Thinking+Like+a+Researcher+-+Christian,+Jonathan,+Denise


 * What concepts/variables is this study operationalizing?**


 * Students' view of demographics and target audience
 * Students' media and technology usage
 * Students' level of trust in television
 * Students' susceptibility to advertising
 * Students' civic engagement
 * Students' career expectations


 * What are three potential research hypotheses?**

How does level of interest in popular culture influence a student's ability to evaluate the impact and techniques of cigarette advertising? The study operationalizes values for media/technology usage (9-10, 14-15), celebrity recognition (11) and ability to evaluate and understand advertising processes. We can derive a value for "level of interest in popular culture" from the variables related to media usage and celebrity recognition. From a societal standpoint, this question will explore the role of the increasing impact of popular culture and media usage on students' ability to understand popular media techniques.

How does the amount of time students spend consuming media by themselves affect their susceptibility to advertising? Does it matter when students spend time consuming media? The study operationalizes values for media/technology use (9-10, 14-15) and susceptibility to advertising and behavioral predictions (4-5, 12-13, 17).

How does media consumption influence students' career expectations? The study operationalizes values for media/technology usage (9-10, 14-15), celebrity recognition (11) and career expectations (23-24). A potential research hypothesis might test the relationship between media

Part II: Generate Research Methods

Teaching a Public Voice
"Given the importance, noted above, of using a public voice, we should assess the degree to which young people express themselves publicly. Among the nineteen survey indicators of civic engagement that Scott Keeter et al. developed in 2003, five are activities that require individuals to express their own political or social opinions in public forums (persuading others about an election, participating in community problem solving, contacting an elected official, contacting a newspaper or magazine, and calling a talk show). Several other indicators measure participation in public discourse (e.g., taking part in a protest, displaying a campaign sign, button, or sticker).22 For most of these indicators, youth were not heavily involved.
 * People do not naturally or automatically acquire an effective public voice or the motivation to use it. They must be taught**."

How does a senior thesis project impact the use of a student's public voice? In the state of Pennsylvania, all high school seniors are required to complete a senior thesis project of their choosing, culminated in a large-scale presentation in front of their peers and faculty. In a proposed experiment, students from both Pennsylvania and a demographically and economically similar school district in a neighboring state would be studied over a two-year period. The Pennsylvania students would be required to take a stance on a prevalent social or political issue in their presentation, where students from the control state would not be required to complete a thesis project at all. We believe that the process of undertaking a senior thesis project is one way to teach a public voice and as a result, we would expect students from the experimental group to be more engaged both socially and politically than their control counterparts. We would take Keeter's survey indicator scale and scale the students in a way that would be relevant to 17-19 year olds coming out of high school and entering the university system. For example, rather than measuring an activity like "calling into a talk show," which college freshman might be unlikely to do, we would measure their participation in social and political organizations on campus, participation via social media and networking, participation via the Internet and blogs and student government and journalism.

The data collection itself would involve mail-in surveys completed by each student at three points in the research process:
 * Prior to engagement in the senior thesis
 * Following the first semester of freshman year
 * Following the final semester of freshman year

The surveys would ask students to self report their level of social and political activism, both on and off campus, which we will use to measure the strength of their "public voice" and how the thesis (that is, a way of instilling a public voice) influenced their use of public voice in the following year.