The Black Lives Matter Movement, Research Paper Example

The purpose of this study is to determine which demographic characteristics are representative of individuals in favor of the Black Lives Matter movement. The independent variables will include gender, age, income level, race, and religion. The dependent variable will be opinions concerning the Black Lives Matter movement. Gender will be defined as including male, female, or other. Age will be defined into five age categories, including 17 and under, 18 to 28, 29 to 40, 41 to 59, and 60 and over. Income level will also involve the use of income brackets. Broadly, individuals will be considered low income, lower middle class, upper middle class, and wealthy. The status of their income will depend upon the definition of median income in their state. If the individual is below two standard deviations from the mean of his or her state’s income, this individual will be considered low income. If the wage is above two standard deviations from the mean to the mean, the individual will be considered lower middle class. If the individual is above the mean to two standard deviations above the mean, the individual can be considered upper middle class. Last, if the income is above two standard deviations from the mean, the individual could be considered wealthy. Religions will include Christianity (all sects), Judiasm (all sects), Islam (all sects), polytheism, atheism, agnosticism, and other. Thus, all dependent variables will either be categorical variables or interval variables (Briffa et al., 2001).

The dependent variables will be defined by the non-demographic answers that are provided on the survey issued to participants. The first question will ask participants whether or not they support the Black Lives Matter movement, which will be answered providing a simple “yes” or “no” response (Diriwächter et al., 2006). Next, they will be asked how they support a variety of opinions that are held by those that are in favor of the Black Lives Movement in addition to those who oppose it. Respondents will rate the degree to which they support statements provided on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 representing the least amount of agreement and 5 representing the highest level of agreement. A score of 3 denotes a neutral opinion. In the following opinion responses, five of the following questions are phrased in a manner that would determine whether a respondent is in support of the Black Lives Matter movement and the remaining five are phrase in a manner that would determine whether a respondent is not in favor of the Black Lives Movement (Hunter et al., 2008).

The following questions will be asked to determine relevant dependent variables:

1. It is imperative that police reform is supported by the government.
2. Sandra Bland committed suicide while in prison.
3. Eric Garner deserved his treatment by the police when he was put into a chokehold because he was committing a crime.
4. It is important for presidential candidates to discuss support of the Black Lives Matter movement as a part of their campaigning process.
5. Black people are disproportionately targeted by police and convicted of crimes that they are not responsible for committing.
6. It is important for police to use stop and frisk tactics so they can effectively reduce the amount of crime in low income neighborhoods.
7. I will vote for a candidate that supports police reform efforts.
8. I stand by the police on their actions because they are working to protect innocent people.
9. I wish to become actively involved to support the Black Lives Matter movement.
10. Some of the Black Lives Matter movement activists are too extreme for me to become involved.

The answers to these questions will be used to determine the relationship between respondent demographics and their degree of support of the Black Lives Matter movement.

To analyze these variables, it would be necessary to determine how many individuals in each category rates a majority of answers strongly in favor of the Black Lives Matter movement, while gaining an understanding of those who are strongly against it. A summary of the data can be drawn by creating histograms that compare support for the Black Lives Matter movement using the response data. For example, the number of males versus females in support of the movement versus those who are not in support of the movement can be represented easily in graphical form (Given, 2008). It is apparent that the data retrieved is a form of inferential statistics because it is assuming that the population gathered for this study is representative of the total population. While this is not true, the sample size can be increased to contribute to the likelihood that the results of such a study would be externally valid. Even if this information is not externally valid, it provides a summary that can help researchers determine how to investigate this topic more thoroughly to be repeated again in the future. Furthermore, the results can be used as an internally valid understanding to reflect the opinions of a small portion of the overall population.

References

Briffa, Keith R.; Osborn, Timothy J.; Schweingruber, Fritz H.; Harris, Ian C.; Jones, Philip D.;

Shiyatov, Stepan G.; Vaganov, Eugene A. (2001). Low-frequency temperature variations from a northern tree ring density network. Journal of Geophysical Research, 106: 2929

Diriwächter, R. & Valsiner, J. (2006). Qualitative Developmental Research Methods in Their Historical and Epistemological Contexts. FQS, 7(1): 8.

Given, Lisa M. (2008). The Sage encyclopedia of qualitative research methods. Los Angeles, Calif.: Sage Publications.

Hunter, Laura; Leahey, Erin. (2008). Collaborative Research in Sociology: Trends and Contributing Factors. The American Sociologist, 39(4): 290.