While in
my Sociology Research Methods class I was assigned the task of creating a
research proposal on any topic of my choosing. I’ve always been interested in
gender, and growing up Jewish I’ve observed how religion affects gender
identity. I was particularly fascinated in how Jewish men perform masculinity,
so I thought pursuing further research in a classroom setting would make sense.
When I realized I would like to complete my own research, it made sense to continue
with the proposal that I had just spent an entire semester working on. As well,
this project is directly related to my long-term goals. I hope to continue with
gender research, on masculinity as well as the broader effects of structural
inequality. I am considering graduate work and perhaps a PHD in sociology,
where I would continue to focus on gender.
My week
to week work varied greatly depending on what step in the research I was. At
the beginning I spent the majority of my time recruiting participants for my
focus groups. This was much more challenging than expecting. I put up posters
all around campus but this yielded no results. I had to talk to people
individually and face-to-face to gain their participation. As volunteers signed
up, I started holding focus groups. Having never led a focus group before I was
nervous, but they ended up being a lot of fun. I really enjoyed hearing from
participants and I was pleasantly surprised how open they were with me. Once
the data was collected, a very large chunk of time was devoted to transcribing
the audio recordings into a written script. This was tedious, but actually a
great chance to think critically about the data. At this point, I am analyzing
the script for patterns which will end up being the results of my research. One
pattern that has stuck out to me this week is that for many participants other
identities play a bigger role than Judaism, highlighting the importance of
intersectionalism. This is probably the most fun aspect of my project as I’m
seeing the outcomes of all this work.
