Comprehensive Exam - Methods
In order to graduate with my Masters of Science in Communication, I was required to successfully pass my comprehensive exams: three essays covering theory, methods, and applications of my learnings. Completed Spring 2021.
My Methods prompt: Pick one of the theories that you described in your response to the theory question, and explain how you would approach (1) a quantitative study based on the theory and (2) a qualitative study based on the theory. Start your description of each study by listing your research questions and/or hypotheses and explaining how they were informed by the theory. Then, describe how you would approach data collection and analysis. Be sure to specify how you’d approach: (a) sampling, including participant recruitment (if applicable); (b) developing and/or finding measures; (c) managing ethical concerns; and, (d) analyzing your data.
A Mixed-Methods Approach to Understanding Identity Gaps for Working Mothers
It is undeniable that COVID-19 has been a detrimental thorn in society's side since March 2020, but the societal effects of COVID have disproportionately affected women. Millions of people have lost their jobs, an unfair amount of those being women. The US had 140,000 lost jobs in December 2020. 100% of those jobs were held by women. Over 5 million women have left the workforce since COVID started, either due to layoffs or forced to leave as juggling being a working professional and a caregiver to children has become too much to handle. Women are leaving the workforce at 4x the rate of men. Vogue has called this “The Year of the Invisible Crisis.” One tech CEO is demanding change and action.
Reshma Saujani founded ‘Girls Who Code’ after a failed political campaign in New York. Although never a coder, Saujani saw the difference between boys and girls in school in both confidence and the will to try (and sometimes fail) when writing code. After starting a successful business and helping thousands of girls boost their confidence and enter a career in STEAM, Saujani is now tackling another mammoth: The Marshall Plan for Moms. Saujani is campaigning to pass a law, The Marshall Plan for Moms, that will pay mothers for their unseen labor ($2,400), as well as address parental leave, affordable childcare, and pay equity. Saujani’s letter to Biden, published in the New York Times, was signed by 50-powerhouse women like Birchbox and Rent the Runway CXOs, celebrities like Amy Shumer, Gabrielle Union, and Eva Longoria, as well as #MeToo activist, Alyssa Milano. Coverage of Marshall Plan for Moms has ranged from CNN, to The Hill, to CBS, Today Show, Fortune, Forbes, and more.
As the pandemic deepens gender inequalities, I find it fascinating and important to shine light on in further research. For this exercise, I will discuss a potential mixed-methods approach to this by using Communication Theory of Identity (CTI) as a framework for this study.
CTI and Identity Gaps in Working Mothers
As mentioned in my theory response, CTI highlights that individuals have four levels: personal, relational, enacted, communal. People with less power or societal rankings tend to suppress their identity, creating identity gaps (i.e., working mothers). This can have detrimental effects on one's mental health (i.e., depression) but also lead to ineffective communication. This theory would be great as a framework for furthering research on work-life balance, which is why I have selected it for this proposal.
In COM 598, we read an article about Japanese women's identities. They highlighted the contradictions in the women's relational identities, showing identity gaps. I believe we can use this study as a groundwork for studying the work-life balance struggle many women are facing during COVID. Women are not only working mothers, they are teachers, they are nannies, they are cooks and maids, etc. As we look at the preliminary data Marshall Plan for Moms is built on, we see these identity gaps affecting predominantly women. In a Women’s Day seminar I attended earlier this week, Achieve Unite stated that 1 in 3 women are contemplating leaving work right at this moment. Identity gaps often have a person redefine or realign their identities, which could be detrimental for working mothers. The data is lending itself to this study and the framework of CTI.
Qualitative Study
Qualitative research must be subjective, exploratory, and open ended. We conduct qualitative interviews in order to add to existing literature and theoretical perspectives by sharing others’ stories and experiences through data collection. Some types of qualitative methods include interviews, ethnography, and focus groups. Our interviews will aim to answer the question:
RQ1: How does the identity gap in relational identity for working mothers influence their decisions to stay or leave the workforce?
Methods
I would first start with semi-structured interviews to address the research question above. I would start with qualitative methods first because an exploratory study could help us highlight specific themes and categories, which we can then use in a quantitative study to determine if the findings are generalizable and transferable. Prior to conducting interviews or recruiting participants, we would want to submit for IRB approval since we will be working with the public.
Participants. In order to participate, we would recruit working mothers and set some parameters about their status in order to participate. They must be women, with at least one child, and have had a consistent full-time job for at least three years (leading up to COVID). We would want to ensure that they are from a variety of locations. By recruiting participants from different locations (ex. not all participants from Raleigh, NC), we will be able to identify different issues that arise across the board.
Procedure. To prepare for data collection, we would need to build out an interview guide which would outline some of the questions and topics I’d like to discuss in the interview. Questions about their decisions to leave the workforce, what it means to them to be a mother, what it means to them to have a job and career, etc. Digging into their relational identities as both mothers and working professionals, as well as why they choose to either stay in their career or leave, will be crucial to answering our research question. Once we have our sample pool, we would conduct 30-60 minute interviews either in-person or over Zoom. In-person interviews could potentially take place in coffee shops, libraries, etc. These interviews would need to be recorded for later use and analysis.
Analysis. After the interviews, we would start transcribing them. By analyzing the transcripts, we can pull out common themes associated with working mothers and their relational identity. Coding and analysis is the first step to helping outline common themes associated with each participant. In a recent CTI study about Japanese Single Women said that they coded for everything from feelings and emotions, to others’ reactions and responses, and more. After this coding is done, we will be able to highlight common themes and extract themes from our analysis. Analysis of the transcripts for metaphors or themes will then help us conduct a quantitative study based on those themes.
Quantitative Study
For a quantitative study, our measurement must be objective and statistically valid. These are closed-ended, causal statistics, that review numerical and hard data. Many quantitative methods can be used such as surveys, meta-analysis, or content analysis. For this phase of our mixed-methods study, we would want to conduct a survey. This survey can be leveraged to determine if the findings from our qualitative interviews are generalizable and transferable. Our survey will aim to answer the question:
RQ: How common are these issues working mothers face in the decision making process to either leave or stay employed?
Methods
In our exploratory study, we already have our themes selected from our qualitative interviews. We will now take these themes and translate them into a likert scale survey. We can operationalize these variables in a quantitative way. The reason we are doing a quantitative study now is to help us determine if the findings are generalizable and transferable. This will help strengthen our findings so that this research is proven that it can be applied in the future. The survey we conduct will help us quantify and rank some of the comments and themes discussed in our interviews. Surveys are great for assessing attitudes and behaviors of large groups of people and will potentially be easier to recruit for than an interview since they are not bound to locations, anonymous, and do not require much narrative to take place since all the questions are closed-ended.
Participants. In order to gather our sample, we would still want to recruit working mothers using the same parameters set before. An easy and great way to share these surveys would be through company ERG groups for women. Another way to share is through social media. Either of these options would help us maximize the number of participants. I’d like to have this be as geographically diverse as possible, same as our qualitative study.
Procedure. Once we have shared our survey with companies and on social media, we then should wait an appropriate amount of time to collect the data. We could leave it open for two or more weeks and then check in on our sample size at the conclusion of this time period. Once we have about 200 respondents, we should have enough of a sample to begin our analysis.
Analysis. We will want to run statistical tests that specifically identify the amount of times something was answered so we can then say, “X% of women say that they are leaving the workforce because of inaccessibility to childcare” (as an example, in the event inaccessibility to childcare was one of the common themes we saw in our qualitative analysis). To be honest, quantitative methods are not my forte, but I believe we’d want to input our data in SPSS during our data analysis to help us determine the validity of our data.
Ethical Considerations
From current research, we know there are many factors that go into women leaving the workforce. We will want to ensure we are not painting a white-washed image and that we are writing and researching more intentionally when it comes to race. Since low-income jobs have been depleated during COVID (mainly held by women) and we know that non-white women are often paid less than their white-female counterparts, we will want to do our part to ensure this is a well rounded and represented study.
Also, ensuring our studies are fully anonymous is important because some participants may still have jobs, or are thinking about leaving their job. As mentioned earlier, identity gaps can also lead to many negative outcomes like depression. We would want to take that into consideration when asking certain questions in our interviews, as we are not psychologists and not adept or trained in clinical conversations surrounding depression.
Ultimately, an overarching ethical consideration all researchers should have is how they represent the data. In a “fake news” society, we will want to ensure that we are not misrepresenting information and always being transparent about our analysis and findings. Dr. Amy Delaney came to our COM 598 class yesterday and spoke of the importance of getting your questions right the first go-around. Regardless of your research method, you have one shot to collect your data. You cannot go back after and say, “wow, I wish I had included this question” or “these findings aren’t exactly what I’m looking for, let’s redo this part of the procedure.” Dr. Delaney stressed the importance of measurement, and she’s right! By doing a mixed-methods study, we are able to measure the quality of our research in both means of reliability (consistency of measurement) and by validity (confidence in measures).
