Tuesday, January 16, 2007

Research I'd like to see

Now there's a loooong list of this, but after a morning of "Will the Burning Crusade ruin our children and youths" I would love to see this project:

Find a group of 30 year olds. Random selection method of their choice. Interview them about their main interests between the age of 12-18. That will be from 1989 - 1995. What did they use the most time on? How much time did they use on their homework? How were their grades in this period?

Look at their position in society today, how are they doing?

The different types of media have been around for long enough that we can know if youth and children are ruined by their media consumption. Why not check from this end, rather than speculate from the other end?

And yes, lots of methodological traps here. Got to be a very good sociologist to pull this one off well.

2 comments:

LornaJay said...

Well, I'm 30.... South-African Scottish, knitting, sewing blogger. That random enough? ;-)

Torill said...

Random enough for me!

I wish I had the funding for 3 doctorates, and I know exactly what I'd like to do with it. One person would look at the media history of today's young adults (see above). One person would look at the media panics of 1989 - 1995, and the rest of the money would go to looking at the objects of the historical media panics, as well as coordinating all three projects. It would have to include a lot of travelling (like to Scotland and South Africa) and it would be great fun for all!

So, anybody have a couple of million dollar they don't know how to spend on media research?