Nutritional Habits in Adolescent Girls and Advertisement - Assignment Example

1. Design a simple experiment using concepts in your field. Be sure to consider the ideas of experimental and control groups, threats to validity, and the advantages and disadvantages of using experiments. The experiment will seek to conduct an analysis on the nutritional habits and behavior of girls in adolescent and their relation to advertisement in Saudi Arabia. The study will make use of observers to establish whether there is a relationship between nutritional habits of adolescent girls and advertisement in Saudi Arabia. The adolescent girls will be shown various food advertisements and then given assorted food during meals including the foods that were in the advertisements. The control group will consist of girls who will not be shown the experiment but will also be given food the same as the girls in the experimental group. The threat to validity is that there could be some variables that affect nutritional habits and behavior other then advertisement. However, the threat will be eliminated through the use of the control group. The findings of the experiment will be important in establishing whether there is a strong correlation between nutritional habits and behavior and advertisements. In addition, the qualitative data obtained will reveal some of the reasons for the strong correlation between nutritional habits and behavior and advertisement. Experiments make use of samples that may not reflect upon the true state of things in the population. In this experiment the findings might indicate that alcohol consumption does not affect academic performance whereas in the population the state of things might be different. In addition, it would be cumbersome to establish the level of impact of different forms of advertisement. a) Operationalize the concepts in your research question into an item or items suitable for a questionnaire. Research Question: Is there a correlation between nutritional habits and behavior in adolescent girls and advertisement? Questionnaire Item: Do you believe that food companies are sincere in their commercials about the nutritional benefits of products? b) Include some demographic measures in your questionnaire: The adolescent ages will range from the age of ten to twenty and they will be grouped into 2; one group will be from 10-15 and the other group will be from 15-20. The study will seek to establish the group whose nutritional habits and behavior are influenced by advertisement. c) Decide on a type of experimental design and explain how observations would be made. The research will follow and interpretivist approach where data will be collected and analyzed. The research will also follow and ethnographic approach where the nutritional behavior and habits of both the experiment and control group will be observed over a long period of time. d) Explain how three scientific assumptions are upheld (violated) in your example Errors in experiment are unavoidable therefore the assumption of intentional and unintentional mistake is violated. The subjects might be biased by what they expect to happen therefore the second assumption is violated The result of the sample might be a true representation of the population therefore the third assumption is not violated. 2. Give examples of how each goal of science can be served by experimental research The first goal of science is to investigate with the aim of validating or disapproving a theory. Experiments allow researchers to conduct studies aimed at establishing whether a theory is just a postulation or whether the theory is factual. The second goal of science is the discovery of new concepts and ideas that help in understanding of our world better. It is through experiments that scientists have been able to stumble upon new ideas and concepts. The third goal of science is that it should be able to support a claim through evidence. The results of a research act as evidence. In essence, experiments have seen the development of science into a discipline that employs innovation in the processes utilized in research and that seeks to make human existence more comfortable by seeking answers to human problems. 3. Find a good example of ethnography for your major area of study, or near it. Feel free to use internet resources to locate your study. Explain the characteristics that make your study ethnographic? A good example of ethnography is the role played by culture in promoting the well being of patients under the care of nurses. Cultural beliefs are important because different cultures perceive illness and death differently. Therefore, when the caregivers are aware of the cultures of their patients, it will be easy to assist the patients in tackling aspects such as anxiety and fear of death. Studying ethnography is important because it helps in getting rid of cultural bias and promotes integration within a given society. Furthermore, ethnographic studies help in bringing out the unique characteristics of certain cultures that might be used by caregivers in nurturing resilience in vulnerable families. 4. Describe, by way of an example, the use of content analysis? Content analysis is used to make inferences about a given subject or topic that has been covered. For instance, one can analyze the content of the language spoken by children before they know how to speak well in order to identify the messages the children are putting across and whether there is some common denominator among all children. 5. What kinds of topics are appropriate for using content analysis? Content analysis is appropriate foe use when studying various aspects of language such the basis of language, the attributes of language and the effects of language. 6. Explain the following statement: Often the secondary data analysis method is exactly the same as Quantitative data analysis, except for the data gathering step? Secondary data analysis involves the use of already existent set of data in seeking answers for a research problem. Secondary data analysis is compared to quantitative data analysis because both of them deal with trends as a result of the numerical distribution of the data. In secondary data analysis, usually the qualitative aspect of the study has already been figured out. Therefore, the only aspect remaining is to generate a quantitative relationship between sets of data. 7. How might existing statistics be useful to a researcher doing descriptive survey research? How much could such statistics be used to validate questionnaire data? Existing statistics is very important for a researcher using descriptive research. Essentially, descriptive statistics analyses already existing data with the aim of identifying trends and perhaps using the trends to answer the research question or validate a hypothesis. Such statistics can be used to validate a questionnaire because one can look at the variance between the results of a questionnaire and the existing data and conclude that the questionnaire is either valid or that it s biased. In essence, descriptive statistics provides the researcher with a yardstick that can be used to make generalized decisions concerning the results and trends of the present study. 8. What are some of the advantages of qualitative research (compared to quantitative research)? Although quantitative studies provide the researcher with definite numerical results that reduce bias, qualitative research also have some major characteristics that has seen it being used increasingly in social sciences and psychology. In quantitative studies usually there are no intermediates and results are interpreted with regard to numerical values. However, qualitative studies provide the researcher with the capacity to study aspects with continuum such as behavior and which cannot be easily quantified. Qualitative study also assists in bringing out human perception when collecting data using questionnaires and interviews. Qualitative research is also in a better position to create a connection between causes and effects. 9. How do qualitative and quantitative research methods complement each other? Qualitative and quantitative research methods complement each other in several ways. First qualitative method allows researchers to tackle aspect that cannot be quantified. Second, qualitative research methods also allow researchers to collect non-numerical data from subjects so that the data can be compared to quantitative data. Qualitative data is also useful in structuring of hypothesis and then further using quantitative data to either validate or refute the hypothesis. Read More