The Editing Process

Hi all! This week has been super busy! I started doing some data collection for a project at Mayo Clinic and it's really interesting to be a (small) part of another research project in a different field. I am loving working with adults too. While I feel naive sometimes, they've been very helpful and treat me with respect, an experience that has made me give myself more respect.

Now, onto my completely different research project.

The overall trends in the feedback I received included confusing sections and abrupt transitions. I also really valued Max's comment on restating my purpose throughout to remind the reader what I am doing and why. I think definitely at some points of my paper it seems to go down a rabbit hole of information and it is necessary to go back to the overall intentions of researching the structure of Disney movies to find motivations of the company.

Me getting comfortable in the Rabbit Hole

Most of the confusing logic or points was during the literature review. I believe this problem stemmed from the fact that Mrs. Haag and I talked everything out so when I wrote it, it made sense to me and Mrs. Haag, but probably lacked some of the previous knowledge and familiarity. Luckily, my fantastic peer editors were able to point out information that did not make sense so that I can hopefully connect everything. 

When grading myself using the rubric, I felt like I fulfilled the "understand and analyze argument" sections and also the sources and evidence section in my literature review. However, I can improve in the "research design" section since I have a clear purpose and all the sources, but I am lacking in some of the connections. Again as a consequence of the confusing parts, I feel like I am also missing points in the "establish argument" section where I need to take my results and thoroughly discuss the limitations. Luckily, I am actually doing well with the word count, so I can go back and make the connections more explicit. 

Another section I could possibly lose points on is distinguishing my voice from sources. I need to fix my credibility assessments to focus more on the writer's conclusions, as Max pointed out on my paper. This way I will be able to show their results, and the MY conclusions to how they fit in my argument. 

Finally, looking ahead to the presentation really scares me. I have a lot of information especially in my literature review that I am not sure how I am going to cut it down. I think once I am able to figure out the lit review part, the rest of the presentation should be okay. One trap I see myself falling into is only reporting the larger results, which I think could be a negative since it would not show the nuances to my findings. 

... I just finished the paper?

I know I am not completely finished, but it is honestly so satisfying to say I wrote the last section of the paper.

Overall, I think the strongest part of my paper is probably the lit review section. It took about three tries but... I finally got somewhere I was really proud of that actually flowed logically and justified all of my parts and focused on the deeper root of what I wanted to discuss, the cycle of parent and child in capitalism. Before implementing my methods, I realized that my lit review really was not aligned with the deeper implications of what I was trying to figure out. Shifting the focus ultimately lead me to adding the thematic analysis portion. This part was very transformative and therefore the pieces seemed to fall into place a lot easier, which I think is represented well in my literature review. I think there is a lot of theoretical information, but I was able to explain it in a way that makes sense to readers.

I think the weakest section of my paper are the transitions especially between sections like methods, results, and discussions. Luckily the subtopic of "methods" helps, but I still don't want it to be as shocking throwing information in there.

I also feel a little unsure about my discussion. More specifically, I feel like there is good information in there about the different parts, but again it is connecting all of the ideas. Also I almost feel like I am undermining my research because it feels like there are infinite ways to analyze Disney films. While my results were kind of anti-climactic, there is some interesting findings and I want the significance to be accurately shown.

Another huge thing, is that I am wayyyy over the word count. I still have to cut some parts like in my methods section I adjusted some of the way my numbers were analyzed, however, this will not entirely fix the problem. So if there are any sections that are wordy or seem aimless please comments so that I can cut down on some words.

I am pretty excited for peer review, not going to lie. I look forward to improving my own paper, reading my peers' papers, helping them improve, and learning from their papers. I know there is still more effort that I can put into my paper and I look froward to polishing the finished project!

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Let's Have a Discussion on Discussions

I can't believe we are almost done with our papers! It has been such a long process, but yet feels like it flew by. 

Last week was the results section, and now we have the discussion section to write. Since the sources I used last time have been foundational sources in the formation of my methods and results, I plan to analyze their discussion sections as well. 

I really liked that "Images of Couples and Families in Disney Feature-Length Animated Films," the thematic analysis of families, immediately related the results to real world applications. In this study they took each theme they found prevalent and talked about what that theme meant in terms of child therapy practices. This gives me the idea to separate my ideas based on theme, in my case I will probably do movies that fit the structure and cycle and movies that break it. Then I will examine why it is the case that these movies seem to follow or do not follow the cycle. Since the majority of movies broke the cycle I will focus on that, and talk about the changes and reasons behind rebellious characters and such. 

Similarly, "Post-Princess Models of Gender: The New Man in Disney/ Pixar" jumped right into the real world implications of their character analysis, focusing on how these lessons affect their son's understanding. They then brought in other stats and sources to talk about the broader influence Disney has on viewers. This was mostly what I did in my literature review. But, I think it is important to see that they brought in new information here to prove their point that the messages in Disney movies are being transmitted to a wide audience, and therefore need criticism. The new information was used as a way to transition into the broader implications of very intense character analyses. I plan on bringing in sources to prove WHY it is more compelling for Disney movies to not follow Marxist definitions and what about families have changed in time. This will transition from my specific movies to the real world implications and significance of my research in the field. 

"Gender Role Portrayal and the Disney Princesses" followed very similarly as the other two. One difference though, was that each section had a sentence that clearly answered the question/ addressed the hypothesis, a small detail, but helpful reminder. Since this is going to be read by an AP Reader it is very helpful to use precise language so that they know exactly where my "answer" is. I also liked how to answer their question, they first presented a broad statement, that gender was both stereotypical and non-steretypical, and then went into the nuances of this statement. To address the limitations of their study, they present some issues with coding complex behaviors and a select sample of movies, which is basically what I did so these are considerations I will take when writing my limitations. 

I'm still a little vague on what information specifically I am putting in here, but I am starting to research that tomorrow! This is one of my favorite parts relating information back to meaning so I am looking forward to it. See you next week!

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Reporting Results

Now that all of the raw numbers are in, it is time to start putting them into conclusions that actually make sense to the reader. For my project specifically, this proves to be a little difficult since I have both a content analysis with numbers to report that connect to overall conclusions, along with a thematic analysis that need to connect with the previous conclusions. In order to find the best way to organize my results section, this blog post will talk about three studies and their organization, and how that is useful to my own paper. 

The first source I look at, "Images of Couples and Families in Disney Feature-Length Animated Films," made use of a content analysis. Their results section had a lot of information in it, however, it was broken down by the different thematic elements of the family analyzed. The first section was about family, the second about parents, and so on. Each section was further divided based on information like who comprised the family or which parents were present. Then in these more specific sections, statistics were given to report information about the different structures. This is useful when thinking about my paper because I have SO MANY moving parts. On the surface level, this reminded me subtopics are very useful. More importantly, it helped me start thinking about breaking my information up into digestible pieces that relate to a theme. As in, it probably is not useful to hear that Belle had 16 instances of authority traits, but instead I can group characters together to say something like a percent of mother were submissive which is greater than the percent authoritative, and do this for each category. 

Again, Subtopics seemed extremely useful in "Post-Princess Models of Gender: The New Man in Disney/ Pixar." As this one is a thematic analysis, there was a lot of deep interaction with fewer numbers of movies, but the bottom line was that there was a subtopic for the type of theme being discussed, and some evidence displayed about the themes found in each movie analyzed. Similarities were drawn between the themes of the movies, however, the themes did not fully interact until the conclusion of the paper. So while I need to draw some more connections between the content and thematic analysis, I still think it is useful to see that this paper was successful in drawing meaningful conclusions when the themes were very separate from each other. 

Unlike the other two sources, "Gender Role Portrayal and the Disney Princesses" made use of a table to exemplify the data collected of each prince and princess. Next there were tables that presented the statistics used to analyze the data, in this case it was the percent of behaviors of princes versus princesses. The written results section then focused more on the big picture statistics (the overall percentage of behaviors) and how statistically significant this was. Then it pulled out the most common and least common, the determined most interesting things to look at for the characters. This organization can be related to mine in that I can use tables to organize my data, and also my results. I have a lot of numbers, so I think this is the best way to organize all of the information without having to state each specific character and movie. Instead then in the written portion I can focus on the movies as a whole set. 

To bring these three examples together, I see myself breaking my results two sections: the family structure versus the thematic analysis of parental control over a child's future. The family structure will be reported using tables of information. Then, I will pull out overall statistics and use subtopics to talk about power dynamics and gender personalities. Next, the thematic analysis will be broken down into smaller subtopics: rejecting or accepting parental ideals, and the success of the child in following chosen path. Finally, these two parts will come together in an overall conclusion for each movie in the form of two tables with two columns. The first table is for movies that fit Marxist family structures, the second for ones that do not. The first column in each table is the name of movie, and the second column is the overall theme for the parental control on the child's future aspect. This highlights specifically that the only movie to fit family structure also displayed an acceptance of parental ideals for the child. The Lion King was one of only movies to show this, while the rest of the movies showed some type of change between the parental or child control over their lives. 

I am sorry this was so long but I think it was helpful looking at these sources to get a better picture for my own research. I look forward to the progression of my paper and conclusions! 

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Inside Out: the numbers of the results section

I am currently finishing up adding my data into my results spreadsheet!

Collecting data, I will admit, took it out of me. If I have to watch another Disney movie in the next three months, I may cry.

However, I got some pretty cool results. Originally, I planned on creating a point scale to evaluate the frequencies of traits a character exhibited; however, the frequency was often too small to make an accurate scale. Now, I simply have the frequency of "submissive," "authority," "gender masculine," and "gender feminine" traits in a spreadsheet. By comparing authority and submission and masculine and feminine, I will come to some conclusions on the character's traits and whether this follows the Marxist role they should fit. 

In terms of the notes I took on children's understanding of their future, I came up with four themes: 

Child rejects parents’ view for future, child gives in eventually

Child rejects parents’ view and is successful with own path

Child accepts parents’ view and is successful

Child accepts parents’ view, but realizes that is not the best way and changes

 

After I place each movie under a theme, I am making a list of movies that fit family definitions then naming the theme on future, and a list of movies that do not fit the family definitions, also with the theme on future named next to it. I will then look for a trend between the two parts, as in I am looking if the families that do not follow the structure also do not create a cycle of parent and child.  

This past week I finished collecting all of the raw numbers and themes, filled in the conclusion of the characters’ traits, and have begun categorizing movies based on family theme. I still have to finish the family themes, and find trends with the structure and family theme. The majority of it is going very well. The conclusions are pretty straightforward right now, but I am worried about finding trends. Right now for that section I have a simple table set up, but I am trying to think of a better way to convey the correlation between structure and cyclical family theme. 

All in all, I am relieved that the collection aspect is done, and I am looking forward to the analysis portion so that I can begin to really delve into what all these numbers are showing me.

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WOW the third trimester is great!! I get to watch movies all day! 

Honestly though, starting to watch movies has made me even more excited about this project. I think it is because I was starting to get sick of talking theory and now I can actually see how all of the pieces are working together. 

One cool thing. I watched the Lion King, and we all know Simba is to be the king when his father passes away and he was expected to fill this role since the day he was born. Then he runs away and the main story continues. But, the end he becomes king again, therefore filling the role his parents (and his whole society) expected him to fill. The end scene is even his own son being raised on the rock. So, this movie was perfect for the thematic analysis on children fulfilling the world the parents create for them and continuing the cycle. 

After I analyzed the movie, but I realized "duh the circle of life." 

But I'm still very pumped and hope this can come into conversation of themes throughout the movies. 

I am feel very good about my research. Another big decision I made this week was cutting movies out of my sample. Movies like Toy Story and Monsters, Inc. had too little of family interactions for me to analyze their gender or the future perceptions. This makes my job a little easier with less movies to watch, but also limits the scope of my research. However, I still feel like my results will be meaningful and relatable to Disney as a whole. I also think this could be a point of future research to expand the character types or structures analyzed. 

I fell a little behind on the movies to watch based on my day to day schedule. However, I have a whole day tomorrow to watch movies and that’s the only plans I have. So I will be right on schedule again. I am only two movies behind so I’m looking forward to watching them tomorrow. The coding is going a lot easier now that I am getting into it. I look forward to starting to analyze my data to find trends. It’s finally all coming together! 

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We're Done! (with school at least)

This week was very exciting in that we had our last day of school! Then, the next day I flew to Hawaii. I am so relieved to be done with classes, but I know that my work is far from over. Looking at the AP Research schedule was pretty overwhelming since there is a lot that needs to be done and the days are flying by.

Since I left for Hawaii, I have not been able to complete more of my data collection. However, I am in good shape to get everything done by the due date still since each movie is only about an hour and a half.

I also realized that I will have to add another movie to my list: Moana! I am actually really looking forward to this because I haven't seen it yet and I heard good things.

In order to turn in my final draft of my literature review and methods, I had to do some big edits. Basically, I was skirting around the main idea that parents create childhood ideals for their children to live in outside of the hardships of labor. Because of this, the children only perceive the world through the roles they think they must fill in the future, becoming the model parent their own parents created. The parent acts as a producer of his own children's ideal childhood, creating a capitalist cycle. Now that these connections are made between parent, child, consumer, and producer, I have a clear conclusion that I can link my methods to.

Now that we are on our own, I think the biggest pitfall I imagine I would fall into, is pushing off my data collection. However, I will put together a revised schedule when I get home so that I can stay on top of my movie watching. Overall though, I am really looking forward to continue watching the movies. With all of the deadlines in place, I know I can manage my time to get everything together. I think being done with classes will have a positive effect on my project because now I have larger chunks of time I can dedicate to watching movies.

I'm writing this research blog in a swim suit looking at the ocean, but I'm anxious to get back and working!

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