What does an Institutional Review Board do?
- Variety of different types of scientists and members of the general public make up the IRB
- Weigh the potential benefits vs. the potential costs (not always black and white)
What are some of the qualifications of an IRB?
- Informed consent: study must be explained to participant before they agree to participate
- Minors under the age of 18 cannot give informed consent; must get consent from parent or guardian
- Prison population may feel coerced
- Voluntary participation: occurs during the study; participant must be allowed to withdraw at any time
- Minimize harm or distress caused to participants
- Anonymity or confidentiality
- Using deception: must be justifiable and explained afterward
- Must be a valid reason why deception was used
- Debriefing: must give participants info about study after it is completed and make sure they are ok.
What is sampling? How do you make it representative?
- Sampling: selecting members of the population to be in your study
- Sample should be representative (as much like our population as it can be)
- Best way to select a sample is randomly- every person in population has equal chance of being in the sample
What is volunteer bias? Why are most samples in sexuality research are limited and a victim to it?
- Volunteer Bias: sample is not truly random because it relies on volunteers
- Volunteers for sexuality research tend to be/have: more permissive attitudes about sex, more sexually experienced, more likely to be male, less religious, more likely to be politically liberal, more likely to be college students (often done on college campuses)
What is self-reporting?
- Self Report- ask participants directly about sexual thoughts, feelings, values, and/or behaviors
- Questionnaires (written) vs. Interviews (verbal)
What are the strengths and weaknesses of self-reporting?
Strengths:
- cheap, efficient, can study things you cannot simply observe (feelings, thoughts), online surveys may give you access to hard to study groups/people
Weaknesses:
- Design Concerns
- Limited Choices
- Ambiguous Questions
- Wording of Questions
- Order of Questions
- Participant Concerns
- Purposeful distortion
- Problems with memory
What is Observation?
Directly watching and/or recording a behavior of interest
What are the strengths and weaknesses of observation?
Strength:
- Accuracy
- Physiological Measurements Possible
- Thermography
- Vaginal Photoplethysmograph (uses light to see blood flow)
- Penile Strain Gauge
- fMRI
Weaknesses:
- Increased problems with volunteer bias
- Problems generalizing to real world because small sample size
All research has bias. What is sex research influenced by?
- Sex research is influenced by a number of institutions
- Religious organizations, law, education, family, friends, the media
- These institutions have impacted how we can view, talk about, and even research sex
What is the importance of experimental research?
They are the only type that can show and measure causality. Shows how one variable impacts another variable.
Describe Qualitative research (provide an example of someone famous for this research)
- Qualitative- more in-depth and open ended, hopes to discover how or why things happen
- Focuses on textual data
- Four Validities: Dependability, Credibility, Trustworthiness, and Confirmability
- Describe your first time having sex
- Alfred Kinsey (interviews)
Describe Quantitative Research
- Quantitative- employs statistical method to test a theory or hypothesis, often uses numerical data to generalize to a larger population
- Focuses on numerical data
- How old were you when you first had sex
What are correlational designs? What is there purpose? What is the caveat?
Correlational designs are used to illustrate a relationship between two variables. It uses statistical method to predict the strength of the relationship of two variables as well as predict what type of behavior will occur next. However, correlation does not equal causation.
EX: Correlation between Porn and Sexual Aggression, but after experimental research there is no causation shown (Ferguson and Harley)
What is experimental design? What do we have to ensure?
Experimental research wants to see how one thing impacts another (observe change and determine casualty). They see how a change in an independent variable affects the dependent variable. But you have to ensure all other factors remain the same.
How do we ensure accuracy with experimental design?
- Validity
- Reliability
- Replicability
Validity
Whether the tool we are using measuring what we are aiming to measure
How accurate is the tool at measuring what we want to measure?
Reliability
Is the ability for as measurement to reproduce similar results over time
If we ran experiment multiple results, would we find the same thing?
Replicability
Ability to recreate the experiment
Why might researchers use a convince sample?
It is hard to get a representative group because of stigma, religion, etc. Some people use a convince sample, already established network, because they are easily accessible. However, they are not representative of a group and heavily influenced.
Response Bias
Thought process that might influence a participant to respond inn a self-report survey or interview in a less than truthful way
Social Desirability Bias
Participants may report behaviors that are more socially desirable than what is actually true
Richard von Krafft-Ebing
Conservative early sex reasearcher who believed sex was only for reproductive means and was referenced often in discussions of sex and legal sex cases. Any non-procreation sex was a perversion (book Psychopathia Sexualis)
Henry Havelock Ellis
Progressive sex researcher who indicated masturbation and homosexuality are normal and that women and men exhibit similar levels of sexual desire. Discussed trans.
Margaret Sanger
Founder of planned parenthood, advocate for birth control and reproductive rights for women. Critics pointed out her support of eugenics and abortions as reasons to discredit her work.
