I think one thing that I struggled with in my methods was effectively communicating what numbers I am getting and using from the code. I think my explanations of those feel forced, so I need a way to integrate them better and in a more formal, but clear manner. For example, I do not think my explanation of Cohen's kappa is that strong. Would it be helpful to provide an appendix with the equation and defined variables? To me, the averages seem pretty straight forward since everyone knows how to take an average. But what I am doing with these numbers might not be as clear as it should be.
Another weakness, I realized, in my paper was opening with a discussion of my research question in order to get to my methods. I open up by justifying the movies I chose, whereas I think I could add more about justifying a content analysis first, then moving on to the movies. I hope this will be a simple fix, by taking the information/ definitions I already have on content versus thematic analyses and moving this up to the beginning. From there, I can expand on the relation to my own research question.
Although I initially dreaded the process of writing my methods (and it was very intimidating) it has turned out to be a really interesting part for me. It is exciting to start finalizing research plans and envision what the next actions are.
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Grace, I'm hoping that today you gained some clarity on what was missing for your methods section. Primarily, I think you need some sort of a framework to show the governing principles for your coding sheet and methods overall. I think the lack of a framework stemmed from an all-around lack of clarity in terms of the FUNCTION of each of the elements on the coding sheet. I'm hoping that our discussion today lent some insight in terms of how to provide the purpose, function, and framework for each of those sections. I'd also love to sit down with you some more to talk about the rest of the methods section. Maybe we can schedule a time before Seminar one morning. Let me know!
ReplyDeleteGrace,
ReplyDeleteI think there were a lot of good points brought up today during our in-class critique of your methods. I agree with your blogpost that some of the explanations feel forced, but that largely stems from the lack of a clear connection between the different working variables that you have in your paper. Like Mrs. Haag said, if you can clearly state the purpose of/interaction between each of the three different variables that we talked about in class, then your paper will definitely be a lot better and clearer. This will also help up clear much of the concern you have about effectively communicating the meaning of your variables and the calculation of your results. Overall, I think your method section was strong, it just needs to be reorganized and the language needs to be polished a little more. I'm really enjoying following your research and can't wait to see what you come up with! Good luck!