<div dir="ltr">Hi Dr. Szostak, Dr. Godfrey, and all Social Science Listers, <div><br></div><div><div style="font-size:12.8000001907349px">Thanks for reaching out and for your concern, Dr. Godfrey. I am completely aware that my survey, and thus my ethnography itself, is biased. The reason I mentioned that the mix of male to female is 1:4 is because I really want to get more male voices and male perspectives. Or, statistical power, as Dr. Szostak pointed out. <span style="font-size:12.8000001907349px">Another reason I made this distinction is because using my data I have to come up with a series of hypotheses. For example, "If a person is blind or visually impaired and is female, then she will..." I am also going to use age as a variable, and highest level of education attained, etcetera. But if there is only 1 male response for every 4 female response then I really shouldn't be drawing any conclusions by gender. </span><span style="font-size:12.8000001907349px">And yes, the absolute number of males is comparatively less than females. </span></div><div style="font-size:12.8000001907349px"><br></div><div style="font-size:12.8000001907349px">I could not have chosen this topic, and used a random sample, simply because I do not know enough blind or visually impaired folks to be able to acquire any sort of meaningful data. I spoke with a number of people, all blind or visually impaired, in person and on the phone before I even considered surveying as my method of research. It was the President of the Pennsylvania chapter of the AFB suggested I contact people using the Listserv. </div><div style="font-size:12.8000001907349px"><br></div><div style="font-size:12.8000001907349px">Students in my class have a whole section of our ethnography about the limitations of our method of data collection, so all this will be taken into consideration. And yes, only hypotheses can be made about the respondents and not the community at large, and no direct conclusions can be drawn. Only speculations based on the interpretation of the data. </div><div style="font-size:12.8000001907349px"><br></div><div style="font-size:12.8000001907349px">I am only an undergraduate student and this course is very low stakes--it is merely an introductory course to ethnographic methods. (I am in the Honors College, although this is not for an honors class or project.) I could have chosen any culture or community to observe and I chose the blind and visually impaired community. In fact, at first it was not working out because I had lots of trouble finding a cultural broker/informant, but I persisted because I really wanted to pursue this topic. Though meanwhile I could have jumped ship any number of times. If the ethnography was going to be any more robust than it is, then I would have had more than 10 weeks to choose site, learn how to effectively take field notes, choose a topic within the site, operationalize the topic, create hypotheses, choose a method(s) of data collection, gather data, analyze the data and complete the writeup. As Dr. Szostak and others along the way have pointed out, if this were for a graduate course I would have had to gone about the project much differently. Personally that discrepancy bothers me, I don't know about anyone else. </div><div style="font-size:12.8000001907349px"><br></div><div style="font-size:12.8000001907349px">Thank you Dr. Godfrey and Dr. Szostak for your thought provoking questions and comments. For all the help that this Listserv is providing me with, the least I can expect in return is to be given a run for my money :-) </div><div style="font-size:12.8000001907349px"><br></div><div style="font-size:12.8000001907349px">Sincerely, </div><div style="font-size:12.8000001907349px"><br></div><div style="font-size:12.8000001907349px">Nora </div></div><div style="font-size:12.8000001907349px"><br></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Fri, Mar 13, 2015 at 8:17 PM, Szostak, Christine via Social-sciences-list <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:social-sciences-list@nfbnet.org" target="_blank">social-sciences-list@nfbnet.org</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div lang="EN-US" link="blue" vlink="purple">
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1f497d">Hi Nora and All,<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1f497d"> Though I fully agree with the concerns mentioned below, since, if memory serves, this is for an undergrad honors project, I would not worry too much about these
issues. If you are going on to graduate training, you will definitely want to take the below to heart. However, there is nothing wrong with soliciting further for the parts of your sample that are under-represented. In my research, I study both native and
non-native speakers of American English and find myself often having to re-solicit to one group or the other so that I can properly balance my samples and match them as well as possible.<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1f497d"><u></u> <u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1f497d"> This is unfortunately, for many of us, one of those things that you need to do to make sure that your comparison groups are equally represented (e.g., if you
carry out stats with groups of very different sizes, even summary stats like means) can be highly misrepresentative. Thus, I applaud your efforts to try to re-solicit to ensure your sample sizes are strong.<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1f497d"><u></u> <u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1f497d"> When you go to write this up, what you will need to do, to deal with the below concerns, is state that your sample was a sample of convenience. For many of
us in the social sciences this is what we constantly face and have to accept given our means…<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1f497d"> In the future, one way to best describe this when talking with other researchers, would be to use phrases like statistical power or to ensure that the data
are more stable…<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1f497d">Best of luck with the project!<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1f497d">Chris<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1f497d"><u></u> <u></u></span></p>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1f497d">Dr. Christine M. Szostak<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1f497d">Assistant Professor of Psychology<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1f497d">Department of Social Sciences<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1f497d">Shorter University<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1f497d">Rome, Georgia<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1f497d"><a href="mailto:szostak.1@osu.edu" target="_blank"><span style="color:#0563c1">szostak.1@osu.edu</span></a><u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1f497d"><a href="mailto:cszostak@shorter.edu" target="_blank">cszostak@shorter.edu</a><u></u><u></u></span></p>
</div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1f497d"><u></u> <u></u></span></p>
<div>
<div style="border:none;border-top:solid #e1e1e1 1.0pt;padding:3.0pt 0in 0in 0in">
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">From:</span></b><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"> Social-sciences-list [mailto:<a href="mailto:social-sciences-list-bounces@nfbnet.org" target="_blank">social-sciences-list-bounces@nfbnet.org</a>]
<b>On Behalf Of </b>Godfrey, Jonathan via Social-sciences-list<br>
<b>Sent:</b> Friday, March 13, 2015 8:01 PM<br>
<b>To:</b> Nora Goldberg; Blind Social Scientists List<br>
<b>Subject:</b> Re: [Social-sciences-list] Anthropology<u></u><u></u></span></p>
</div>
</div><span class="">
<p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-NZ" style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1f497d">Hi there,<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-NZ" style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1f497d"><u></u> <u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-NZ" style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1f497d">I’m a little concerned that you care about the mix of male to female participants when you don’t even have a random sampling scheme. Your ability
to infer anything for a population is limited anyway for so many reasons.<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-NZ" style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1f497d"><u></u> <u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-NZ" style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1f497d">If you had suggested that your absolute number of males is less than what you want I would still be concerned but less so.<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-NZ" style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1f497d"><u></u> <u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-NZ" style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1f497d">I know that many surveys are done using convenience sampling of some kind but I seriously hope your course staff are explaining how you can only
make comments about your sample respondents and at most suggestive statements about the population the sample may have come from. In simple terms, your sample is biased and aside from a lack of gender balance, it will be very hard to know how it is biased.<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-NZ" style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1f497d"><u></u> <u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-NZ" style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1f497d">Sorry if I sound a little harsh; poor sampling is a hobby horse of mine at present. I’m seeing too many postgraduate students who have not understood
the limitations of their research findings because they do not have a random sample. They are not limited to social science students either by the way. Many students we see come to our statistical consulting service are looking at business-oriented research
questions.<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-NZ" style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1f497d"><u></u> <u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-NZ" style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1f497d">Jonathan<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-NZ" style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1f497d"><u></u> <u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-NZ" style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1f497d"><u></u> <u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif">From:</span></b><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif"> Social-sciences-list [<a href="mailto:social-sciences-list-bounces@nfbnet.org" target="_blank">mailto:social-sciences-list-bounces@nfbnet.org</a>]
<b>On Behalf Of </b>Nora Goldberg via Social-sciences-list<br>
<b>Sent:</b> Saturday, 14 March 2015 12:49 p.m.<br>
<b>To:</b> <a href="mailto:social-sciences-list@nfbnet.org" target="_blank">social-sciences-list@nfbnet.org</a><br>
<b>Subject:</b> [Social-sciences-list] Anthropology<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-NZ"><u></u> <u></u></span></p>
</span><div>
<div>
<div>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-NZ">Hi Social Science Leisters, <u></u><u></u></span></p><span class="">
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-NZ"><u></u> <u></u></span></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-NZ">I wanted to let you know that tomorrow will be the last day to take my survey that I have been circulating for my Anthropology class. For your convenience the link is below. If you have any questions about the survey
or the course that it is for please feel free to email me. Roughly 3/4 of respondents so far have been female, so gentleman, please, help me out! I want the data to paint the most balanced sketch possible. And also feel free to share the survey link, either
personally or via social media, with any friends and acquaintances who are blind or visually impaired. The project has been very insightful, and I have really appreciated everyone's answers thus far. <u></u><u></u></span></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-NZ"><u></u> <u></u></span></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-NZ">The survey will be found here: <a href="http://goo.gl/UBHm7x" target="_blank"><span style="font-size:9.5pt">http://goo.gl/UBHm7x</span></a></span><span lang="EN-NZ" style="font-size:9.5pt"> </span><span lang="EN-NZ"><u></u><u></u></span></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-NZ"><u></u> <u></u></span></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-NZ">Thank you so much! <u></u><u></u></span></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-NZ"><u></u> <u></u></span></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-NZ">Sincerely, <u></u><u></u></span></p>
</div>
</span><div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-NZ"> <u></u><u></u></span></p>
<div>
<div><span class="">
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-NZ">Nora E. Goldberg <u></u><u></u></span></p>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-NZ">Urban Sustainability and Community Place making <u></u><u></u></span></p>
</div>
</span><div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-NZ">Pennon Honours College <u></u><u></u></span></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-NZ">Drexel University, 2016 <u></u><u></u></span></p>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<br>_______________________________________________<br>
Social-sciences-list mailing list<br>
<a href="mailto:Social-sciences-list@nfbnet.org">Social-sciences-list@nfbnet.org</a><br>
<a href="http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/social-sciences-list_nfbnet.org" target="_blank">http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/social-sciences-list_nfbnet.org</a><br>
To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for Social-sciences-list:<br>
<a href="http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/social-sciences-list_nfbnet.org/nora.goldberg6%40gmail.com" target="_blank">http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/social-sciences-list_nfbnet.org/nora.goldberg6%40gmail.com</a><br></blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><div><br></div>-- <br><div class="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr">Nora E. Goldberg <div>Environmental Policy, Economics & Public Health </div><div>Pennoni Honors College </div><div>Drexel University, 2016 </div><div><br></div><div><br></div></div></div>
</div></div>