I handed in my research proposal to Mrs. Haag this morning... which means there are a lot of emotions right now. I'm proud of myself because I think I am getting an even stronger grasp on my research and what I will be doing. And I am really looking forward to starting the data collection. However, I am also nervous about more writing and conveying my methods in a way that is clear but not oversimplified.
My plan moving forward consists of reviewing my proposal, writing the methods, editing, starting validity tests, and then finally watching some movies.
There are still considerations I need to make like the best way to organize my results so that I can actually draw meaning from them. As of right now, I have a code sheet that has a column for the frequency of the behavior or attribute. But, I need to know these traits for each character and each family and each movie and then as a whole. In order to make meaningful results on a character level to a general trend, I imagine writing a qualitative analysis of whether each character fits the capitalist definition of his or her role based on whether their character has a majority of the characteristics of that role. Then, I can make a conclusion on the family as a whole, which can contribute to a discussion on whether the movie contains clearly defined families and gender or not. Once I make a conclusion on each movie, I can have a spreadsheet of these conclusions so that I can look at the sample as a whole.
If I see a trend in the possible contradictions between the characters and the capitalist structure, then I can pull specific traits and their frequencies. For this I imagine using a spreadsheet that would add up the frequencies of specific traits of every character in a certain role (ex: authoritative mother or aggressive mother). I am afraid this may be too subjective or cherry picked if I only took out data from certain characteristics. So, the other option is I could have a spreadsheet that would add the frequency of each trait in a certain role and then could look if there are contradictions. This would also strengthen the qualitative conclusions I make on the movies and sample as a whole. Realistically though, I do not know what this would look like in terms of creating a spreadsheet that can add everything up for me (especially if I have separate spreadsheets for each family or movie).
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