The Legal Status Of Prostitution - 1460 Words

Research Design: Prior to the discussion of the methodology employed in this research, a hypothesis of answer for this research question ‘Can people attitudes on the legal status of prostitution be shaped by media representation?’ will be allocated. The hypothesis position to this question is posited as ‘an individual with less knowledge on the subject (i.e. prostitution and its legality issues) is more probable to affect by media on his or her attitude towards prostitution’. This research intends to adopt an experimental design because it deemed as an ideal research method to measure individual attitude change in regards to the effects made by the media on prostitution as a legal or formal occupation. As Imai, Tingley and Yamamoto†¦show more content†¦According to Bechhofer and Paterson (2000), experimental design is commonly found in psychology, economics, medical and some of the policy research, but it is the least common research design found in sociology. As a researcher in sociology, using an experimental design in this research not merely attempting to break through the intrinsic research tradition, but also to reveal an interesting research on measuring media effects and attitude change on legalising prostitution. Due to the time constraint issue (only few months to complete the research as a postgraduate student), this experimental research takes place in the University of Leicester and it targets are the University of Leicester students. Despite of age, gender, class and their degree, thirty university students will be randomly selected for a semi-structured interview. The interview begins by asking students to rank how positive or how negative they are in viewing prostitution as a legal or formal occupation, based on a Likert scale. This scale designed as a 5-items (1 = Strongly Agree, 2 = Agree, 3 = Neutral, 4 = Disagree, and 5 = Strongly Disagree), which based on the participants’ self-report on indicating their beliefs and attitudes towards prostitution. An example of the question in the scale will be similar to ‘I think entering into prostitution is a free choice and prostitution should be seen as a formal job’. By doing this at the