Complaints
Due February 9 and 16, 2007

The question underlying this assignment is "are there gender differences in how people complain?" Each group will discuss interesting sites for collecting complaints, and organize collection of complaints. Group members might all collect in the same site, maybe at different times, or they might choose to collect in different sites. Each group member will record the first ten complaints he or she witnesses, using the Excel spread sheet found on this page. The spread sheet contains columns for the time of day, the place, the coder's name, the gender of the complainer and the complainee, the topic of the complaint (see below), and a verbatim transcription of the interaction. That should include not only the complaint, but anything that led up to it and that followed from it. The groups will combine their data and email them to us by class on Friday, February 9.

We will distribute the full file to the class by the end of the day on February 9. Groups will meet and analyze the data set together, deciding what aspects of the data set they want to focus on. Each group will submit one analysis by class on Friday, February 16.

The complaint topics will be hard to categorize. For the moment, let's use the following: exam, other academic work, non-academic work, food, third party, complainer's action, complainer's appearance, complainer's general state. Beyond these, add your own categories as appropriate and we'll try to trim them down once we see what there is.

Here's what you need to record your data:

SpreadSheet