The purpose of this exercise if for you to observe one social setting or social artifact to begin to detect patterns in human behavior – observance of norms and potentially behaviors that deviate from the norm. This week’s exercise includes two parts. First, without any prep work, you will need to go to one public place (or conduct content analysis with your social artifact) and observe the people/artifact for 25 minutes. Social Setting: Note people’s behavior, their demeanor, their reactions/interactions to/with each other. Social artifact: from second to second (for TV), or page to page (for print), Note themes, sounds (i.. music), texture of page (i.e. ads in magazine), etc. Second, you will develop a research design with research problem, hypothesis and operational definitions for variables; then you will conduct another 25 minutes of observations.
