Thought experiment: Approximately one-page single-spaced scholarly essay, with a line of white space
between each paragraph.
Mini research topic: What is the amount of sexual content on (some specific media)? (This media could be a
television show, a film, a you-tube video (or videos), advertisements in a magazine, or film trailers.) Develop a
coding sheet that would allow you to determine no sexual contact, limited sexual content, moderate sexual
content and heavy sexual content. This would take me some serious thinking. For example, would 10 kissing
scenes be heavy sexual content? Would one scene of intercourse that was depicted for 2 seconds be enough
to make a 20 minute section of a film be heavy sexual content? What if it was 2 seconds or rape? Or 5 minutes
of sex? What if the scene was of bikinis at a beach? Would the sexuality be the poses? Or just the bikinis? If it
was the bikinis would there be an age limit? Would a scene/picture of 80 year-old-men wearing speedos be
heavy sexuality (or just annoying)? What if the scene was of 80 five-year-old girls wearing bikinis?
Take between 10 to 20 minutes of material and using your coding sheet to rate the sexual content of that
material. (This would be about half of a sit-com, 5 Disney trailers, 10 beer commercials or a 20-minute segment
of a film.)
Prepare a results and conclusions for your research and discuss (briefly) any problems that you found with the
coding instructions. (Problems would include places where the coding instructions were not clear, places that
you thought were sexualized but the coding instructions were not complete enough to capture that data and so
on.)
Basic structure of essay:
One sentence description of the research project including the specific media examined.
Coding instructions. (Put as an appendix.)
Research coding sheet. (Put as an appendix.)
Chart of results. (Put as an appendix.)
Paragraph explanation of most important results.
Conclusions of what you found.
Description of any spots where the coding instructions were incomplete or hard to follow.
Sample Solution
