Your topic is very interesting and your presentation was well thought out. Something I’m left wondering is how your model defines gender. Are you using a simple male/female variable or are there other possible values for this variable?
Something else that you may wish to explore is access to or quality of sexual education since this may influence the women’s risky behaviors.
I’m also wondering who conducted the interviews with the 30 women and how you accessed this data. The way the interviews were conducted may have an influence on your findings so I think it is important to note where this information is coming from.
This is thorough work, your ability to draw findings from statistics and interviews is really impressive. Your variables were easy to understand and made sense for your research question. I also think you have a good handle on the causal mechanisms that define neopositivist research. You mentioned in your last slide that you plan on doing a large-N case study with about 200 cases, and I was just wondering if those 200 cases would each be accounts from Tanzanian women. Perhaps with such a big pool, you will not be able to control for cultural differences between the experiences of women in the city of Dar es Salaam and those from rural Tanzania (for example women living in Maasai villages). Furthermore, here are some of the questions, can you further expand on the the subcategories that accompany the two big conceptual buckets you outlined in your Literature Review, and how you might incorporate this in your research project? I think you’re on the right track here, can’t wait to see how your research project progresses next semester.
the changes you proposed to your research project are quite interesting. Since your current dataset is from 30 individual interviews, what dataset are you thinking of using to find your 200 cases? As now your 30 cases of individual women are known to be group-members from specific areas (bars, clubs) what information would you collect on your 200 cases? Would you find, as you mentioned, more quantitative data or would you still identify certain qualitative aspects like group behavior, group affiliation, etc? Also, how would you operationalize your variable differently should you expand the focus of your study? How would your hypotheses, if at change all? Overall I believe you have shown progress if the development of your large-n study; during the semester break you will have to time to mull these decisions over to finalize your methodological choices. Good luck!
Hi Lauren,
Your topic is very interesting and your presentation was well thought out. Something I’m left wondering is how your model defines gender. Are you using a simple male/female variable or are there other possible values for this variable?
Something else that you may wish to explore is access to or quality of sexual education since this may influence the women’s risky behaviors.
I’m also wondering who conducted the interviews with the 30 women and how you accessed this data. The way the interviews were conducted may have an influence on your findings so I think it is important to note where this information is coming from.
Lauren –
This is thorough work, your ability to draw findings from statistics and interviews is really impressive. Your variables were easy to understand and made sense for your research question. I also think you have a good handle on the causal mechanisms that define neopositivist research. You mentioned in your last slide that you plan on doing a large-N case study with about 200 cases, and I was just wondering if those 200 cases would each be accounts from Tanzanian women. Perhaps with such a big pool, you will not be able to control for cultural differences between the experiences of women in the city of Dar es Salaam and those from rural Tanzania (for example women living in Maasai villages). Furthermore, here are some of the questions, can you further expand on the the subcategories that accompany the two big conceptual buckets you outlined in your Literature Review, and how you might incorporate this in your research project? I think you’re on the right track here, can’t wait to see how your research project progresses next semester.
Lauren,
the changes you proposed to your research project are quite interesting. Since your current dataset is from 30 individual interviews, what dataset are you thinking of using to find your 200 cases? As now your 30 cases of individual women are known to be group-members from specific areas (bars, clubs) what information would you collect on your 200 cases? Would you find, as you mentioned, more quantitative data or would you still identify certain qualitative aspects like group behavior, group affiliation, etc? Also, how would you operationalize your variable differently should you expand the focus of your study? How would your hypotheses, if at change all? Overall I believe you have shown progress if the development of your large-n study; during the semester break you will have to time to mull these decisions over to finalize your methodological choices. Good luck!