion, we accomplished a great deal. First of all, Dr. Christensen confirmed my observation that a descriptive study of opinions about religion would attract significantly less attention than an analytical one, and I should probably change my research question to reflect that. That, alone, is a pretty big change. He suggested that I study the difference in opinions of the elites about religion and compare those views to the opinions of the general population in England. I explained to him my concept idea for a survey that would ask Londoners to choose how many trends in the country listed on the survey they considered to have a negative effect on the nation. I would have a control group where "declining religiosity" would not be included, and a test group where it would be included. At that point, Dr. Christensen explained that surveys are extremely hard to use because it is so difficult to make them random. Call centers try to do the job by randomly calling numbers and talking to the people who answer, and although that isn't a perfect system either, it's as good as they can get. Since I can't do that, we decided that I could analyze the census data for the whole country and for London, and choose maybe three or four or five districts in London that have an ethnic, social class, and religious makeup that is fairly representative of the whole country. I could go to those districts and ask people to take the survey myself, perhaps knocking on every fifth or tenth door, or asking one man and one woman per bus, or something like that. It would be arduous work, but the payoff would be very interesting. He suggested having a research question with a dependent and independent variable - for example, the secular opinions voiced by elites in the United Kingdom have caused decreasing levels of religious affiliation in the United Kingdom in the last decade. He said I could possibly measure the opinions of elites by searching the Times for the last 5 or 10 years for all references to religious affiliation or secularism and cite how many times secular views were expressed by these elites. I suggested that I could look up comments given about religion by elites in the last year and compare how many positive statements were given as opposed to negative ones. Or, I could find a published list of "the most influential people" in the United Kingdom, or something of the sort, and then study each person on a case by case basis to see what kinds of views they have expressed about religion. Then I could compare that data to the data collected in my survey to see how the views of the elites line up with the views of the masses.
Another idea that I've had just thinking about it now would be to ask people to rate how favorably they feel about a statement made by a well-known person in society without telling them who said it, and include statements that were positive about religion and others that were negative about religion. I could compare how favorably people responded to these statements. I'll have to ask Dr. Christensen to get a better idea of how to do that though.
Anyway, overall, it was an incredibly productive conversation, and I recorded most of it on my iPhone so I can go back and listen again to remember some of the things we discussed. Dr. Christensen said that although he wouldn't be able to collaborate with me for a class over the summer, he would gladly be my faculty mentor. Also, I decided while we were talking that I would do my second Research Design assignment in the class on the topic chosen for the Field Study project, and Dr. Christensen agreed that it would definitely help. I'm more excited than ever about doing this project, and even though it's still pretty frightening, I think it could really make an impact on the debate in the country if it is very well-written and has a good research design. This will be some trip to London ;)
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