Need to write a Methods Paper due tomorrow by 6PM?? PLS HELP

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MILITARY SPOUSAL RELATIONSHIPS AND UNCERTAINTY

Method

The independent variable military deployment is referred to, as actions requiring relocation of military personnel and materials from a home base to a given destination. The dependent variable uncertainty is defined as people’s inability to predict and explain behaviors of self or the behaviors of others (Knobloch et al, 2010)
Collecting self-reports will carry out the methods used to analyze military marriages and observable data to greater understand levels of uncertainty. The spouses will provide self-reports about perceptions of relational uncertainty, participate in two 10-minute video interactions, and describe their thoughts and feelings about the conversation.

Participants

The researchers will recruit married couples living on military bases and off military bases in the southwest region of the United States. Flyers will be posted in the community room on base and place other flyers at recruiting centers, universities, churches, shopping areas, and sports complexes. Announcements will be put on to an e-mail newsletter circulated to active and reservist service members and use the base community email blast. Due to the strong communal ties a snowball sampling style will be applied by asking participants to distribute flyers to others who are interested.
To be eligible to complete the study you must be of legal age 18 years of age or older and currently married and at least one spouse must currently be enlisted as an active or reservist member in the military.
Our advertising goal is to attracted a sample size of 150 married couples, which is reasonable considering our target population. Many of these families do not have adequate time to engage in survey participation due to taking on extra family duties and roles, our projected numbers will be smaller in size. A total of 400 flyers will be made to distribute to people and businesses but cannot guarantee they will all be distributed or attractive enough to pull in a larger sample size.

Materials and Procedure

Participants will go to a local university laboratory; spouses will then be separated to individually complete the first of two questionnaires that will evaluate demographic information and relational uncertainty using an alternative procedure method between both tests. The questionnaire will be a 6-point Knobloch and Solomons (1999) scale (1= completely or 6=almost completely uncertain). These measures have demonstrated evidence of reliability and validity in previous works (Knobloch & Knobloch-Fedders, 2010). The questions will be used to show levels of relational uncertainty (see Appendix A). A few of the questions will be (a) How certain are you about relinquishing daily duties? (b) How certain are you about your marriage? (c) How important are your goals to your spouse? (d) D you enjoy spending down time together?

Then couples will be asked to come together for a 10-minute video session where the researcher will give each participant an index card describing a topic of conversation the researcher will provide instructions and then the researcher will turn on the video camera leaving the couple along to participate in the conversation (see Appendix B). Burgoon and Hale’s (1987) measurement instrument is proven to be valid and reliable this scale will be used to measure participants’ perception of affiliation, dominance, and involvement (Burgoon & Hale, 1987).
Each of the video sessions will be transcribed verbatim then given to a team of trained undergrad students to rate the relational messages the raters will not know the purpose of this study. The judges/raters will be properly trained on how to rate the assigned variables, practice with similar questions, then work alone, and once all the video have been half way examined the group of judges will come together for further discussions regarding recalibrating rating standards if needed. The couple will once again be separated to answer follow up questions about their perceptions of the conversation. Then the whole process is repeated a second time by reuniting the couple, providing them with a second topic conversation round. Lastly, they will both be separated once again to answer a follow up questionnaire (retest) to evaluate their thoughts and feelings about the second conversation. The couple received a $40 gift card for participating in the 90-minute session.
The measurements will provide greater insight to levels of uncertainty from self-reports to see if they link or match the behaviors shown analyzed from the videos. These findings would help narrow down or help provide much needed information, which will contribute to further studies about military marriages in which a spouse is deployed and levels of uncertainty they experience post-deployment.