On Sun, May 12, 2013, Maia McCormick wrote: > 2013/5/11 Aahz Maruch <a...@pobox.com> >> On Sat, May 11, 2013, Maia McCormick wrote: >>> >>> 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). > > 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?"
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. -- Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6 http://rule6.info/ <*> <*> <*> Help a hearing-impaired person: http://rule6.info/hearing.html
