Strangechord

I hate to say it, but posting is probably going to be pretty sparse over the next two months. Plan on checking in at most twice per week or so.

I’ve been incredibly busy lately with my new classes. I’m taking one called Sociological Research Project - it’s a requirement for a Soc. major at PSU and is a huge term-long research project done in groups. My group of four will be surveying Portland university professors regarding their attitudes towards and participation in political protest. We plan on sending out surveys to about 500 faculty in the hopes of getting at least 200 completed) randomly sampled from about five four-year institutions in Portland (PSU, Reed, Lewis & Clark, U of Portland, Warner Pacific, and Concordia. We’ve decided that the surveys will be administered and results gathered online via a really powerful, easy-to-use tool called CivicSpace.

Our complete project proposal (with lit review survey written) is due in 12 days. Then we have three weeks to send out and receive back completed surveys, then two weeks in which to write up the findings and prepare a class presentation, and finally, two weeks after that in which to write the final report draft (40-50pp). Almost all of the other groups in class have five people; our has four and one of my group mates will be out of town for five days at the end of February (right at crunch time). As I’m a strong researcher, writer, and presenter, and am fairly adept at SPSS (the statistical software we’re using to analyze our results), I’ll be putting in a lot on the project. I’ll try to post little updates as it goes along.

Of course, I also have two other classes and I work two whole days per week. Alas, fair reader, before spring break we won’t be seeing much of each other.