Some Thoughts on Luker's Chapter 6

I found Luker's chapter on sampling, operationalization and generalization to be the most interesting reading that we have been assigned so far. If I were pressed to choose which chapter in her book has been the most useful, I would probably maintain that the literature review techniques, analogies and advice given in Chapter 5 are paramount, and can be viewed as beneficial not just for our own research but for any social science research project. After reading Chapter 6, however, it now seems as though Luker is beginning to strike a greater balance between theoretical discussions and parables, and concrete, practical advice. I hope this is an approach that is maintained throughout the remainder of the book, because I find it to be well-rounded and engaging.

I like that Luker advocates drawing from the methodology of canonical science in a judicious fashion. It is clear that different research contexts can warrant different research methodologies. I like how Luker illustrates this point through her K-9 Search and Rescue Dog Training analogy (Luker, pp.102-3). When the goal is to simply search the wilderness, the appropriate method is to divide the terrain into grids and then have teams search each one. When the goal is to search disaster areas, the appropriate method is to target specific areas - for example, in the case of an earthquake, it is best to target areas containing buildings, that are in a state of collapse, and where people are likely to have been during the crisis. Luker also gives advice on conducting comparisons, doing data outcropping, and maximizing the "acceptability" of your sample among peers, colleagues, editors and reviewers.

In the operationalization section of the chapter, Luker dives right into the heart of what makes defining things so difficult: language, culture, history, gender, law, politics, philosophy perpetually overlap and interact with each other to produce highly contextual definitions of persons, objects and ideas. Her in-depth analysis of how definitions and perceptions of rape have changed throughout time is fascinating, as is her brief investigation of how rape can still be defined and perceived in wildly different ways depending on your sex and general philosophical/ideological orientation.

Luker concludes the chapter with a brief discussion of generalization, offering the advice that we should attempt to "bump up a level of generality" when doing our research (Luker, p.126). By this, she means that we should attempt to reach higher levels of generalization by anticipating some of the theoretical and practical implications of our research for areas outside our immediate domain. I found this last point to be really useful the development of my research proposal. I am now beginning to brainstorm some of the ways in which my study will be relevant, not just for other social science researchers, but for market researchers, advertising companies, and other various business-related entities.