Talking Stick - Being a Consumer - IQL

After visualizing ourselves as consumers, finding artifacts that represented us as consumers, and passing  the talking stick to openly share our ideas about our own consumerism, we came up with the following themes:

1. Shopping had a visceral effect:

• People hated shopping
• People loved shopping

2. Consumption changed with the economy and with lifestyle (people going to college - became more frugal with spending)

3. Jobs had a significant effect on consumption

• Having a job meant no longer receiving money from parents
• Having a job gave a greater sense of responsibility
• Buying was made more carefully - just the necessities were purchased
• Money became more valued because of the time it took to earn it.  
• There was less spent and more saved

 4. Shopping was associated with guilt

• Impulse buying quickly resulted in feelings of guilt.
• Sales and discounts (thrift store) often led to impulse buying because of the idea that there was "savings" in the purchase (a bargain).
• Though if the purchase was a gift for someone else there was a feeling of pride in the purchase.
• And if the purchase was local there was less guilt because one was helping their neighbors.  The consumer knew where the money was going. 

5. Shopping was associated with empowerment

• Shopping could be empowering - especially with a large purchase which needed to be paid off over time.  
• Greater feeling of responsibility

6. Debit and cash were preferred over credit which was harder to manage

7. Status and a feeling of place were important.  Also important was:

• The design of the products and the place where purchased
• The image the product had
• The class it catered to
• How one felt when owning an item of a certain brand.

8. Most items bought were food, clothes and cosmetics (in that order).

• When buying food place, quality and price were important.

9. Social and solo

• People liked shopping as a social activity
  People liked shopping alone

Dates: IQL

8/30-9/1  Introduction: What is Quantitative Literacy?
Read: Fair Trade Ch. 1, Statistics Ch. 1, article (handout)

• What is Fair Trade?
• Why do we like research?
• Why is research important for Fair Trade?

9/6-8  Distinguishing Fair Trade
Read Fair Trade Ch. 2, Statistics Ch. 2

• Selecting samples
• Fair Trade vs Free Trade
• Telling others - designing a FT presentation

9/15 LIBRARY ASSIGNMENT

9/20-9/22 Understanding the Data
Read Fair Trade Ch. 3, Statistics Ch. 3

• Measuring accuracy: bias, margin of error, histograms
• Why is Fair Trade so popular?
• Studying Fair Trade consumers
• Planning focus groups

9/27-9/29 Finding the Data
Read Fair Trade Ch. 4, Statistics Ch. 4

• Creating surveys
• Defining Fair Trade
• Conducting Focus Groups

10/4-10/6  - Meeting/research time - No Class
Read Fair Trade Ch. 5, Statistics Ch. 7

• Individual Meetings: quantitative research question for final essay
• Conduct Focus Groups

10/11-10/13  - Measuring Fair Trade
Read Fair Trade Ch. 6, Statistics Ch. 8

• What did your consumers say?
• What data will you measure?  How?
• Introducing: TAMS analyzer

10/18- Hybrid day - No Class
Code data with group
10/20 - Analyzing the Data
Read Fair Trade Ch. 7, Statistics Ch. 9
• Understanding the numbers
• Understanding the people

10/25-10/27 Learning from the Focus Groups
Read Fair Trade Ch. 8 & 9

• Reviewing Focus Group findings
• Designing a survey
• Developing a questionnaire

11/1 - Hybrid day - No class
2nd draft of paper due: Center for Writing
11/3 Guest: Emilia Laime
Read Fair Trade Ch. 8 & 9

• Meet Fair Trade knitter

11/8 - 11/10 - Presenting Data
Read Statistics Ch. 10 & 11

• Organizing data
• Graphing data
• Testing surveys
• Final questionnaire done
• Preparing for Fair Faire
  

11/15  Explaining Data
Read Statistics Ch. 12

• Describing distributions
• Mean-Median-Mode
• Standard deviation
• Implementing the survey

11/17 Fair Faire at Student Center

• With survey

11/22 Data Distribution
Read Statistics Ch. 13
Quant. Essay - 3rd Drafts Due

•  Standards, percentiles, norms, outlyers
• Continue working with surveys

11/24 Thanksgiving

11/29 - 12/1 Analyzing the survey

• Data entry and analysis
• Charting the results
• Creating the presentation
• Google sites

12/6 - 12/8 Data Presentation

• Sharing the results
• Social media
• Press release
• Celebration
• Evaluation

FINALS WEEK - final paper due.

Mason Library

You can find library resources on fair trade linked right here at the Mason Library.

Welcome to the Fair Trade Study

This is where students in two courses -- Sociological Research Methods and Quantitative Literacy -- will collaborate on a joint project to examine the phenomenon of ethical consumption on campus, in Keene, and through the fair trade towns network nationally.