5th Annual ASA Blog Party

Be there or be square!

Johnny Foley’s Irish House
243 O’Farrell Street, San Francisco, CA
Sunday, August 9
6pm

Tales from the Dissertationside

They say everyone lives their last year of grad school on perpetual edge, precariously balanced between triumph and blubbering insanity.

Today I got my first taste of the darker side of this liminal state.

It all started when I began doing the recodes for Wave 2 of my dissertation data. I had finally finished merging the two waves--this is harder than it sounds, I might add. Sure, there is a fancy tool in the software that allows you to merge datasets. All you have to do is give it a variable that will be the same in both datasets, then the computer does the rest.

Riiiiight.

The variables I had in common were respondent's first name, last name, and email. Email seemed the best option. So, I merged. But only about 3/4 of the cases merged this way. The rest the computer couldn't match. Some students mistyped their email address (name@school.ed - WHERE'S THE U?!?). Some inexplicably decided to capitalize their address. Some gave me a different address each time. I had to go through manually and match those up.

I still have three respondents for Wave 2 that I can't match to anyone in Wave 1. Which is weird, since the survey request only went out to those who had taken Wave 1. Haven't decided what to do with them.

So, once merged, I went to do the recodes for Wave 2. A lot of it is exactly the same as Wave 1 was, since most of the questions are repeated. So, I brought up my Wave 1 syntax file (SPSS, all I got at home). And I'm going through the file just tweaking the variable names to work for my Wave 2 variable names, and lo - there's a repeated line. An entire set of variables recoded twice! Ack!

So, I had to go back to the raw data for Wave 1 and compare/contrast, see if my variables were actually coded, then coded back again. And they were. So, fixed that. Luckily, I haven't used Wave 1 for much of anything yet.

Finished recoding Wave 2. Ran descriptives. Noticed something funky with the international students. My old descriptives report said I had 73 international students. My newly minted run says I have 83. I am still not sure what happened there. At this point, I am chalking it up to an initial mistype. I mean, the second digit is still the same, right? Still, it's disconcerting.

Other than that, my descriptives look great. I am feeling good. I want to hold my descriptives in my hand, walk around with them, look lovingly at them, and maybe sleep with them under my pillow for good measure. So, I go to print them out.

The. Printer. Is. Out. Of. Ink.

I go to get some ink.

But it's Sunday, and it is after 8pm.

After trying two of my preferred places, I end up at a Big Box Store. Those things are always open. I find ink. I wander around the aisles a bit, in something of a daze.

Pretty towels. Shiny camera. Oooooo.

I pay for my ink. The cashier gives me my receipt, AND a coupon for Starbucks. There's a Starbucks in the store. I think, "OOOooo a fancy caffeinated beverage is EXACTLY what I need to put the mess that was this day behind me!"

The store was closed.

I almost cried then.

A Sociological Film Rating System

Have you ever pondered our society's choices in what to censor and what to warn us about in film ratings? Like, why are we generally more concerned with sex in films rather than violence? And there are other problems that don't get censored or rated at all. What about those?

The Motion Picture Association of America provides us with our standardized rating system, giving films a G, PG, PG-13, R, or NC-17, depending on how they measure up to certain criteria. These include, but are not limited to, language (i.e. use of profanity), nudity, sex, violence, drug abuse, sensuality, "adult activities and other elements," and--in the case of NC-17 films--"abborrational behavior."

The overarching themes are language, sexuality, and violence. This is the Triad of Evils; the three things we most need to shelter our kids from. Or are they?

What if the triad were sexism, racism, and heteronormativity? What would the ratings system look like then? And how would the movies get recategorized to fit these new criteria? Based on research by Emily Kazyak and Karin Martin at the University of Michigan, we might hypothesize that Disney would end up with the R rating in this new scheme.

And then I thought further: this would form an excellent basis for an introductory sociology class project. I am SO planning on doing this with my class this fall. It is certainly preferable to grading a bunch of term papers.

Option 1: The project is to put together and try out a new rating system. Their assignment would be to review the Motion Picture Association of America's descriptions for each level. Each student would work individually to come up with a new system based on sociological concepts. They would have to include 5 concepts from the readings in their new rating system. They would devise a way to break down each concept into G, PG, R, and NC-17 levels. What would be R-level racism?

Turn in: (1) A worksheet raters can use to rate a movie, filled out using their all-time favorite movie (so they already know it well and can really focus on the rating criteria when they watch it) (2) A page or so describing their rating system, and (3) one page or so in which they describe what rating they gave their movie and why.

Option 2: I put together a worksheet for them to use and give them a description of the rating system. I pick the criterion, etc. Then, they have to select a movie that's come out in the last five years and rate it.

Turn in: (1) A completed worksheet, (2) a paragraph synopsis of the rating and why, like you would give the press to publish, and (3) a 3-page description of details from the movie supporting their decision. I would then compile everyone's synopses and post them as a group.

Thoughts? Option 1 is more work for them, option 2 is more work for me. But with Option 2, I can build on it year after year since the ratings are standardized. However, they might learn more with option 1, and they'd have more freedom to pick their own criteria....