Today’s Plan:
- Review Methodology Basics by Discussing Burgess et al.
- Team Gender and Team Race
- Starting Questions
- Homework
Review Methodology Basics
Last class I introduced the 3 core methodological questions:
- How did they collect the objects they wanted to analyze?
- How did they analyze them? What measurements did they take? What “tools” did they use?
- How did they ensure reliability? If there tools require human judgement, then how did they attempt to reduce variability or noise?
Those are the questions researchers use to gather evidence, analyze it, and produce knowledge. So, how does Burgess address this in its three different studies?
A Key Methodological Tool: The Likert Scale
While the term likert scale might be unfamiliar, I can almost guarantee you’ve encountered one before.
- It is very likely you have encountered a Likert scale
- It is likely you have encountered a Likert scale
- It is neither likely or unlikely you have encountered a Likert scale
- It is unlikely you have encountered a Likert scale
- It is very unlikely you have encountered a Likert scale
Note: social scientists and marketers often omit the middle option above. Doing so forces a respondent to make a decision–and often the hardest decisions are those that require us to put something above or below the median cut line. The middle option provides respondents with an opt out.
Note: If you do a ranking scale, make sure you tell someone whether 1 is their favorite/good or 1 is their least favorite/bad.
I’ve already shared a few scales from previous semester with you. A refresh:
Story Driven Female Protagonist Tool
Is this character highly sexualized?
- Highly sexualized (4)
- Somewhat sexualized (3)
- Somewhat unsexualized (2)
- Highly unsexualized (1)
Race Research: Representation of Latino Characters
Does the character fit one of the following archetypes?
- Spicy sexpot [oversexualized characters]
- The maid / domestic servant
- The gangbanger / drug dealer
- Spanish only speaker / hyperbolic accent
Even this group was able to construct a Likert scale for these archetypes:
- Very sexpot (4)
- Somewhat sexpot (3)
- Somewhat un-sexpot (2)
- Very un-sexpot (1)
It isn’t as “clean” as the gender question, but it works.
Developing a Project
A few pointers. First, think about whether you want to analyze games covers, character selection screens, free mobile games, console games, a specific genre of games (sports games, non-major sport games, racing games, rpgs, fps, games marked E for kids, etc etc), user reviews of games, game trailers, etc etc. What are you going to look at? Are you going to check to see if a game has a Damsel in Distress, for instance? Or to see if the game has a non-male playable character? Or to see if the character creation process has start body size differences between male and female characters? Some of these things take more time to check than others–but I will set my expectations for what you do based on how much time it takes to process your research objects.
Second, think about what you are going to look for. I’d like for you to have one or two research questions to check. The gender group above asked the sexualized question, which is easy to see and measure. But they also asked an “empowerment” question, which was a bit trickier to suss out from looking at a game cover. Finally, they asked what we called the “Hawkeye” question: If the character is a woman, would it be weird to see a man in the same outfit? [Very weird, Somewhat weird, Somewhat normal, Very normal]
Group Spaces
Team Race:
- Google Doc for drafting research project ideas
- Google Slides for collecting screen shots (if necessary)
- Google Spreadsheet for listing objects (if necessary)
- Google Form for developing analysis (if necessary)
Team Gender:
- Google Doc for drafting research project ideas
- Google Slides for collecting screen shots (if necessary)
- Google Spreadsheet for listing objects (if necessary)
- Google Form for developing analysis (if necessary)
Homework
TBD.
