Final Project: Introduction, Literature Review, and Methods Section-

1. What is your research question?

Cell phones and social media are a big thing today. Social media sites such as Facebook and Instagram are always showing thin girls who work out and look extra pretty. This leads me to ask does exposure to media increase pressure to be thin in adolescents and young adults?

2. What is your hypothesis or hypotheses? What is the null hypothesis?

My hypothesis is that media has a negative effect on adolescents and young adults self-image. After exposure to media, the participants will feel more pressure to be the ideal-thin and have a lower self-esteem. The null hypothesis would be that media has no effect on an adolescent or young adults self-image. I believe that social media portrays men and women in a sense that is not reasonable.

3. How many participants would you like to use and why? What are the inclusion characteristics, i.e., what must they have in order to be included in your study (for example, gender, diagnosis, age, personality traits, etc.)? Are there any exclusion characteristics, i.e. are there certain characteristics that would exclude them from being in your study? Does the sample need to be diverse? Why or why not?

I would like to use up to 100 participants. I feel like this number would give me an accurate reading for my question. Half of my participants would be male and the other half would be female. The inclusion characteristics that I would require would be that they are between the ages of 12 and 22, and spend at least five hours on social media such as Facebook or Instagram. On average children 8-18 spend an average of 7.5 hours a day engaged with some form of media (Lawrie, 2006). These would be my only inclusion characteristics because my study only requires a certain age bracket and they have to use social media to see what kind of effect media has on them. For this particular study I would not have any exclusion characteristics present. The participants for my study can be of any gender, race, or economic status. I feel like having a diverse sample would be beneficial but it is not necessary. The more diverse the sample is would mean a better representation of the population. I do not think that race or economic status play a factor in the negative effects to self-image caused by the media.

4. What sampling technique will be used to collect your sample? What population does your sample generalize to?

I would use simple random sampling to conduct this study. Stratified random sampling is when we randomly select participants from each important subgroup. I would choose this technique because I feel like it I feel like this sample would give me an accurate representation of the adolescent and young adults today. I would choose boys and girls of different races, ages, and wealth classes to be more accurate. My sample would generalize the adolescents and young adults of Hawaii. Since Hawaii is so far from the rest of the country I feel like we are exposed to different types of media. It is warm with nice weather year round, so the need to have the perfect “summer” body is more relevant to youth of Hawaii versus someplace that snows and gets cold. Hawaii is so diversified that it would be easy for me to get a mixture of races for my participants. I think this is an important factor because each races has a different image of beauty. For example: I am of Japanese, Portuguese, and Filipino descent. My Japanese and Filipino culture has taught me that having lighter color skin is more desired because that means you are wealthy and work indoors, and not outdoors in the sun. My Portuguese culture says that the bigger you are is better because that means you can afford to eat. The Polynesian culture is very similar to the Portuguese culture and it would be very interesting to see all of the different responses from youth of different backgrounds.

5. What are the variables in your study? HINT: Refer back to your hypothesis or hypotheses.

For this study my variables would be self-esteem, body satisfaction and internalization, neutral images and ideal-thin body images. These variables all play a role in my research and will help me come to a conclusion about media and the ideal-thin.

6. Provide operational definitions for each variable.

Each study must have a dependent, independent and controlled variable. For this study the dependent variables would be self-esteem, body satisfaction and internalization. The dependent variable is the variable that will be measured and the variable that the researcher thinks can be affected during the experiment. The independent variable is the variable that is varied during the experiment. In this case the independent variables would be the images of the ideal-thin. For women it would be thin and tall models and for men it would be muscular men. The controlled variable would be neutral images of men and women who are not chiseled or thin. The controlled variable is the variable that is held at constant.

7. How will you measure each variable? Discuss the reliability and validity of these measures in general terms.

Each variable would be measured using face validity. The questions from the survey and questionnaire would be rated on scales and compared to the participants who didn’t view images that contained the ideal-thin model. Face validity happens when a test or items on a test make sense on the face of it (Argosy, 2014). I think this is a reliable method because it can be replicated and the results wouldn’t differ tremendously. I believe that the participants who are shown the neutral images would have a better self-image than the ones who seen the images of the ideal-thin model.

8. What technique will be used for data collection (e.g., observation, survey, interview, archival, etc.)?

For this study I would use multiple resources for collecting data. I would use an observation, a questionnaire/survey and lastly an interview. I feel like participants would be more open and honest when answering questions about their self-image on paper rather than to a person. The participant would remain anonymous and we wouldn’t know how they exactly felt about themselves.

9. What type of research design is being used?

For my research the design I would be using would be descriptive research. This type of design is used to primarily gain a better understanding of underlying reasons, opinions and motivations (Kalnes, 2014). This design is detailed and provides insights to problems.

10. Briefly discuss the procedure that would be followed when conducting the research.

I would first have the participant watch different ads or commercials that present different body types and observe their reaction to the images. I would then give them a questionnaire and ask them how they felt about the body types shown in the video. I would also include a picture from the video to make sure there is no confusion about which image is being referred. Next I would give them a survey that had questions pertaining to themselves. The survey would be on an ordinal scale with choices of very unhappy, unhappy, okay, happy and very happy. The questions would range from dieting questions to self-esteem questions. Lastly I would interview the participants and ask them about their self-image and if they could change what would they change about themselves.

11. What are some POTENTIAL ethical issues? How might they be addressed?

Some Potential ethical issues when doing this type of research would be the validity of results. Some people might say that the participants’ results were not accurate because they were dishonest. To avoid this type of ethical issue I would make sure to let the participants know how crucial honesty when answering these questions are. The method of answering questions on paper anonymously also helps me to make sure the answers are honest and truthful. Another potential ethical issue could be harm for the participants. Some may say that participants may be more prone to hurting themselves after viewing the ideal-thin models in order to become thin. To avoid this, I would make sure to get consent of all the participants and make sure they are fully aware of what would be happening. Also reiterating to the participants that these images are not real people.

References