Divisive Behavior

Divisive Behavior   Order Description   Term Project A whopping forty-eight percent of your grade in this course is based on a term project. The purpose of this project is to apply the concepts and methodologies that are learned in a textbook setting to real world situations. Additionally, I typically assign you a concept, rather than a concrete fact about which you merely gather data. With a concept, you must define it by its various dimensions and model it by its outcomes. For example, if the concept is happiness, you must first define happiness. What does it mean to be happy? How do you measure it? Smiling might be one dimension, but it is not enough to define the entire concept (especially since unhappy people can also smile). Then what are the outcomes? Are happy workers more productive than unhappy workers, for example? This term’s project is on divisive behavior. In current American culture, it appears that most issues have two extreme points of view that allow for very little (if any) compromise. Without compromise, there is no collaboration. Without collaboration, there is no advancement. You can find this divisive behavior on almost any important issue in our society: politics, racial equality, healthcare laws, abortion, homosexual marriage, gun rights, etc. For our project, we are not concerned about the issue itself; rather, we want to understand why people are so unwilling to bend. Civil discourse is a dying art. Too often, people have closed minds and intractable opinions. They speak (or shout) over their adversaries and neither side appears to listen to learn – about how/why that person developed his/her perspective and where there are points of commonality. Why is that? One possible explanation is the rise of individualism. The dimension of individualism that I am referring to here is the idea that every person is an island unto himself and each has a right to speak or say what they feel without regard for others and that each is entitled to benefits (both tangible and intangible) because of their membership in our society. If everyone is so concerned about his or her own personal rights and entitlements, how will we ever find common ground? Where have altruism and common good gone? The over-arching research question for this project is: do individualistic attitudes lead to divisive behaviors? The specifics of the project are that you must conduct a research project consisting of a review of the literature, development of hypotheses, construction of a survey instrument, data collection and analysis, and a review of your results. It is very important that you do not choose a specific issue (such as politics or racial equality) and even more important that you do not choose a side (which would introduce bias to the project). Your interests are individualistic attitudes and divisive behaviors. You will first need to research the literature to define appropriate individualistic attitudes. Then you will need literature to support divisive behaviors. Once you have developed your model (that these attitudes lead to these outcomes), you will establish your hypotheses. Next, you will use your literature to help develop a survey instrument that you will then administer to subjects. Finally, you will analyze your results and prepare the final report. The project outline and section requirements and guidelines follows: I Introduction II Review of the Literature You must find and review at least 10 articles on the topic (individualism and divisive behavior), at least 5 of these articles must be research papers or articles. Next, you must present a critical review of the articles found. This is not, not, not a chronological summary of each article. It means identifying the relevant points found across the articles, citing how each article supports or contradicts the point. [For example, suppose that you believed that individualism is associated with selfishness. Four of your articles discuss this concern. You would devote a paragraph, or more, to the issue of selfishness and bring in the points that each article made on that subject. This is vastly different than a review that says “the article by Smith and Jones (2012) found blah, blah, and blah. The article by Williams and Davis found blah, blah and blah. You should also include some demographic information on the potential subjects – how do age groups, education, income brackets, etc. impact individualism or divisiveness? Are young people more or less likely to be divisive? The end of your literature review should lead/transition to the hypotheses in the next section. III Hypotheses Your research question is “do individualistic attitudes lead to divisive behavior?” The hypotheses that you generate will be a function of the dimensions of individualism and divisiveness that you define in your literature review. You must state your hypotheses clearly and they must be supported by your literature review. You will test these hypotheses in the data analysis section, so write them in a manner that allows for such testing. IV Survey Instrument You must develop a questionnaire that has at least 25 questions, in addition to your demographic questions. These questions must clearly relate to the hypotheses that you’ve posited. You must conduct a pilot study of your instrument whereby you will ask at least 10 people to take the survey and provide feedback on the clarity, breadth and duration of your survey. You will then use the feedback from your pilot study to make necessary revisions to the instrument. Finally, you must discuss the steps you have taken to insure that your survey will yield valid and reliable results. Note that the final survey instrument must be included in an appendix of your final project. V Data Collection You must have at least 50 useable responses to your survey. Your sampling methodology can be convenience, but your final sample must be at least quasi-representative. That is, I’m expecting to see a broad range of ages, incomes, education, and employment type. This may mean that you will need to collect more than 50 responses to meet the criteria. You must describe your methodology and the sample demographics in the final project. VI Data Analysis After describing your data as stated above, you must test your hypotheses. As you learned in Quantitative Methods, simple proportions will not be sufficient for an above-average grade (note: C is average). You must test for statistical significance. For example, suppose you hypothesized that arrogant people are poor listeners and you asked the questions “do you think your opinions are more important that others?” and “I often listen to others who have a different opinion from mine?” If you post results that only indicate that 49% responded strongly agree or agree with the first question, then 20% strongly agree with the second question, you have not tested the hypothesis. [Teaching note: to test this type of hypothesis, you would first have to have defined “arrogant.” Suppose you determined (based on your literature, of course) that anyone who scores 4.5 or above on an average of at least two questions of arrogance are placed in the arrogant group. Then you code your data based on arrogant and not arrogant. Sort your listening responses based on the arrogant group, then run a t-test to determine if there is a statically significant difference in listening skills between arrogant and non-arrogant (less arrogant?) people.] You should discuss each analysis that you performed, what you expected to find, and whether or not it supported your hypothesis. Additionally, you should present your results in tables, citing test statistics and p-values. VII Results This section will describe the overall findings of the study. It should discuss what the analyses, taken together, imply for the “client.” Furthermore, this section should discuss any weaknesses and/or limitations to the study, specifically the generalizability of the study. VIII Conclusions This section should attempt to define the target market and price points for the infrastructure and maintenance services provided by this potential business. IX Bibliography Your bibliography must be in APA format. X Appendix Some final notes: The entire project must be submitted as one cohesive document. Please do not submit separate files, such as Word and Excel. Your grade on the final project will be based, in part, on the contributions that you made to the overall final work. If your work on the literature review, question development, pilot study, or analyses was of too poor quality to be included in the final project, your final grade will reflect such, and not that of the overall group.