In October of 1978 Mary Hiatt published an article, The Feminine Style: Theory and Fact, on her research on the differences between literature written by men and literature written by women. She explains that the style, diction, logic, and sentence structure is different among the sexes. Hiatt employs many different methods to obtain her results. The methods she uses, which include using multiple pieces of prose, separating fiction and nonfiction, her examination of literary elements and devices, and her decision to use a computer, to collect her data and analyze it was an effective choice to validate her research. Hiatt’s use of one hundred pieces of writing keeps her research valid and less susceptible to mistakes. Using multiple sources
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A small sample of work would only include a small amount of writing styles. This could not represent the majority of authors because there are many different styles of writing. So a researcher who is attempting to find out if men and women truly write differently would need multiple pieces of literature from various authors to make their research valid. By having more data to work with, the conclusion that spawns from the research will come out more accurate compared to if someone was to use a small amount of data. She likewise chose the literature that was used in her research unbiasedly and randomly. Hiatt states “Objectivity was maintained by not choosing books on the basis of literary ‘merit,’ for merit is a subjective matter. To have selected books because anyone in particular—I, my friends, critics in general—liked them would have seriously prejudiced the study.” If she had chosen books based upon her or her friends appeal to the writing, the results would be inaccurate. Her friends and her could have similar taste in authors, so each book that would have been chosen would be similar …show more content…
A computer is as accurate as the data that is inputed into the system. According to Robert Murray Thomas in Conducting Educational Research: A Comparative View, “Computers are generally highly accurate and reliable. In the great majority of instances, when errors do occur, the fault either lies with the person who wrote the software program which carries out the computations or else with the people who are operating the computer” (Thomas 337-338). Computers have the ability to compute data at quicker speeds than people, and the results that are created will be as accurate as the data that is inputed into the computer. People are not as accurate or as quick as a computer. The speed at which a computer can compute data is greater than a person. Thomas again said, “in the early 1960’s, making it then possible for computers to execute up to 100,000 instructions per second” (Thomas 337). The human mind is not capable at computing data at these speeds. If Hiatt had chosen to conduct her research without the use of a computer, it would have taken her hours upon hours of reading each book multiple times and correctly picking out evidence that she needs to support her claim. This is not the smartest and most effective approach. Mistakes would easily have been made. She could mistake some words or phrases and her research would have been distorted. Instead, she made the
A small sample of work would only include a small amount of writing styles. This could not represent the majority of authors because there are many different styles of writing. So a researcher who is attempting to find out if men and women truly write differently would need multiple pieces of literature from various authors to make their research valid. By having more data to work with, the conclusion that spawns from the research will come out more accurate compared to if someone was to use a small amount of data. She likewise chose the literature that was used in her research unbiasedly and randomly. Hiatt states “Objectivity was maintained by not choosing books on the basis of literary ‘merit,’ for merit is a subjective matter. To have selected books because anyone in particular—I, my friends, critics in general—liked them would have seriously prejudiced the study.” If she had chosen books based upon her or her friends appeal to the writing, the results would be inaccurate. Her friends and her could have similar taste in authors, so each book that would have been chosen would be similar …show more content…
A computer is as accurate as the data that is inputed into the system. According to Robert Murray Thomas in Conducting Educational Research: A Comparative View, “Computers are generally highly accurate and reliable. In the great majority of instances, when errors do occur, the fault either lies with the person who wrote the software program which carries out the computations or else with the people who are operating the computer” (Thomas 337-338). Computers have the ability to compute data at quicker speeds than people, and the results that are created will be as accurate as the data that is inputed into the computer. People are not as accurate or as quick as a computer. The speed at which a computer can compute data is greater than a person. Thomas again said, “in the early 1960’s, making it then possible for computers to execute up to 100,000 instructions per second” (Thomas 337). The human mind is not capable at computing data at these speeds. If Hiatt had chosen to conduct her research without the use of a computer, it would have taken her hours upon hours of reading each book multiple times and correctly picking out evidence that she needs to support her claim. This is not the smartest and most effective approach. Mistakes would easily have been made. She could mistake some words or phrases and her research would have been distorted. Instead, she made the