Students will create a professional multimedia presentation discussing their research process from start to finish. Presentations must include an introduction of the research question, a brief literat

Research Methodology

Yaritza Barbosa

Social Psychology Self and Society

04/10/18

Research Methodology

The research method used for the study is secondary research analysis. The secondary research is a type of research where the findings of already gathered, evaluated and presented primary data are reexamined to give further depth to the analysis. The method is very advantageous for research as it saves time and finances that would have been otherwise spent on primary data collection, and it is also useful as in this way the analysis can be based on a large amount of variety of data that might have been difficult to obtain otherwise. There are some negative points associated with this methodology like the time needed to sort out the required information and reliability of the actual data, but these can be managed by carefully collecting data from multiple sources and arranging the collected information in a proper format.

The method is typically used in sociological research by scholars to add to the existing body of knowledge. The purpose of usage of this methodology of the research is to evaluate and assess the existing information and data in a way that was not intended in the actual original analysis. This adds perspective and new dimension to the existing research and the scholar does not have to face the problem of obtrusive research, as the research will not require any direct data collection from people related to the present purpose of analysis and the behavioral influences of the test subjects will not have any negative impact on the research (Little & McGivern, n.d.). One approach rigorously applied by sociologists for secondary data analysis is the content analysis approach (Pfarrer, 2012). For content analysis, the scholars use a quantitative approach to select a variable from the text and code that variable, then report the instances according to the coded categories from the selected sources of analysis. For the purpose of content-based research analysis, it is of vital importance to select the variables that can be observed with consistency, clarity, and reliability from the selected sources.

The question formulated for the study is ‘early exposure to TV silence predicts aggression in adulthood’. Secondary research methodology is highly suitable for answering the question communicated above, as it is very difficult to collect reliable, accurate and robust primary data for the measurement of aggression. The two main reasons identified by scholars for this are that people most of the time try to hide the aggressive behavior and that such aggressive actions have negative consequences and also are deemed to be unethical in nature (Moss, 2016). So, it is best for the research purpose to take the advantage of unrated data that have already been collected. There have been numerous studies on the subject encompassing various populations and time periods. There has been plenty of primary data collected, analyzed and reported on the subject matter by various scholars. The existing primary research on the subject has been done by scholars for different groups of people, and the matter has been the topic of study since the beginning of violence portrayed in the movies and later on television.

There are two main categories of aggression according to the scholars; effective aggression and predatory aggression (Moss, 2016). Affective regression is behavior associated with the defensiveness and reaction that takes place due to hostility in environment or detection of any element of threat or fear therein. Affective aggressive behavior is spontaneous in nature and will surface when any such situation arises regardless of the amount of self-control a person has. Predatory aggression, on the other hand, is the aggressive behavior that is deliberately performed; these kinds of actions are carefully thought out and planned. Predatory aggressive behavior mostly falls into the category of criminal intents and actions. For evaluation of data from a different angle and to add uniqueness to the study the data will be examined from the perspective of both types of aggression and to evaluate which type of aggression is mostly resulting from early exposure to TV. The types of aggressive behavior will be determined based on how the variable was measured in the original research. The results will be discussed in two groups based on the types of aggressive behavior being analyzed and assessed.

Data is collected from various primary data-based studies on the subject of exposure to TV and media in younger children leading to aggressive behavior in later life. The data is also collected from the scholarly work with partial applicability to the exact question, that is, from the studies where the impact of numerous variables, including media violence as predicting variable, is examined for calculating the adult aggressive behavior.

References

Little, W., & McGivern, R. Chapter 2. Sociological Research – Introduction to Sociology – 1st Canadian Edition. Opentextbc.ca. Retrieved from https://opentextbc.ca/introductiontosociology/chapter/chapter2-sociological-research/

Moss, S. (2016). Measures of aggression / smoss2- Sicotests. Sicotests.com. Retrieved 10 April 2018, from https://sicotests.com/psyarticle.asp?id=243

Pfarrer, M. (2012). Content and Textual Analysis as a Research Methodology | Terry College of Business. Terry.uga.edu. Retrieved from https://www.terry.uga.edu/management/contentanalysis/