"Booooooyaahhhh...I'm not really pregnant!"

[33girl]

Originally Posted by Drolefille

This kind of study can never have a control group. It's qualitatively reviewing her experience. Instead it would need to be repeated elsewhere with other students.

I didn't say a control GROUP, I said one individual as nearly "like" her as possible.

Obviously people are going to react differently to the pregnancy of Suzie who is in the home-ec program, not very popular, has been dating the same guy for 5 years and is wearing a promise ring, and Bonnie who is the head of every club and sport and never dates the same guy twice. She can't say "this is how people react to a pregnant student" and leave it at that.

[Drolefille]

Originally Posted by 33girl

I didn't say a control GROUP, I said one individual as nearly "like" her as possible.

Obviously people are going to react differently to the pregnancy of Suzie who is in the home-ec program, not very popular, has been dating the same guy for 5 years and is wearing a promise ring, and Bonnie who is the head of every club and sport and never dates the same guy twice. She can't say "this is how people react to a pregnant student" and leave it at that.

A control person* wouldn't be relevant to that study, that's what I'm saying. If a professional were doing a similar sort of thing, it would probably involve surveying large groups of pregnant students on how their peers have reacted to their pregnancies. If a non-professional (because I don't think a professional would) were to do something closer to what the student did it would be multiple faux-pregnancies, not one pregancy/one non-pregnancy or even 10 pregancies/10 non-pregnancies.

*group here can include "one" individual, but whatever.

[DrPhil]

Originally Posted by 33girl

I didn't say a control GROUP, I said one individual as nearly "like" her as possible.

Obviously people are going to react differently to the pregnancy of Suzie who is in the home-ec program, not very popular, has been dating the same guy for 5 years and is wearing a promise ring, and Bonnie who is the head of every club and sport and never dates the same guy twice. She can't say "this is how people react to a pregnant student" and leave it at that.

This type of participant observation methodology is not designed to address larger patterns of behavior and generalizations. Her findings would indicate that people reacted to her, specifically, in that manner and she could posit that it is perhaps the case that there is a larger phenomenon at play for future research to examine. Her study does not test that larger phenomenon.