14 May
2013
14 May
'13
3:28 p.m.
On Sun, May 12, 2013, Maia McCormick wrote:
2013/5/11 Aahz Maruch <aahz(a)pobox.com>
Obviously, you'll need to do some research on proper technique for
obtaining study participants. I'd suggest that getting support from
dance organizers would help; you should definitely do your study over an
extended period of time (to find people who like me are seasonal dancers
or who only show at random times when their schedule permits, which is
also true for me when I'm busy).
You also need to think about your goal(s), whether it's to provide useful
information for the dance community, support your academic career, etc.;
that'll likely influence both how you structure your study and how you
find your participants.
For example, I was part of a sample of three participants for a friend's
thesis (linguistics PhD); would have been difficult for zir to find more
given the timeframe and the focus on people who were going through the
process of getting a cochlear implant.
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On Sat, May 11, 2013, Maia McCormick wrote:
That's a really good point. I mean, one way would be to focus my study only
on people who self-identify as being "in" the contra community... but, how
would you suggest I go about finding people on the fringes? I feel like my
sample size will be kind of biased by who I'm friendly with, which is
pretty much the quote unquote 'young hip flashy' dancers (who tend to be
super comfortable switching roles, largely queer, considerably poly and
sexually liberal, etc.). I also want to find the people who consider
themselves "contra community" but feel uncomfortable dancing switch, or
might look at a male-male and female-female couple and say "hey, why don't
you split up and pair off m/f?"
That's exactly it, though! The variations of expressions of self-identity
and sexuality within different subsets of contra. Like, I'm really
interested to look at intersections of gender, sexuality, flirtiness,
role-swapping, skirt wearing, age, use of contra network as a social base,
use of contra network to find romantic/sexual partners... oh my god,
there's so much to explore!
One thing to be careful of, by way of personal example: primarily because
of my hearing impairment but also because I have a lot of trouble staying
up late, I tend to think of myself as "of" but not "in" the contra
dance
community. So you likely will need to put in extra effort if you want to
find people who are not part of the core communities (i.e on the fringes,
however you measure that).