Lawrence, Harrison and Stone Article

The purpose of the study conducted by Lawrence, Harrison and Stone was to uncover the perceptions that typical college students have about college athletes. With the word 'perception' also comes the word 'stereotype,' and that is the central theme behind the article. A stereotype is defined as, "as an exaggerated belief associated with a category. Its function is to justify (rationalize) our conduct in relation to that category."

As I was reading the section at the beginning about the Perceptual Confirmation Paradigm (PCP), I couldn't help but to somewhat smile. I have had multiple conversations with friends and others of the same race and around the same age. The majority of the people I've had conversations with about racial stereotypes basically don't like to acknowledge the stereotypes exist. I have used an example that I heard from a guest lecturer many times while having this conversation. His example dealt with a study done with employers reviewing the resumes of applicants. The research team put together resumes that had practically identical credentials, including the same quality education, the same amount of experience and the same skill set. The main difference on each resume was the name attached to the top. Half of the resumes included typically "white" sounding names (John, David, Jeff), while the other half of the resumes included typically "black" sounding names (Jamal, Tyrone, Malcolm). I don't remember the exact numbers, but the results were significant. Employers, from all types of companies, regularly would invite the "white" sounding names in for interviews over the "black" sounding names.

Until reading this article, I had never developed a sport-specific example. The article explains how white participants were asked to evaluate a basketball players talents based on listening to a radio broadcast of the contest. Half of the participants were told the player to evaluate was white, and the other half was told the player was black. The participants who thought the athlete was white used terms like "less athletic ability," "court smarts" and "hustle." The perceived black athlete was said to have more athletic ability and less court smarts. Keep in mind, this was the same athlete. As I've mentioned, this is an unbelievable example to show that stereotypes exist whether or not we are willing to believe they do or not.

Sparkes and Smith Article

The basis of this article deals with how a qualitative researcher can deem research "good." Sparkes and Smith look at two different types of researcher to come to a conclusion. The first type of researcher is a criteriologist and the second type is a relativist.

A criteriologist, as the name suggests, judges the quality of research based on "permanent and universal" criteria. To this person, a clear cut algorithm must be predetermined in order to properly judge the quality of the research. After evaluating the research, the criteriologist then has a very basic yes or no answer. The research is good, or the research is bad.

The relativist, similar to the criteriologist, does believe that criteria should be used in evaluating research. However, the difference comes in that that relativist "does not believe that these criteria should be determined in advance of any particular piece of inquiry." In this type of evaluation, the relativist cannot determine definitely that the research is 'good' or 'bad.' For the relativist, evaluation of the research is contingent on the time and place of evaluation and the circumstances in which the research is collected.

The authors of this article are much in favor of the relativistic approach to evaluating qualitative research. They claim that criteriological research is crippling, as it does not allow for conversation and inhibits creativity. In a nutshell, criteriology allows for no thinking 'outside the box.' In contrast, relativism allows for creativity, conversation, and the development of potentially better ideas.

I also side with the relativistic approach. I will use the idea of women in sports as an example to illustrate my point. The 'research' and the thoughts of the early 1900s most likely were consistent that women should not participate in sports as men could. With a criteriological approach, the same universal and predetermined ideas of that time would carry over forever. However, taking a relativistic approach and allowing 'time' and 'place' to be factors in the quality of research, discussion, experimentation and action have occurred which obviously diminish the quality of thought in the early 1900s.

Without relativism, we never allow ourselves to evolve. This isn't just true in research. This is true in sports, music, style, theater, business, etc.