Thursday, June 08, 2006 ::: Research Paper Proposal: Steady, As She Goes: Negative Correlations between the Professional Life and the Personal/Social Life of Single Adults
I think I've finally come up with an idea for my research proposal topic.
So I was running late for class today, and when I got to the bus stop, I met that guy ... err, what's his name - Noor's friend ... and we start talking. He says, "I don't know what it is, but girls in summer school are so hot." To which I respond, "The way I see it, there's probably two explanations for that. (1) Obviously, girls always dress sexier in the summer. (2) The girls in summer school are typically the girls that didn't do so well in regular school. And the good looking girls are typically the girls that don't do so well at school, so they end up going to summer school."
And that's what started me on my research proposal idea. Originally, the idea was to measure the correlation between a girl's attractiveness rating and her G.P.A. The idea was pretty interesting from a methodological point of view: we'd have to sample girls in such a way that we wouldn't overrepresent a demographic of high or low G.P.A. students. So we couldn't focus on first year students, because they haven't taken enough courses to get a good representation of their G.P.A. And we also couldn't just go to random classrooms and pick our samples, because we would be underrepresenting the population of girls that don't go to class. Also, we couldn't just advertise for girls to come in, because the girls that are most likely to respond are those that are comfortable with their physical attractiveness or those that are more serious about their studies and so want to be more involved in experiments. So the sampling technique in this study would have to be very creative in order to get a sample representative of the population.
The problem with this study is that there probably isn't any background literature on it. But I haven't checked PsychINFO yet, so I don't know.
So I figured that maybe I could investigate a broader issue - perhaps one where more literature has been printed on it. So I figured I could measure the correlation between the professional life and the personal/social life of single adults. The problem with this, I suppose, is how to operationally define my variables. How do I measure "professional life"? Do I measure income? time spent at work? or just the type of job they have? And how do I measure "personal/social life"? Do I measure the time spent in recreational activities? What kind of recreational activities? Clubbing? Exercising? Attending sporting events? Or do I measure how many dates a person has been on in the past year, or if they're in a relationship and if they are, is it long term and how long?
I guess what I could do is go onto PsychINFO and find studies that have measured similar variables. But then how would I know my measures are valid? Afterall, "professional life" and "personal/social life" are very vague terms.
. . . ... I've been spending way too much time on PsychINFO and studying.
