IRB and an Interview

I have submitted my IRB!! Hopefully I won't come across any problems!

Also, today I completed my first interview with Gene Davenport the executive director of The Georgetown Project! He provided me with a lot of useful information and he also gave me the contact information of several people within the community that are involved with the issue of homelessness. I finally feel like I am getting somewhere! :)

things are looking up :)

Well, I have to admit I was a little discouraged yesterday. However, any doubt I had then has been negated by this morning... I completed my first interview! And it went really, really well.

I spoke with the preacher of the church I attend here in Georgetown, and he was more than happy to help, and gave me some incredible insights. I had been starting to think that my initial idea, how modern religious movements are affecting the church of Christ, was less valid than I thought. However, he knew exactly what I was talking about and was able to clarify a lot of issues and give me background info that I hadn't had access to yet. He also lent me three theology textbooks of his to do a little more research, and they've been fascinating reads from what little I've been able to read so far. AND he invited me to dinner with he and his wife (I've known both of them a long time, so it's not as awkward as it may seem...) to talk with her because she could give me a different perspective than he can.

All in all, things are going well. :) Now comes the daunting task of transcribing an hour and a half long interview....

Scheduling

So, I was supposed to complete my fist interview of the weekend, but my interviewee made a scheduling mistake, so my little brother bumped me back in favor of a soccer game. I'm trying to reschedule a trip mid-week to make up some lost ground, but I'm not sure if it will work out.

But I have been researching the literature on my topic and there is a good bit more than I expected, which is really helpful, but I'm still waiting for them to come into the library.

Questions on Gossip

I've been working on a list of questions/topics to talk about in my interviews and was hoping that I could get some feed back on how they looked? I know that they need to be put in more simple language and be worked in rather than asked in order, but these are the things I'm interested in. Does it look like this is going to be too broad? Is there a way to make it more focussed? Thanks!

-What is gossip? Define what consitutes gossip and what isn't (I'm thinking of trying to get a small group together for this to discuss it and see different opinions and what people agree on when they're together. I'm just not sure how to pick the people to be in the small group... If it's people who know each other they'll probably be friends and think alike, if I chose people who don't know each other they may feel uncomfortable...)
-What is gossip used for? (Bonding, entertainment, etc. This will probably be more broad since there's no way to lead them to chose a word without feeding them a work as an example)
-Why gossip? (another just like the above)
-What are the situations in which people gossip?
-Why do people enjoy gossip?
-Who is talked about and who does the talking? Is it everyone on campus or only certain groups? Who gossips? explain why/example (In talking to some people in class I realized that pretty much everything I hear is about a member of Greek life as I am, so I was wondering if there was a distinct difference in who hears gossip on who based on what they're involved in... seems pretty obvious but I'd never really thought about it)
-Where do you hear the most gossip? Is it private or public?
-When is the most common time to hear gossip? When do people want to talk about other people? ( I know most of the time when you get together with friends you will pretty much always bring up some form of gossip and I want to know why, but I honestly can't explain why I do it so I think this would be really hard to get an answer to... it also relates to "why gossip" from earlier)
-How is gossip spread? How does thsi affect people and the community? (How it changes people's views on ideas, people, etc)
-What is the correlations between rumours and gossip? (the game "telephone" is a good example of how I think it works because the truth can get mangled by gossip, but that's a personal opinion) Do you think there's a difference between spreading rumours and gossip? What is the difference and does it matter or are the affects the same? Is gossip typically accurate or is it distorted information? What is the danger of gossip?
-Southwestern has a "Mouthwestern" shirt, does this encourage or just condone the spread of gossip? Why do we think that gossip is unique enough to Southwestern to name it?

I didn't realize how much that was until I wrote it out so I'm thinking that I may need to cut a bit, and if you could give me any help, that would be amazing because I have an interview lined up for tomorrow afternoon after class so I'd like a pretty strong base for what I'd like to say. Thanks!

basketball

I've decided that the social dynamic among team sports varies significantly and thus I'm going to focus on basketball, both professional and nonprofessional, in my ethnography. Although I'm disappointed I can't cover a variety of sports I realize that there are some sports that are more classed than others (tennis), some that are more ethnicized than others (cricket, american football) and some more racialized than others (basketball). As far as I know the NBA is the most diverse american sporting league with nearly 40% of its members being of foreign descent. I've contacted my two interviewees and now have to get them their consent forms and start coming up with interview questions.

Interviews...

So I was thinking about what to say on my IRB form and am currently trying to come up with the best way to interview people. I feel like interviewing people at a party may make for some interesting answers and probably a whole lot more truth than I'd get after the fact, but I'm pretty sure there's some legality issues with having people sign releases while under the influence, so I'm not sure how to go about my interview process? I was thinking of maybe getting in touch with people the day after the party to do interviews on how they percieve the differences between Greek and non-Greek participation in Greek parties, but I'm not sure if that'll be very accurate... or if I'll be able to get a hold of people the day after a party. What would be the best way of going about this? Thanks!