Sociology assignment?

Question

i have chosen to do my project on how the media influences our image and whether the media encourages girls to diet

i was just wondering how i could carry this assignment out, i have a few weeks to do this but im unsure. If i carried out a questionnaire i have to use the correct wording and im worried about offending people particulary as it's quite sensitive. Would girls be willing to answer questions about their body image??

any suggestions would be grateful thanks

Answer 1

What a good subject.  This can be accomplished in several different ways.  First, this subject has been examined in the past so one may locate those studies (they are probably available on the web) and compare and contrast the results of each.  Likely each study was carried out for different populations and, if valid, was comprised of randomly selected members.  This, of course, requires the use of statistical methodology to perform, e.g., chi - square, log odds, difference in means, etc.  Each of which is very easy to carry out.  Second, you could field a survey.  Be certain to select both a random and representative sample, i.e., if one surveys the entire female population of a grade in High School then the concept of random selection of respondents may be relaxed (but, the results are appropriate for only those individuals surveyed at that point in time.  Such responses are not reflective of all females of the same age everywhere.)  Such questions should include:  gender, occupation, age, type of media to which they are regularly exposed, number of hours of such exposure, time of day, type of media enjoyed,   celebrities admired, commercials admired, magazine advertisements admired, etc.  Then the second part of the survey (actually it should be blended within the entire survey) should query as to what respondents see as the ideal personage, the ideal lifestyle, the ideal mate, one's self image (generally speaking), e.g., "how do you view your own self image?  Good, So So, Bad.  Determine what respondent believes to be a good self image, etc.  Ask them what image they would enjoy if they could without dieting, excercise, etc.

Good Fortune.

Answer 2

If you chose to use a questionnaire, it would have to be totally anonymous to obtain any real data from participants...

This is a great link that covers everything dealing with body image, questionnaires, research articles, and much more:

http://www.edreferral.com/body_image.htm

This is a link to body image assessments used in major research studies:

http://www.body-images.com/assessments/

Answer 3

i think you should carry on with what you planned out ask people you know who are quite concius about their weight or figure and how they feel and what they would do to change, would they feel better or something like that, i don't know if that is what you wanted to know but i hope it helps you in a way, good luck with the assignment ..

Answer 4

though a questionnaire would likely be effective, it might not be as effective as if you supplemented it with visuals. Its a pretty common theme to take pictures from magazines or even show a clip or something (if this is a presentation) from modeling shows, where already thin women are told they need to lose weight. If your writing a paper it might help to have some type of visuals during questionnaire process to perhaps help individuals open up. Perhaps you could start by asking which pictures reflect the ideal, and gauge responses from there, finding out from your other questions whether or not the girls are using these images to set their own ideal body types.

I guess it depends a little on the specifics. If its for a paper its one thing, but if its for a presentation, there are a lot of good accessible visual type things that really hit home for this topic.