Candy and Criminology
Never has a question generated such interest.
Look people, have you ever been to one of these victims things? They can be pretty emotionally overwhelming. In the past I've spoken on my own experience, then general topics on victims issues: I found the whole experience pretty unrewarding for presenter and presenterer? (presentee?).
Anyway, so this time I chose a very fundamental topic that I felt could help victims and people who work with victims: my presentation is Survey Preparation and Data Analysis. The point is to provide VSPs some basic, guerrilla concepts about conducting a survey and analyzing the data. The candy survey is meant to provide them with an example of how to conduct a survey, and some of the basic mistakes you can make if you don't know what you are doing (The survey I posted has several holes in it in terms of completely surveying a hypothesis / concept / subject of interest.)
I purposely chose "candy" because it is a non-offensive topic that will allow people to focus on the basics (If I posted something on the death penalty everyone would get bogged down in their own personal baggage that they bring to that issue and miss the basic concepts behind the discussion.)
But, there is method behind the madness. Every research model needs a question, a hypothesis. My question is "Do people have an emotional response to food?", now you can extrapolate that into a research hypothesis like, "People have a strong emotional response to candy" or "Women have a stronger emotional response to chocolate than men". Then you use a survey as a research tool to test the hypothesis: get it?
Can you see how you can extend this out to all kinds of questions about criminology / victimology? It's fun! Experimental models are the foundation of research; and the beauty is you don't have to have a PhD to do them.
So, Yes... candy!
Still time to take survey
posted by John Allore @ 8/16/2006 05:43:00 PM
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