Sorry for the radio silence all… My FTP account was deactivated… I’m work­ing if some­one tried to hack my site.

I’ll get a better update soon.

My appli­ca­tion was rejected/deferred. For those inter­ested attached are the fol­low­ing rea­sons and accom­pa­ny­ing vent:

b) Recruit­ment: Please pro­vide addi­tional infor­ma­tion on the pro­ce­dures that will be used to recruit sub­jects for the research. Please also submit a copy of the scripts/email mes­sages that will be used to recruit par­tic­i­pants (as out­lined in the recruit­ment sec­tion of the pro­to­col) and note that the IRB gen­er­ally requires that recruit­ment materials/scripts include any age restric­tions on participation.

my orig­i­nal entry
After observ­ing sub­jects, in envi­ron­ments includ­ing dis­cus­sion boards and chat rooms, I will pri­vately approach them via either e-mail or instant mes­sen­ger and ask if they are inter­ested in par­tic­i­pat­ing. This con­tact will include infor­ma­tion on my research and an overview of IRB protections.

If they response pos­i­tively, we will dis­cuss in what form the inter­view will take (phone, instant mes­sen­ger, e-mail). I will then send the full con­sent form to them and have it returned before pro­ceed­ing further.

Matt’s Com­ments
Oy! Recruit­ment scripts? I mean people will have to sign their lives away if they agree. And in that doc­u­ment every­thing is painfully explained. Why the heck do I need to script out every freakin’ encounter with people? I can just see it… I’m in the flow of a dialog and then I have to announce “give me a moment while I find the exact script that I will need to say in order to ensure that I don’t damage your obvi­ously frag­ile psyche.” Yeah… that’s natural.

The larger implied issue here is what con­sti­tuted a dialog online? Is an email exchange a online proxy for con­ver­sa­tion? Or is the equiv­a­lent of a mass blan­ket­ing or requests for par­tic­i­pa­tion in a study?

d) Data stor­age: Please pro­vide addi­tional infor­ma­tion on data stor­age and coding pro­ce­dures for the com­ments col­lected from chat rooms. Specif­i­cally, please indi­cate whether screen names or any other iden­ti­fiers will be linked to the chat room comments.

Matt’s com­ment
The issue of User­names is really tough. Since they are able to be linked back to e-mail addresses they’re con­sid­ered iden­ti­fy­ing infor­ma­tion. Like keep­ing someone’s name.

The prob­lem is that unlike most names, people specif­i­cally choose screen­names. And they have pretty sig­nif­i­cant mean­ing (which I’ll post more on soon). So I’m plan­ning to ana­lyze them as part of the study.

Still the IRB con­sid­ers this a dan­ger­ous thing as some­one could, in theory, get a hold of them and do “evil” things (though in this case I don’t know what con­sti­tutes evil). So I need to keep them locked down. And then if I want to use my find­ings, I must create pseu­do­nyms to ensure every­thing is cool.

This process is going to kill me. Or make me stronger. Sadly I fear it will be the former before the latter.

Quick note… IRB’s been sub­mit­ted. Hope­fully it will take about a week, pro­vided there are no snags.

The finals are taking far more time than expected. As such, I’m not going to get those pic­tures up just yet. Hope­fully I’m be more out in front of things by tomorrow.

On a slightly dif­fer­ent note, as the last post sug­gested, it turns out that a number of folks who are check­ing out the MAPSS (Master of Arts Pro­gram in the Social Sci­ences here at the Uni­ver­sity of Chicago) pro­gram are coming across this blog. As I posted please feel free to ask me ques­tions. Also, let me know if you are coming to the Campus Days event in April. I’ll be one of the tour guides for it. Plus a bunch of us are talk­ing about putting together a “after hours” meet and greet with stu­dents at one of the local water­ing holes. I’ll make sure you know when and where.

Quickly though, here are a couple answers to be big ques­tions:

1. Should I do MAPSS?
Short answer: yes
Long answer: if you are will­ing to work, it’s a great pro­gram. Arguably more intense than any single year of a PhD pro­gram. It will help sharpen your skills, focus your research, and hope­fully get you into a better PhD program/get you more money when you go there.

2. Is MAPSS just a cash cow pro­gram?
The only people I have heard express that view are U of C under­grads. At least the MAP’ers who run in my cir­cles are hang­ing and bang­ing with the best Anthro/Psych PhD’s this school has to offer. One of my friends has already been accept­ing into the Anthro PhD pro­gram here at U of C. We’re on first name basis with some of the top Profs and researchers in the world. I know MAP’ers who are involved in top flight research and are co-​presenting with Pro­fes­sors at conferences.

So no… I don’t think it’s a cash cow pro­gram. Nor do people like John and Jean Comaroff, Michael Siver­stein, Susan Gal, Bertram Cohler, John Cacioppo, and many others.

3. Is U of C com­pet­i­tive?
Yes no maybe… can you repeat the question?

For MAPSS no. I think most of the com­pet­i­tive­ness occurs on the under­grad­u­ate level. Don’t get me wrong, U of C is INTENSE. But all of the com­pe­ti­tion is with myself, not with my classmates.

Just got back from a week­end in iso­la­tion. I’m knee deep in finals. So start­ing tomor­row there will be new con­tent in the form of pic­tures! I’ve gotten a lot of pics I’ve been mean­ing to share for a while. Hope you enjoy.

BTW for new MAPSS stu­dents who come across my blog on web searches, I’m happy to answer ques­tions. Please e-mail my school account though: mattb (at) uchicago.edu

Con­sider this a mile­stone. I just had my last Lan­guage in Cul­ture Class. I’m one final and a few response papers away from putting it to bed. Woo Hoo.

ok one class is now offi­cially over. The giant paper is going well. I’ve sub­mit­ted my thesis topic to a con­fer­ence. I’m strung out and tired but makin’ progress.

2 Classes to wrap.