I’m posting this for a colleague at my employer, the Wellesley Centers for Women. She’s part of a team doing research on how young people’s use of media influences their developing self-identity. She told me the team is particularly interested in “reaching out to young people whose voices are not always incorporated into developing new knowledge,” including those who are LGBT, are in LGBT-parent families, and/or are people of color.
The team is looking for young people between the ages of 12 and 25 to take a 15-20 minute survey—and there’s the chance to win prizes for participation. If you know of anyone who might be interested, please pass this message along!
I’m not involved in this specific project (and I speak only for myself at this blog, not for my employer), so if you have any questions, send them to mediaidentitystudy@wcwonline.org.
Here’s the full description:
We are doing a nationwide online survey study called the Media & Identity Project. This study is being conducted by researchers at Wellesley College. We are inviting young people between the ages of 12-25 to participate. We are interested in how the use of social media, technology, and TV influences you, particularly in terms of cultural and gender identities. The survey will take 15-20 minutes and your answers will remain private. At the end of the survey, you will get a chance to enter weekly raffle prize drawings of $25, $50, and $100.
Please enter our webpage below to begin taking the survey.
www.wcwonline.org/mediaidentitystudy
We look forward to hearing from you!
The survey has passed the review of the Institutional Review Board at Wellesley College (of which the Wellesley Centers for Women is part).
I just had my teenager take the survey, but neither of us saw any questions that would have clearly captured the fact he has 2 moms. He checked that he lives with a mother/stepmother and checked that he doesn’t have a father/male guardian. But there weren’t any questions that specifically asked about LGBT parents, or multiple parents of the same gender. And there was definitely no way to indicate educational levels of a second same-sex parent. You might want to relay this info back to your colleague — if they were specifically trying to capture the children-of-LGBT demographic, they should have included it as a check-box option, rather than expect kids to describe their family structure under “other.”
Frankly, I would not have encouraged my son to take the survey if I’d known that it would fit him just as badly as various surveys he has to take for school, and just reinforce the idea that our family structure is something so unusual that it doesn’t merit a check-box.
Thanks, S. I appreciate your feedback, and will certainly relay this to my colleagues.
Dear Mombian community,
I thank Dana and several concerned bloggers for bringing this to our research team’s attention. We apologize for the lack of answer options to reflect same sex family structure, as we were using several pre-existing measures that capture socioeconomic status, and these have not historically been inclusive enough to keep up with 21st century families. Over the past 24 hours, we have changed the survey to include a specific question about same sex families and have tailored questions that would pertain to their situation. Even though this cannot take away the frustration that the survey takers already experienced while bumping against this roadblock, I wanted to reassure all potential survey takers that your family structure is an essential part of your identities and we completely acknowledge that and celebrate it.
I look forward to any comments or feedback you may have about this survey. One of the purposes of the survey is to find participants whose voices aren’t traditionally heard through mainstream surveys. This is a learning process for us as researchers and I invite you all to help us gain knowledge about underrepresented communities and spread the word about this survey (new and improved version!).
Sincerely,
Linda Charmaraman
Principal Investigator
Media & Identity Study
Wellesley Centers for Women
(family structure: 2 moms, 1 daughter, 1 dog)
Dana and Linda, thank you both for the fast follow-up! I am very impressed. Linda, I really appreciate the effort you are making to make it a more inclusive survey — it must indeed be tough to capture all the demographics changes to make for a more inclusive survey, when so many pre-existing survey tools out there are so inadequate.
I did fine one nice benefit from having my son fill out the survey, even in its original form — it’s often hard to know what is going on inside a teenager’s brain, and yet it was interesting to peek over his shoulder and see how he felt about some topics that we’d never discussed directly. (Like how race and religion might impact his dating choices.)
Anyway, thank you!