Observation Method
The purpose of this study will be to determine whether class participation is affected by factors like race or gender. I intend to use the observation method in conducting the study and recording certain behaviors. The observation method that I will use has some advantages and disadvantages. Some of the advantages include; it will provide me with good insights on the behavior and interaction of students in class participation. The method will also provide me with rich access to detailed information because I will be able to observe real events on class participation by studying the students’ behaviors and therefore, I will be able to collect quality data and have correct interpretation of the data. The method will also enable me to make an in depth analysis of certain situations. For example, by analyzing the data which would make me find out that most females feel inferior when they are in the same class setting as the males, which made them less active in class participation (Kawulich, 2005).
Among the disadvantages of this method of data collection are that; it will require that I understand the behaviors of both genders so that the data that I will collect may not be biased. Another disadvantage is that I may lack the complete trust of the participants, which would make the participants behave in a different way from the way they behave normally so as to give me a different impression and this would lead to wrong data collection. Direct observation involves a lot of time I will have to wait for the occurrence of events so as to study the particular events.
The participants that I will cover in my research will include 75 art students in their eighth grade among them; 12% Asian, 41% Caucasian, 43% African American and 4% Hispanic. In addition, 60% of the students are males and 40% are females. I will conduct the study for a period of five weeks with class discussions of between 20-30 minutes and I will record each session of the group discussions. I will use a chart to record the frequency of participation between males and females and also another chart to record the frequency of participation among the students from different races (Howard, Zoeller, & Pratt, 2006). Data that I will record in the charts will indicate the students’ participation as either; Frequently(F), Occasionally(O), or Never(N). After collecting data, I will tally the information and represent it on graphs so as to understand it better and come up with the findings. Based on my hypothesis on the findings, it is expected that approximately 85% of the males are usually very active in class participation as compared to their female counterparts whereby only around 25% of the females are active in class participation. In the hypothesis findings, it is also expected that the participation of students is equal on the basis of race. This will be an indication that class participation is affected by gender but race is not in any way affecting the class participation. Based on the finding that I will get, it will prove my assumption that the main reason as to why the females are not as active in class participation as the males is that, most of them feel inferior when they are in the same environment setting with the males (Sheffield, 2016).
I assume the absence of some few students may be one problem that I may encounter during data collection. But on the bright side, I believe that there will be few instances whereby a student will be absent. Therefore, I expect the results of the findings to be less affected as the accuracy level of data collection will be about 96%.
References:
Howard, J., Zoeller, A., & Pratt, Y. (2006). Students’ Race and Participation in Sociology Classroom Discussion: A Preliminary Investigation. Journal Of Scholarship Of Teaching And Learning, 6(1), 14-38.
Kawulich, B. (2005). Participant Observation as a Data Collection Method. Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 6(2). Retrieved from http://www.qualitative-research.net/index.php/fqs/article/view/466/996
Sheffield, U. (2016). Observations - Data collection - General advice - LeTS Evaluation Resources - Resources - Strategy and Development - LeTS - The University of Sheffield. Sheffield.ac.uk. Retrieved 2 May 2016, from https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/lets/strategy/resources/evaluate/general/methods-collection/observation
