For example, in 2009 we started seeing articles describing how use of Facebook had “doubled over the past 60 days” or how in the past year Facebook as grown by 145% among users in the United States (from 20 million in 2007 to over 103 million in January of 2010). By July 2010 US users had exceeded 125 million, while newspapers reported that the total user base had exceeded 500 million users worldwide. Facebook, and SNS, growth exceed everyone’s expectations. The question remains, is this a viable area for recruiting participants for research?

I would side on the positive. My own experience with recruiting participants online has convinced me that for some types of research, recruiting online is hugely beneficial. I was looking for a global sample of individuals who had a particular type of life experience. I ran an add on Facebook, and within one month had over 2 million “impressions” go out to the public, with 1, 073 people clicking on my add, all for $211. Slightly over half of my participants lived in India, a population I could never have reached with so little funding (and a typical faculty researcher’s budget). Additional respondents hailed from Australia, Canada, Mexico, Nigeria, South Africa, and the Ukraine, in addition to my US participants. Undoubtedly SNS allows for contact with a much broader group of individuals, and in my opinion this completely changes the game, as it were, for social scientists conducting research.

For more information on SNS and research based on networking sites, I encourage you to visit the bibliography at http://www.danah.org/researchBibs/sns.php. It seems to be updated regularly and offers a large variety of research chapters & articles.

The second rave-goer is a text written by Edward Stewart and Milton Bennett, American Cultural Patterns: A Cross-Cultural Perspective (1991). This text describes a number of differences between various cultures, and in particular describes the differences between languages. For example, English maintains a structured relationship between subjects and objects while also being fairly action oriented whereas Chinese maintains a less polarized, more relational linguistic bent between subjects and objects, focusing on the continuum between polar opposites rather than on the ends of the spectrum. Another way Stewart and Bennett describe the difference is that English may be more digital and Chinese more analog. An example, dear Watson? Let us take family relationships and some event X that happens in the family. If one is raised using a language with very specific, hierarchical language around family dynamics and depending on context and formality the use of language changes, then the event within the family will be described using those same terms. However, if translated, let’s say, into English much of those formal, linguistic, relationship-specific words could easily be lost, and thus the description and full appreciation of the *experience* of the event changes.

In comes the third drunkard, careening toward the other two. This drunkard is that of the research method called phenomenology, and in particular the difference between classical phenomenology and what is at times called hermeneutic phenomenology. In classical phenomenology (or p-nom for short in this post), a reseacher may bracket his or her preconceptions, set aside these biases, and access the event at hand in a rather objective way. In hermeneutic p-nom there is a continual assumption that culture (and personal experience / bias) will always get in the way. Thus, according to hermeneutic p-nom there is no direct access of the experience, only direct access of one’s own experience of the experience, as experienced through one’s own cultural and personal lenses as it were.

KA-POW!! Stumbling, reeling, and a general sense of dishevelment and dizziness fill the air.

Ok, so what does this mean? Well, if one were to take a universalist perspective, then there does exist phenomena that occur at a ground of being level, that everyone may access. If one speaks English, then that experience is likely going to be described in polarized, action-oriented language that is not especially descriptive, and if one falls within the classical p-nom camp then one could, with some meditation and concentrated effort, set aside one’s biases and “get at” the real p-nom that occurred. HOWEVER, note that the permutation above is only one of many, many combinations. If one were relativist, then one would likely also be a hermeneutic p-nom advocate, and thus would also realize the complications of language to describe any event as a more descriptive language would give great, specific detail while another may focus more on the relationship of the event to some other event. If one were a evolutionist/developmentalist, then the event (or phenomenon) could be understood within a progressive perspective, noting that different descriptions of the event would necessarily point toward the different developmental levels of the individual (and her/his culture, language, etc.). An example here might be the difference between a 4 year-old’s description of a lunar eclipse and a 45 year-old’s description. But wait, what if they are from different cultures and speak different languages? Ah, then once again complexities arise and we might not be dealing with just a cognitively-based developmental difference.

Ryan, Ryan, Ryan, why do you go on? What is the purpose? Well, that is the point. The reeling that is. The point is to acknowledge that the drunken rave-goers have collided, and that at some point a stance must be taken in order to regain balance (at least momentarily until we can start dancing again). I am searching for my balance, are you?

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I’ve also been hard at work getting an online version of the Projective Differential developed. The first version is just about ready, and will be for coaches, counsellors, consultants, and therapists who do one-on-one work with their clients. This project is actually being run through my other company, Tapintu Inc., and has certainly reminded me that you have to make some choices in development - on time, on budget, to spec… pick two. The next phase of development (which I hope will proceed more quickly given the foundation we’ll have in place) will move towards having a system that can also be used for small group work, or large scale assessment. Once I’ve got everything in place, I will also be making a version available to researchers. Details and agreements haven’t been determined yet, but the researcher version may be offered through what we’re planning for Multiple Angles.

Ryan’s been focused on two fronts: writing articles an the difference in expressive art created by individuals who have had a near-death experience and creating the best darn Angel Learning System user friendly online dissertation process that ever existed. His next project, meditating on humbleness and humility. On the non-academic side, Ryan has started a hiking and meditation group that so far has gone quite well - nobody showed up for the first session and he ended up meditating in the rain, by himself, on a mountaintop, likely surrounded by hungry mountain lions, and rabid squirrels.

Some time ago I made a shameless plug for the film my brother-in-law is making (actually, he was a fiancé-in-law at the time), and mentioned that they were funding the film with pocket change contributions. Well, they’ve finished filming, and are in post-production now, but that doesn’t mean it’s too late to contribute!! They’re still accepting contributions over at Pocket Change Film, and $100 will still get you a ‘funded by’ credit on the film.

Now, here’s some BIG NEWS about that - the film’s star, Kristin Booth, recently won the Genie Award (kinda like Canada’s Oscars) as Best Actress in a Supporting Role for her performance in ‘Young People F$#%ing)‘. But that’s not all!! Just announced today - Gordon Pinsent (a multi-award winning Canadian actor) has joined the cast as the Narrator. That’s pretty cool!

Our presentation focused on the research our group conducted over a year within our own psychology graduate school, the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology. Our cooperative inquiry research focused on six facets of assessing diversity - curricular review (through syllabus analysis), student course evaluations, a brief student survey, faculty interviews, re-analysis of a recent “cultural assessment” which included a section on diversity, and our own reflections both as researchers and as community participants.

We found a number of trends, a couple of which as a faculty I find particularly interesting. One is that syllabi do not tell the entire story - often faculty include additional, sometimes spontaneous, exercises or discussions which may include diversity but were not previously included in the syllabus, while at other times diversity discussions were planned but not carried out in the classroom. From a research perspective, syllabi are useful as a start but cannot be relied upon to demonstrate what is really happening in a classroom. Other data sources must be collected to provide a more complete picture.

A second interesting point was that we found two means by which faculty included diversity within the classroom. One way was for the faculty/instructor to intentionally make space for diversity issues or plan discussions/exercises focused on diversity. Another way faculty/instructors introduced diversity was to invite students with diverse perspectives to share their perspectives. Generally the students were of visibly diverse populations, usually of a a different race/ethnicity than the dominant makeup of the student population within the class. This second way of introducing diversity intersected with another finding that some students felt tired of holding the diversity flag, as it were. Thus, while inviting student sharing may help create an atmosphere of student participation, I now feel it is vital for faculty/instructors to intentionally create space for diversity issues through readings, assignments, and focused discussions rather than rely on spontaneous discussions or relying on students to teach diversity perspectives to fellow students. This seems like it should be intuitive and common sense, however it likely needs to be repeated.

A third finding was that the top 3 diversity areas mentioned in faculty syllabi were culture, race/ethnicity, and religion/spirituality. All other categories were mentioned much less. This is particularly interesting as the sex/gender topic, while 4th on the list, was not even close to the religion/spirituality topic and yet we have a large LGBT community.

There were other findings as well, but I’ll keep this post from getting too long by stopping here. Maybe it will whet your appetite for a future article on the topic.

However, I will note that we presented our findings to our community after completion of the research, and then we conducted interviews one year later with 6 top administrators in the school including the president, academic VP, and Chairpersons of the programs to learn how our research influenced change at the school and the feedback was quite positive. So, stay tuned!

If you are interested in the next NCORE, which will be held in San Diego, CA please visit the NCORE website. Proposals for presenting must be in by Dec. 15th, 2008 and the conference will be held May 26 - 30th. Hope to see you there!

Personally I (Ryan Rominger) have moved into a formal Core Executive Faculty within the Global Programs (distance learning program) at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology. Part of this move was to take on the role of Associate Dissertation Director and help reform our dissertation departments into one unified dissertation department serving the 3 Ph.D. programs at the school. We are currently serving 155 students and will likely be up to 175 by holiday break, and 190 by the end of the academic year. In addition to the organizational change, the Director and I were charged with re-creating the forms, policies, and procedures for the entire dissertation process. Whew!

Besides the teaching and Associate Dissertation Director role, I am acting as the faculty trainer for our new online learning management system - (Angel Learning). It is quite a nice system, similar to eCollege, but the transition from our (ITP’s) old system to this new system has required quite a bit of training on my part so that I could train the Faculty! It has been fun, of course, as it pertains to online education and technology.

Meanwhile, there have been conference presentations (in particular the National Conference on Race and Ethnicity in Higher Education held in Orlando, FL this past year) and papers (1. Diversity Bibliography and Resources published through Division 2 - Society for the Teaching of Psychology - of the American Psychological Association Div. Biblio 2. Exploring the Aftereffects of the Near-Death Experience: A Summative Report to be published by the Journal of Near-Death Studies Exploring Aftereffects). So, yea, busy. However, it has been a good busy and quite a bit of fun amid the chaos. I look forward to getting back into blogging on this site, so stay tuned.

You may recall, back in January 2007 (was it really that long ago?) - I wrote a post about my sister’s fiancé’s short film “For All the Marbles”. Well, he’s now co-written a screenplay for a feature film which he will co-produce and direct. They’ve started quite a phenomenon with their means of raising the money to get the film made - they’re making the film on pocket change!

People from all over are donating small sums (and some not so small sums) to help get this film made. It all started with a jar, and some change out of someone’s pocket, and it’s become much more.

Anyone who donates $100 or more also gets a “Funded by” credit on the film.

You can learn more at their blog Pocketchange Film, or their Facebook group I’m Making a Feature Film with Pocket Change.