Gender Biases: Observational Study

I chose to focus my observational study on gender biases (between male and females) that occur during the cleanup period of a meal. The observation took place on March 27th, 2016 in my home located in Montville, NJ. After Easter lunch I observed, for thirty minutes, the “cleanup period”—the period where the table is cleaned, food is put away, and dishes, utensils, and glasses are washed. I observed twenty individuals. Eleven participants were male and nine participants were female. The age range of participants was from ten to eighty-one. Furthermore, I positioned myself unobtrusively in this observational study at the dinning room table and then engaged in cleaning up the table.
b. Subject’s behaviors were scored on a 5-point scale (1-avoidance, …show more content…
An aspect of this observational study that worked well was the 5-point scale. Because of the specificity of my scale, I found distinguishing between and labeling the different behaviors to be simple. However, there are two aspects I might need to revise if I were to run this study again, being: the sample size and number of observers. Specifically, I would have liked my sample size to be larger, so that more males and females would be tested, which would allow for a broader generalizability of results. In addition, I would also have ten observers, two per condition, so that the study could control for inter-rater reliability.
d. My measure was a valid measurement of my construct—gender biases regarding cleaning up after a meal. Using the scale, gender biases were measured by the observed behaviors of the subjects. The participant’s behaviors were clear to score, due to the active nature of cleaning. Though the five-point scale was an effective way to measure my construct, there may be others observational ways to measure this construct. For instance, another more specific coding scale could be devised and recorded by one observer who was not engaged in the task and one observer who was engaged in the