Jaiden DeBoe

Author: jdeboe (Page 1 of 4)

Article Annotation #4

May 7, 2025 /

Payton’s article, titled “City of Water: Port-au-Prince, Inequality, and the Social Meaning of Rain”, perfectly displays the connection between a person’s ability to access clean water and their place in the social hierarchy. Based around Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Payton’s study analyzes the environmental and political histories of the city in order to prove that the Haitian government used water resources as a form of power and control over their citizens. The Duvalier regime, which controlled Haiti in the 1970’s, noticed how valuable water resources were, due to the shortages and floods that the country was constantly dealing with, and decided to use them as a weapon to divide the different social classes. Decisions like these only split the country apart politically, leading to the eventual overthrow of the dictatorship in the 1980’s. 

The findings of this article prove a lot to be true about society. If the government in Haiti managed to use water access as a weapon against the people, what is to stop any other national government from doing the same thing? There are several countries worldwide that struggle with the same issues that Haiti faced in the 1970’s. All it takes is a corrupt politician to take control and people could completely lose access to one of their most basic needs. Beyond water though, governments could base class divisions off anything that suits their agenda, whether that’s education, food, or even money. 

It is also important to note that this study shows a different trend than most studies I have seen. More often than not, social hierarchy is used as a way to determine access to resources. Even in America, a person’s position in society can often factor into how easily they can get clean water. The interesting part about this article is that it shows the reverse happening, water access determining social status. Just like with corrupt governments, this trend could occur anywhere. That is why it is important to notice events like these so they can be prevented in the future. 

Article Annotation #3

May 7, 2025 /

This article aims to uncover how family relationships affect Black land ownership through a specific example found in South Carolina. The researchers implemented ethnography and archival research to examine past and current land ownership situations between the Gullah/Geechee families. What they found was that the strong connections between family members, even if they were not related by blood, often pushed the people to speak up and fight against the governments that tried to limit their access to land. 

While some might see this as a powerful conclusion to the study, these results are not anything groundbreaking. It is already well known that most people work better in groups than on their own, so the idea that the people who lived with their family were more motivated to push back against the government is not a surprise. Plus, this study mainly focused on two families from the state of South Carolina. The exact results of the study could be due to factors such as the location where this study was conducted and the culture that surrounds that location.

Lisa Moore proves that, yet again, strong community ties are the key to bringing about change. Granted, there are some instances where people lose all hope in trying to fix their city simply because they know their government does not care. For the most part, however, cities where people have a strong sense of connection with their family or neighbors are the ones that end up making efforts to fix the problems that exist in their community. Flint, Michigan, would be a great example of this. All it takes to start a movement is for one person to decide if they are tired of living in their current conditions.

Moore, Lisa. “Gullah Geechee Families: Land and Culture.” Contemporary Rural Social Work Journal, vol. 9, no. 1, 2017, article 8

Reflection #7

May 5, 2025 /

One of the best examples of researchers pulling information from archives comes from an article titled “City of Water: Port-au-Prince, Inequality, and the Social Meaning of Rain”. The author of this article, Claire Antone Payton, clearly understands how crucial bias is when looking into historical events. For example, she includes accounts from Haitian residents such as Diefe Ofe. This ensures that her study reflects the real-life experiences of the people of Haiti instead of reflecting records provided by the elites in their society. 

Oftentimes, pieces of a story are left out of records or archives in order to favor the perspectives of the elites. This is known as archival silence, or gatekeeping, which can alter the way we see history if the truth is never revealed. When information is hidden from researchers, it can lead to them providing false or inaccurate data to the public. On the other hand, the researchers could hold out on releasing the results of their studies if they are aware that missing data is out there, but that does not always happen. 

If I were to use archives in my research on water equity issues, I would most likely try to find sources on the history of the Mississippi River. However, this task would end up proving rather difficult the further I search. Since much of the history of the Mississippi revolves around Native American tribes, finding more information on that topic would be challenging. Performing archival research is not as easy as one might think. There are several obstacles that a researcher must overcome in order to do it right. Fortunately, the results are often worth the challenge. 

Reflection #3

May 5, 2025 /

While the failure of the Challenger flight may have started with faulty O-rings in the space shuttle, its fate was sealed after NASA decided to ignore the issue. In the time of the Challenger’s launch, the popularity with space exploration had begun to dissipate. Due to this, NASA desperately wanted the Challenger mission to work, in order to excite the public and start making shuttle flights famous again. 

Even though not all the people working on the Challenger mission were willing to do whatever it took to succeed, the ones who did had nobody to stop them. Despite the many warnings given to the higher-ups at NASA, the engineers who predicted the Challenger’s explosion were ignored every time. NASA knew that the future of space exploration was resting on the results of this flight. So, when engineers at Morton Thiokol showed NASA data of the shuttle’s predicted explosion, they simply ignored it. 

Social facilitation played a major role in this as well. While the workers were overseen by the NASA officials, there was not one present to keep the officials in check. They made poor judgment after poor judgment without anyone being around to convince them otherwise. This imbalance of power made it to where the engineers could suggest something to the NASA officials, but they could not tell them what decisions to make. All they could do was sit back and hope that NASA was following their advice. 

Reflection #7

April 16, 2025 /

Not all research studies can collect their evidence from modern sources. Many of them require evidence from historical sources, or archives. One of the best examples of researchers pulling information from archives comes from an article titled “City of Water: Port-au-Prince, Inequality, and the Social Meaning of Rain”. 

The author of this article, Claire Antone Payton, clearly understands how crucial bias is when looking into historical events. For example, she includes accounts from Haitian residents such as Diefe Ofe. This ensures that her study reflects the real-life experiences of the people of Haiti instead of reflecting records provided by the elites in their society. 

Oftentimes, pieces of a story are left out of records or archives in order to favor the perspectives of the elites. This is known as archival silence, or gatekeeping, which can alter the way we see history if the truth is never revealed. When information is hidden from researchers, it can lead to them providing false or inaccurate data to the public. On the other hand, the researchers could hold out on releasing the results of their studies if they are aware that missing data is out there, but that does not always happen. 

If I were to use archives in my research on water equity issues, I would most likely try to find sources on the history of the Mississippi River. However, this task would end up proving rather difficult the further I search. Since much of the history of the Mississippi revolves around Native American tribes, finding more information on that topic would be challenging. 

Performing archival research is not as easy as one might think. There are several obstacles that a researcher must overcome in order to do it right. Fortunately, the results are often worth the challenges. 

Reflection #4

March 24, 2025 /

When talking about common survey methods, the two that first come to mind with researchers would be interviews and focus groups. However, these research approaches can often fail in reaching their primary goals. When most people think about interviews, the idea of jobs interviews could be the first thought that appears in their head. Keeping this mindset throughout a research interview would most likely lead to the interviewee being more nervous and less willing to tell the complete truth, since their main focus will be finding the “right” answer, instead of finding their answer. One possible way this could be reworded in order to put the participants more at ease would be to introduce them as questionnaires instead of interviews. 

Beyond that, the researchers themselves could also influence the responses from the participants. The way the questions are phrased often has an impact on the answers given. For example, a researcher could ask a question such as “Do you believe the new law that was passed is just?”, or they could ask it as “How do you feel about the new law that was passed?”. The first way may persuade a participant to say yes, while the second way excludes any bias. Many researchers may not realize it, but the way they ask a question can cause their responses to be less accurate.  

So, after a researcher conducts an interview and gets the responses, their study is complete, right? Not quite yet. Perhaps the most important part of conducting interviews is interpreting their results afterwards. Since interviews often provide more qualitative data than quantitative data, grouping similar responses is difficult, but crucial to seeing how many people answered a question a certain way. The struggle is finding a balance between putting similar responses in the same category, while not forcing a complex answer into a certain box. Failure at either one of these could cause many viewpoints to be ignored in a given study. Despite all the difficulties that come with interviews and focus groups, when done right, they can offer a lot of insight into the experiences and struggles of people from any given commnity. 

Chapter 1 & 2 Top 5 Assignment

March 23, 2025 /
  1. I wonder whether it is better to conduct a structured interview or an unstructured interview. Sure, a structured interview can often resemble survey research, therefore being more useful for our studies. However, I feel like unstructured interviews could give more insight into the topic that the interviewer might not have thought about beforehand. For example, if an interviewer is asking questions in order to get a census of events that are occurring in local communities, allowing the interviewee to respond in a way that opens the door to new ideas would be a lot more useful than just getting a yes or no answer from them. 
  1. The first chapter mentions how Amy Schalet used a semi-structured interview approach to get the opinions of people from American and the Netherlands on adolescent sexuality. When asked about this technique, Amy explained that it offered an almost “friendly” atmosphere by just letting the conversation flow instead of pausing multiple times to switch the question. I personally believe that this would be the best approach for an interview, purely because of the fact that the friendly environment will make the interviewee more willing to open up more about the topic and feel safe doing so. I believe that this is a practice that should be implemented in our research. 
  1. Although conducting a semi-structured interview gives the interviewer a lot more freedom, it also brings along more challenges. Amy Schalet went on to mention that the difficulty in conducting that kind of interview, especially on a controversial topic, is keeping the interviewee just inside their comfort zone. Since certain topics can often result in major emotional responses, it is important to ensure that you do not push them over the edge. While this is easier in a structured interview, since the interviewer can easily skip a question or move on to the next topic, if necessary, semi-structured interviews can often require complete 180’s from the current discussion to prevent an emotional reaction. 
  1. It is interesting to me how increasing the number of participants in a single interview can make a difference to the results. Chapter 2 starts out by discussing how focus groups can be effective in finding a meaningful conclusion to a complex topic. The authors explain how using focus groups as a method for research can allow people to think collectively instead of individually. One person who is interviewed about a problem in their community may answer the question with a bit of bias, based on how the problem affected them and how educated they are on topic However, a group of people would be able to bounce ideas off each other and reach a collective conclusion. 
  1. Focus groups, just like semi-structured interviews, require a lot of attention and care. Audrey Kobayashi, a researcher who often works with focus groups, described how focus groups need a good facilitator to ensure the conversation flows smoothly. If only two people are actually engaged in the conversation, the facilitator needs to be able to slow the discussion down and allow for the more shy participants to get a say. If the topic being discussed can lead to different responses from different groups of people, the facilitator must be able to split the group accordingly.  

Psychology of Groups Top 5 Assignment

March 17, 2025 /
  1. I wonder why we all have a need to belong that needs to be fulfilled. Is it something that we have always had as humans? Is it a result of years of past human experience that makes us feel more successful when we find a group? This is most likely a question that we will not ever be able to answer, but it is interesting to think about why that is a trait that most people have, and why some people do not have this trait. 
  1. I think it is interesting how being a part of a group can change the way we see ourselves as individuals. A big part of our self-image is a result of our surroundings. We identify with certain groups that we share common interests with. This can lead us to feeling successful when our group is successful. Along with that, watching people in our group perform well often motivates us to perform better in similar situations. 
  1. Despite finding a group being very beneficial to us humans, it does not exactly result in a massive rise in performance. When we are in a group effort, we often tend to relax and perform worse individually because we know that we have support from other people as well. A group of four in a school project would theoretically work 4 times as efficiently as a person working alone, but the weaker performance of everyone in the group would actually cause them to perform slightly worse. 
  1. Along with decreased performance, the idea of group thinking is an intriguing topic. Since being a part of a group tends to change the way we see ourselves, it can often change the way we see the world. In situations where members of a group disagree with each other, one side, usually the loud majority, will convince the others that they are right in this instance. This happens because our identity within the group can compel us to believe the group’s most popular belief, due to members in a group often sharing similar ideals. 
  1. Even though these conflicts can lead to groups being less effective, there are ways to avoid these conflicts. Fulling discussing the pros and cons of certain opinions can help prevent issues such as group think and polarization. Most groups do not prepare enough for this, which is why they ultimately become less successful, despite each member mostly sharing common beliefs. 

Reflection #2

March 17, 2025 /

One of the main problems with data cleaning, as it is, is the connotation that the words give off. Data cleaning refers to the process of wiping away data that is different to the trend already being set up by the rest of the data. The name does not exactly give it justice for how crucial it is in the research process. It gives off the impression that data needs to be “fixed” or “altered” in order to be correct. The best way to phrase this practice would be to compare it to something more similar. Something such as “data-keeping” works better since it relates to housekeeping, which is a better description of what is actually being done during data cleaning. 

Unfortunately, the one difference between housekeeping and data cleaning is that data cleaning does not just remove “bad” data. The data cleaning process can often eliminate data that is significant because of its uniqueness. This could cause the results of a study to be less accurate to the real world. 

A possible solution for this would be to highlight the unique sets of data, instead of hiding them. This could be done by putting a spotlight on regional or even spatial differences. The researchers may not know why these differences are occurring, but that just leaves room for more research to be conducted on this topic in the future. This gives us more possibilities for future discoveries that we might not have had if the original study was “cleaned”. 

Article Annotation #2

March 17, 2025 /

Katie Rawson and Trevor Munoz, the authors of this article, clearly made “data cleaning” the core topic. Specifically, the downsides to data cleaning. The main concerns that were brought up were the loss of validity and the reductiveness that can be caused by data cleaning. Without the complexity of data, which is lost in data cleaning, research studies become less accurate to real life, therefore less significant to the issue at hand. In the end, the authors propose a new approach to understanding complex data. This would consist of building systems that can explore the “strange” results instead of eliminating them completely. 

This seems to be a debate that is not exactly new to research fields. I know this because the author’s purpose was not to completely get rid of data cleaning, but to change how it is done. A change in the way data cleaning is conducted was first suggested whenever the authors mentioned how harmful the current practice is. The only main alteration that is brought up is the creation of a new system that values the different and unique qualities of data. This is not a new revelation, since data cleaning has been a valuable part of research for years. However, the article still holds a significant argument, proving that data cleaning is a piece of an old system that is in dire need of an update. This is all done without entirely bashing data cleaning as a practice. 

While I may not know much about data cleaning and the arguments against it, I know this is a controversial topic, since data cleaning has long been used to improve data quality after a study is conducted. Fortunately, the way this article was written gets the point across while not attempting to take data cleaning off the list of research practices. Now, new researchers who read this article can understand the downfalls of data cleaning without ignoring its full benefits. 

« Older posts

© 2025 Jaiden DeBoe

Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑