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CSUDH - Habermas - UWP - Archives

California State University, Dominguez Hills
University of Wisconsin, Parkside
Created: August 2, 2004
Reviewed:
Latest Update: August 4, 2004
jeannecurran@habermas.org
takata@uwp.edu

Sampling a Hard to Reach Population

1. Introduction Why I chose to share this reading.
2. Focus: Main point of this reading.
3. Reading Full identification of source for reading AND excerpt.
4. Concepts: Concepts and Key Words.
5. Discussion Discussion questions.
6. Conceptual Linking to Substantive Courses What this has to do with our class.

* * *

Introduction:

• The report on adolescent girls and the internet involves a number of typical methodological problems. I thought it might help you with methods to take a careful look at this reading.

Focus:

• I would like you to come away from this reding with some sense of basic methodological concerns. Don't memorize them. Get a feeling for them. You can always come back to them later.

Concepts and Key Words:

• self report:

• matching values: shared values used to place the survey on a site one would expect the desired subjects to visit

Reading:

• Emerging Risks of Violence in the Digital Age: Lessons for Educators from an online study of Adolescent Girls in the United States

  "Since the survey was placed on an open web site, exclusionary criteria for participation were specified on the consent page (i.e., girls from 12-18 years of age); however, adherence to the criteria could not be verified due to the anonymous nature of the survey. In order to minimize superfluous replies to the survey and capture the responses of adolescent girls online, an Internet site was selected for hosting the survey which possessed demographics that matched the study's targeted population; the survey was hidden within the site; and the study was not advertised in any forum so that self selection of the site's typical users could be achieved. After removing incomplete surveys, surveys completed by individuals not targeted in the research, and multiple surveys submitted from the same source, the number of responses totaled 10,800."

Discussion Questions:

1. Why would the researchers want to use self report data?

   Consider that when one designs an interview schedule, that schedule reflects the researcher's perception of the situation and his/her expectations. In this case, researchers wanted to mine the field to discover issues that might never occur to them, for the Internet was not there when they were young. We call this approach grounded theory. Although they designed a questionnaire, they left room for open-ended responses to provide answerability for the young women.

   " Participants completed a 19-item questionnaire that included multiple choice and open-ended questions. The questions had been piloted through surveys of middle school students in Baltimore County which were conducted by CyberAngels (Aftab, 2000)."

   Notice that the researchers piloted the questionnaire with middle-school students. They didn't assume that they already knew what questions needed to be included.

2. How does one compensate for the fact that some people may not tell the truth?

   One doesn't. That is a condition of life, not a methodological procedure. To the extent that researchers tried to leave the survey on the Internet, no strings attached, they empowered the adolescents to feel secure in their revelations. Look also at the sample size. With a very large sample, 10,800, one hopes that one subject's underreporting will cancel out another subject's overreporting.

3. What were the dependent variables?

   "online experiences which challenged them to confront choices conflicting with the development of attitudes, values, and social functioning"

4. What were the independent variables?

   "preventative activities (supervision, education, discussion) by significant adults (parents and teachers)"

5. How could you phrase an hypothesis about the predicted relationship between dependent and independent variables?

   Try: The more that parents engage in discussion with the student about the people and activities they encounter online, the less likely the student is to feel challenged by the social need to refuse to answer improper questions.

   • preventative activity: discussion
   • significant adult: parent
   • online experience: social functioning

   Try pytting some of the other variables into words.

Conceptual Linking to Substantive Courses:

• Agencies:
  Sample linking: Recognize that we all encounter situations, especially in formalized institutions that challenge us to behave appropriately. Could you come up with an agency example?

  You enter an unemployment agency. The worker gives you the "willies." Looks like she thinks you're retarded or lazy or something. She keeps talking to another employee, and interrupts were work to answer what sound like personal calls from her children. You are extremely uncomfortable, as well as seriously concerned about getting another job. How do you function socially in this context without offending the worker (who may be able to reatiliate against you in some way) and without piling more rejection on your own ego?

• Criminal Justice:
  Sample linking: Ways in which some groups are underrepresented in the unstated assumptions of our theories. How does this reading serve to illustrate adversarialism, mutuality, retribution, revenge, illocutionary understanding, the definition and operation of the criminal justice system?

• Law:
  Sample linking: Extent to which laws are made on the assumption that we are all essentially assimilated to the dominant culture. How does this reading help us see the need for contextual readings in law? How does it relate to our natural instincts to seek some kind of natural law? What facts and principles does the reading offer for discourse that could clarify for Others validity claims presented by an Obscure Other?

• Moot Court:
  Sample linking: Ways in which to make validty claims of harm understood by those who have never experienced many of the world's different perspectives. How can this reading enlighten our praxis in terms of different kinds of discourse, like instrumental, illocutionary, governance?

• Women in Poverty:
  Sample linking: The culture of poverty and assimilation. How does the reading deal with our underlying assumptions about poverty, especially poverty of the exploited, the NOT- male? What does the reading suggest of the interrelationship between our society and its children, generally cared for by women, often poor?

• Race, Gender, Class:
  Sample linking: The extent to which silence has been imposed by these affiliations so that domination and discrimination have entered our unstated assumptions in interpersonal relations and the structural context arising from them. What does the reading tell us about exploitation and alternative ways to deal with one another? What does it tell us about institutionalized -isms and our denial of complicity? What does it tell us about our common humanity?

• Religion:
  Sample linking: The spiritual component. Humans are spiritual creatures, creatures that recognize moments that go beyond ourselves to God, Allah, Isis, Gaia, the Universe, or a deep sense of responsibility to create our own meanng. How does the reading fit into our ability, our need to create such meaning in life?

• Love !A:
  Sample linking: What's the aesthetic link in this reading? How does it bring us closer to one another as humans? What does it tell us about our need for love, unconditional love, not rewards for doing well or being well, but caring and acceptance for being who we are?