The Investigation of Women in Sport - Essay Example

? Dissertation Analysis Paper by Paul Tomko Capella February  Table of Contents of Methodology Theoretical Background2 Limitations and Delimitations 4 Data 6 References 8 Description of Methodology Consumption patterns often seem paradoxical- a group’s consumption is the opposite of the expected pattern For example, the primary consumers of men’s apparel are actually women because they buy apparel for their husbands and boyfriends (Holland, 2011). Another such paradoxical consumption pattern is that women avoid women’s sports (Farrell, 2006, 1). “While women are increasingly becoming vested fans of men’s football, baseball, hockey and basketball, the perceived barriers—sociological, psychological and practical—to watching women’s sports still appear formidable for many female fans,” Farrell (2006, 1) argued in her qualitative dissertation “Why Women Don’t Watch Women’s Sport: A Qualitative Analysis.” “By utilizing a qualitative methodology, I explored the foundation of female spectator disinterest in women’s sport. Twelve female season-ticket holders of university men’s basketball, with no recent attendance at a women’s basketball game, were interviewed using a semi-structured format” (Farrell, 2006, p. 1). The logic behind this selection of interview subjects was simple. If Farrell had analyzed women who do not like sports to determine why they do not watch women’s sports, it would have led to too obvious a conclusion: Women just do not like sports, women or men’s. However, it does seem possible that women who like sports like men’s sports, that there may be something about men’s sports in particular that would attract them in particular, such that talking to either fans of women’s sports or women who watch neither would be relevant as a control. Nonetheless, this choice of interview subject is designed to find people who not only like sports but also like them enough to buy a season-ticket pass to college games. Farrell (2006) pointed to research that identifies four different categories of research interest: characteristics of language, discovery of regularities, discerning meaning, and reflection. She also pointed out that qualitative and quantitative techniques are not strict binaries. For example, one quantitative technique, numerical and statistical analysis, is done on a fundamentally qualitative tool, a survey, by having people rank their beliefs from 1 to 7 or on any other scale. Farrell defined qualitative research, in line with Golafshani (2003), as “a naturalistic approach that seeks to understand phenomena in context-specific settings, such as a real world setting where the researcher does not attempt to manipulate the phenomenon of interest” (p. 61). Theoretical Background Farrell (2006) used social constructivism and critical theory for her interpretation, noting that many other approaches (positivism, pragmatism, interpretivism, postmodern techniques) are also equally viable. She defined social constructivism thusly: “Social constructivism asserts that humans construct knowledge using collective social instruments such as language and cultural practices” (p. 62). A social constructivist argument would take it as a given that the category of “women” is not fixed, so there is no answer for “Why don’t women like women’s sports?” that has the form “Because that is what women do” or “Women are genetically programmed only to like male gladiatorial rituals”. If women do not like women’s sports, it must be a social factor: acculturation, values, the failure of women’s sports to appeal to their values or interests, etc. Farrell (2006) justified her use of critical theory thusly: The study of women in sport is, in essence, a study of gender struggles against male hegemonic values embedded in the construction of sport as a male preserve. Critical theory lends itself well to a more deliberate investigation of the power structures of sport in this study (p. 63). Indeed, critical theory’s analysis of sports leads to many fascinating conclusions. Do women who like sports embrace it because of the internalization of masculine values and the operation of masculine hegemony? Is it a theater of male power that has arousing implications sexually? Is it because of family rituals where the family patriarch brought everyone together to watch the game, a feeling of connection to Father and possibly Mother? Might it be regionalism, wherein women watching sports, despite it being a masculine gladiatorial fantasy, are viewed as defending their school or their town? Might it even be a liberatory or transgressive act, where women embrace masculine power in the bastion of that power and thus seek to overturn it? Certainly all these factors are at play at various times, and depending on which ones are, the women’s sport question can be answered in different ways. Farrell (2006) justified the choice of qualitative research by arguing, While quantitative fields primarily seek to predict action, provide causal explanation and generalize results to larger populations... the purpose of qualitative methodology is to richly describe and understand human phenomenon through inductive, naturalistic, and personal prolonged engagement. Both these paradigms [social constructivist and critical] accept the study as a robust interpretation of social worlds (p. 65). She argues, in line with Piantanida and Garman (1999), that human beings are discursive, self-exploring, and reflective, and that qualitative research seeks to find meanings and phenomena due to those constructed realities that humans create. Farrell chose basketball because both collegiate and professional basketball are revenue generating and because Women’s basketball is among a select few women’s team sports that garner media interest, have a development system that stretches from childhood recreational opportunities to professional leagues and are promoted and marketed by athletic departments. A 2003-2004 NCAA attendance study confirmed the popularity of women’s college basketball programs, which at the Division I level enjoyed a net attendance of 6,718,289 spectators of 324 programs (p. 65). She used semistructured interviews of her participants, meaning that she had plans for questions and coding thereof but was willing to ask questions not directly on the survey sheet. She selected her participants from the Ohio State University Athletic Department’s database and contacted 250 women eligible for the study via mail, interviewing all those who responded. Data analysis was done by coding. She submitted her data for member check, negative case analysis, and peer review in order to make sure that it was honestly done. Limitations and Delimitations There are many limitations to Farrell’s (2006) approach, which she was forthright about. The authors of a paper in The Sociological Journal (2011) argued that there are roughly seven limitations of the semi-structured approach: Skill dependency (the interviewer must be very careful to ask questions in a tone that elicits reflective response and not defensiveness or anger or sadness or even effusiveness); unconscious signals; time and resource consumption; not reliably repeatable; too much depth of information and not enough ability to analyze it (a large noise-to-signal ratio); low generalizability; and validity issues because the interviewer has no way of knowing if the interviewee is lying (though even lies can be useful information), whether the interviewed is recalling things inaccurately, and whether the interviewee is rationalizing or changing their responses as different schema in their mind assert themselves. Researchers at the Commonwealth Educational Media Center for Asia (2011) noted, Semi-structured interview provides greater scope for discussion and learning about the problem, opinions and views of the respondents. While there are some specific questions (closed questions) in the interview schedule, each of which may be probed or prompted, there are lot more questions which are completely open-ended. The latter questions mainly serve to explore different facets of the issue. The information thus collected is both qualitative and quantitative. The mix if of qualitative and quantitative is because the structured questions can be easily coded and analyzed, but great sensitivity and skill is needed. The main problems with Farrell’s (2006) methodology seem to be theoretical. If her assumption that gender and social relations are constructed is accurate, she should be seeking out a few different sources of data. It is possible, as noted above, that ticket holders for male basketball could reasonably be converted into female basketball viewers by a few changes, or it could be that their background and values are so masculinist or otherwise in tune with men’s basketball that they would never switch over. Maybe they prefer high-flying dunks to technical play, or maybe they find there to be more violence, or maybe they simply like a men’s team and are not likely to watch a women’s team that has not gained their loyalty. It is impossible to control for any of these factors without having analyzed the following groups: (a) men (as a control), (b) women who watch and attend both male and female basketball games, (c) women who watch only female basketball games, and (d) women who watch neither. If she had managed to find these control groups, her core group would have been far more illustrative. Opdenakker (2006) divided semistructured interviews into four categories on two axes: synchronous or asynchronous and time or place. Farrell (2006) held face-to-face interviews in one room on campus, meaning she chose synchronous time and place. Opdenakker argued, Social cues, such as voice, intonation, body language etc. of the interviewee can give the interviewer a lot of extra information that can be added to the verbal answer of the interviewee on a question. Of course, the value of social cues also depends on what the interviewer wants to know from the interviewee. If the interviewer is seen as a subject, and as an irreplaceable person, from whom the interviewer wants to know the attitude towards for example the labour union, then social cues are very important. When the interviewer interviews an expert about things or persons that have nothing to do with the expert as a subject, then social cues become less important. Farrell (2006) had the advantage of perceiving social cues, body language, breaks in voice, etc. However, there are numerous disadvantages to these interviews. People coming to school and making a special trip for the purpose of the interview may be more formal and less open than if they were interviewed in their home over Skype. The interviewer could read too much into irrelevant social signals. In addition, the requirement for a face-to-face interview can cause many otherwise interested people to be unable to attend. Had Farrell chosen some more options like instant messaging, e-mail, phone, or voice-over IP interviews, she would have increased her sample size and had a built-in control: Did the people in different interview settings react markedly differently? Limitations of the research are identified several times throughout the study. In the Introduction, Farrell (2006) pointed out, The data collected may be interpreted differently by different researchers. The constructivist tradition is highly interpretive; with the researcher as the primary instrument of analysis, bias is accepted as part of the research process. Researcher subjectivity is minimized, though never eliminated, using peer review, member checks, negative case analysis and a reflective journal (p. 10). She made sure to provide great transparency to check for bias. She also could only choose a small number of individuals from a particular Midwestern university. She chose for maximum internal variance, but only so much salient difference can be found between 16 people of the same gender in the same region. The choice of a naturalistic paradigm also has limiting and delimiting consequences. Naturalistic paradigms allow comparison outside of the narrow sample set, if new situations match the old sufficiently. By providing as much data as possible, other researchers can use the study to make comparisons. Data Farrell’s (2006) data is certainly interesting from her choice of methodology. She was able to offer some conclusions that could certainly guide a more rigorous study. What her study indicated to this researcher is that feasibility issues are most important: Only 16 people participated because it is difficult to find more than 16 participants willing to do a face-to-face interview in one location over one stretch of time. If this researcher employs semistructured interviews, the core data will be structured so it can be easily coded. Numerous interview approaches and methods will be offered, to obtain maximal participation and make sure that no social cues or interpersonal biases are coloring the data. This researcher will interview as many people as possible to get a control—Farrell (2006) had to find more than just her small sample size to be able to make sure that her group was representative, potentially, of all women, or even all women interested in sports. Surveys that are more traditional can also be paired with interview results to bolster the reliability of the figures. Qualitative research is a way of identifying unknown problems, while quantitative research measures those problems once they are identified. This researcher will employ an approach that both identifies and measures problems. References Commonwealth Educational Media Center for Asia. (2011). Interviews as data collection tools. In Manual for Educational Media Researchers: Know Your Audience. Retrieved from http://www.cemca.org/books/ Farrell, A. (2006). Why women don’t watch women’s sport: A qualitative analysis (Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University). Retrieved from http://etd.ohiolink.edu/sendpdf.cgi/ Farrell%20Annemarie%20O.pdf?osu1147982213 Golafshani, N. (2003). Understanding reliability and validity in qualitative research. The Qualitative Report, 8(4), 597–607. Opdenakker, R. (2006). Advantages and Disadvantages of Four Interview Techniques in Qualitative Research. Forum: Qualitative Social Research. 7(4):A11. Piantanida, M., & Garman, N. (1999). The Qualitative Dissertation: A Guide for Students and Faculty. New York, NY: Corwin Press. The Sociology Journal. (2011). Focused (semi-structured) interviews. Retrieved from http://www.sociology.org.uk/methfi.pdf Read More