Sunday, February 26, 2017

The Annals of AP Research

Only 7 more weeks of AP Research. Man, it’s almost over. I can’t believe that we are already finished collecting and analyzing our data. My research has yielded results that I did not see coming, and I have noticed connections between my themes that I had never even thought of before. But I guess, that is the whole point of my research. I found 6 overarching thematic differences between Americanized and Japanese anime and around 15 different sub themes. I am excited to write my results section, however, with so much data/details it is difficult to find a format to effectively present the themes. Therefore, I have looked through pages and pages of JStor and my Google Drive folder to come up with the following three sources to guide me:


I have thoroughly scoured the annals to find the best sources to use for my results section.


The first source that I will be using is the thematic guide by Dr. Braun and Dr. Clarke. This was the same paper that I used in my methods to layout my thematic analysis. Braun and Clarke also outline how to present the results of a thematic analysis. Having said that, Braun and Clarke’s paper does not go into detail about a specific format for the themes that I have found, rather they give general guidelines on what the results  and discussion sections should include. Perhaps the biggest advice they give is to use “vivid examples, or extracts” that demonstrate the essence of the theme “without unnecessary complexity” (23).


The next source I looked at was Ralph Donald’s “Anti-War Themes in Narrative War Films.” Donald conducted a thematic analysis on around 20 different films. In his results section, Donald follows a very simple, yet effective structure. Each theme is given its own section. Then, within each section, Donald uses different examples from his analysis to portray the theme in action. Donald only found three overarching anti-war themes but for each he gave an example from each of the 20 films he watched.


The final source is John Weakland’s “Themes in Chinese Communist Films.” Within his results section, Weakland first gave a list of all the themes he found followed by a brief description of the essence of the theme. After that list, Weakland talked about all of the themes as a whole. He looked at the connections between the themes, how the themes are related, how they contradict, and so on. However, unlike the previous two sources, Weakland did not provide any specific examples of each theme.


I am aiming to make my results section Ralph Donald’s results sections. I believe that Weakland will be more useful for my discussion section. First, I will devote a small subsection to each theme, I have 6 in total. Within each subsection, I will talk about the different manifestations of the themes and give examples for each manifestation. My only worry right now is going over the word count or leaving the reader confused, but I know it will all work out at the end (hopefully).

Word Count: 491

4 comments:

  1. Hey GG!

    Well, it's my first time on your blog, so I'd like to start off by saying how much I love your project and your blog layout. Everything looks fantastic and well-put together!

    I really liked the thematic guide source by Braun and Clarke, since it's not just a paper but a real guide on how to analyze the data you got and present it. I think, like you said yourself, the most important part should be providing illustrative examples of each theme, so that the reader can buy what you're saying about each theme, and then also has some insight into your thought process when you did create these themes.

    I am new to your project, but I was curious as to how you plan on measuring Westernization? Do you have different samples of anime shows (forgive my ignorance)? I just wanted to make sure if you wanted to compare specific shows or look at the effect of Westernization that you touched on the comparison.

    But I'm sure you know exactly what you're doing... keep up the good work both on your research and your comments ;)

    Yash

    (189)

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  2. GURSAJAN,

    The title of you blog reminds me of the research journal Annals of Mathematics. It's super prestigious and your blog definitely fits the aesthetic of it. ;)

    Anyways, I think it's awesome that you have three sources already ready for you to begin to outline you results section with. I think you particularly have an interesting job ahead of you if you want to synthesize the Weakland and Donald technique in your paper. It's definitely important to talk about individual themes, but I think transitions are a great way to begin building up the connections between different themes, and to an ultimate analysis of how they are all connected.

    I also think you really need to start thinking about your results outline in particular. It seems like the way you list the themes matters, and I'm sure you're going to need to reorganize you thematic order multiple times to get it perfect.

    Keep up the awesome work!

    Akash

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  3. Hi Gursajan,
    Its my first time on your blog, and I love how removed the blog is from anime. You are honing in on the research aspect of your project, not getting caught up in the epicness that is anime. Please fix your scroller though. The three sources you presented all have different styles. I agree that you have to use examples to properly convey your message to the reader. Without it the reader may be left confused. But you also have to incorporate the good from Weakland and Clarke. Try to create an amalgamation of the previous 3 studies' style to best represent your data.
    -
    Ashwath V.

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  4. Hey Gursajan -- I know that we talked on Monday about how you're going to organize your results, and I think that talking about each larger theme with a subtitle will be important. I agree that having some sort of illustration will also be key, as you want to demonstrate to the reader your thinking (particularly because your methods could be critiqued as more subjective).

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