Saturday, March 31, 2007

Experimental Study: Public Displays of Affection

As a finale to my Social Psychology project, I have decided to do a quasi-experimental study. I’m not sure if quasi-experimental is the right term; the method of data gathering would be naturalistic observation. Either way, the topic of research is ‘Levels of Public Displays of Affection’. I had been debating what the research topic would be for quite some time now, and I had a couple of variations regarding PDA in mind. But each variation I was thinking of (such as gender difference, interaction, type of relationship, etc) all seem to be either to complex or impossible to research one way or another. I discussed my research ideas with my sister who is an excellent source of creativity and information. Together we decided on what would be researched and how. In fact, we became so giddy with excitement about it all that we decided to work together in making the study. We bounced ideas off of each other and we worked together so well that by the end of our crazed idea-making session, we became partners in research; “Sister duo, genius alone but deadlier than any other Social Scientist when together!”, or that’s how I saw it.

So we have already begun to write a proposal for the study, and we have already designed the format we plan to use and how we plan to perform this experiment. So far the plan is to observe the number of PDA behaviors (as we define and categorize them), in 5 minute continual increments in two different settings and two different age groups. One setting is a mall, the other being a bar, and the 2 age groups are those who are appear to be 29 and younger, and those who appear to be 30 and older. We will begin naturalistic observation this week and as soon as we compile all the data, I will give further information.

I felt it would be a good idea to write a post about it because then I could get feedback on what others think of the research, and possibly pointers or ideas. I am open to suggestions, and would love to hear what others think about the experiment.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

I just wanted to let you know the latest issue of Greater Good magazine is out, and theres many topics that you might be interested in. This issue explores "The 21st Century Family,"
discussing the many ways that American family life has been transformed in
recent years. Families today face issues their grandparents could scarcely
have imagined: the challenges of being a dual-income couple; the questions
faced by gay and lesbian parents and stay-at-home dads; and the obstacles
confronted by all families today to find time for one another and make
ends meet.

This issue of Greater Good gets past overheated rhetoric about the decline
of the family and delves into new research findings. Contributors bring
these research findings to life in honest, revealing portraits of typically
atypical 21st century families, and they make clear how families can still
thrive during this period of transition. As historian Stephanie Coontz
makes clear in the issue's lead essay, it's not the changes themselves but
how families respond to them that will determine how well they fare in the
21st century.
Link to this article:
http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/
greatergood/current_issue/Coontz.html

cc said...

This is very interested. I haven't heard of any research done about PDA. I am very curious about the scientific aspect of this research as it will take an extensive amount of time.

This post was written almost a year ago, any updates?

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