13 September 2016 The process of constantly contemplating a research topic from one class to another serves an interesting purpose in my mind. It causes me to constantly rethink this topic and others that I have dwelled on for the last few years. I see this as a powerful engagement with the topic of gender and racism propaganda, sitting where I sit from a perspective of an Italian white-appearing cisgender man and causing me to constantly look at this topic from different perspectives and engage others with this topic. As a result, my area of interest at this time has been refined as, what are the short and long-term effects of organized sexist media propaganda as it influences unintentional interpersonal sexist propaganda upon Black women and girls. In Locke, et al (2010), they describe a variety of quantitative methods that are intriguing. Correlational research and specifically modelling research with its path analysis and structural equation modelling in the form of graphical maps (mind maps more or less) of variables or influences upon study subjects is particularly intriguing since I had, before now, only considered qualitative research for this study. I still interested in qualitative research but the ideas presented in the text are ones that I never considered in previous statistics classes. Intriguingly enough, McDonald, et al begin their article with their general statement that, “humanistic and transpersonal psychologies have eschewed the use of objective tests,” because such measurements don’t serve the nuanced and rich discourse usually available with qualitative research in much the same way that I have, though I am reconsidering that decision after this week as I possibly need to look at ways to combine PAR with statistics in a mixed-methods approach. Additionally there is the obvious fact, according to the authors, that the reductionist aspect of utilizing statistics is not unique to studies outside of humanistic psychology, but advances within the insurance industry (questionnaires) as well as social and political acceptance have allowed an evolution to take place. The authors further list the areas within humanistic and transpersonal psychology that can benefit from quantitative measurement. While is some cases, this may be beneficial, I feel as though that more rounded results would be achieved with a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods, and not necessarily in equal measure. References: Locke, L., Silverman, S., & Spirduso, W. (2010). Reading and understanding research (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. ISBN-13: 978-1-41297-574-2 (paperback e-book edition). MacDonald, D. A., Friedman, H. L., Kuentzel, J. G. (1999a). A survey of measures of spiritual and transpersonal constructs: Part one – Research Update. Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, 31(2), 137-154.