La refundación de Estado: las venas cerradas

A voluminous amount of material was generated by these stems. To impose order on the findings and maintain a close connection between the analysis and the major themes of the thesis, discussion of the individual stems is organized into four main parts. Because it is the

least structured of the ten stems and elicits the most diverse images about future roles and relationships, Stem 1 (Ten years from now) is treated separately in Chapter 7. Completions to Stems 2 through 10 amplify — and in some cases help to account for — the differences in future expectations revealed in the two sexes’ completions to Stem 1.

Chapter 8 discusses orientations toward roles enacted in the public sphere as reflected in completions to Stems 3 (Leaving school),

7 (First job), 8 (Future worries), and 9 (When things go right). To some extent, the distinction between public and private in this material is arbitrary: there are elements of both in completions to all the stems. However, to an important extent the organization of the material was a response to the tendency of the students themselves to structure their statements along these lines. Their replies to Stems 3, 7, 8, and 9 are oriented primarily to the performance of their roles in the public sphere — whether it concerns what to do after leaving school, the qualities desired in a first job, or factors related to the achievement of one’s aspirations for the future. The same thing applies to the analysis of Stems 2 (If I marry), 5 (What turns me on), and 6 (If a mother worked), which are discussed

in Chapter 9 as reflecting orientations toward roles enacted in the private sphere. Students tended to reply to these cues primarily in terms of roles within the family or close relations to one’s peers. In completing Stem 5 (What turns me on), for example, both

sexes referred overwhelmingly to satisfactions associated with members of their own or the opposite sex. Only a minority mention

satisfactions associated with roles enacted in the public sphere, such as achieving what one sets out to do in school or at work.

Stems 4 (The trouble with girls) and 10 (The trouble with boys) are treated separately in Chapter 10, dealing with orientations toward relations with peers. This was done because these two sentences are parallel, permitting a more complex analysis than is possible with the other stems of the reciprocal relationships between boys' and girls' expectations about sex role behaviour.

In Chapter 11 the findings from all the stems are pooled to see what light they throw on the research interests described in Section

6.5. A typology is presented, designed to discriminate between males and females in this sample on the basis of the orientations they display in the completions to these stems. The purpose of the analysis is to highlight differences between the sexes by using discriminant analysis to filter the data so that only the most

important differences are retained. The analysis does not alter the discussion of findings in the individual stems, but it sharpens the demarcation between the sexes and clarifies the setting of their concerns.

Material for each of the stems is discussed under four main headings:

(a) Rationale for inclusion: a discussion of why the stem is

considered useful to the study; what orientations and values it was assumed would be reflected in the completions and how these are related to the themes of the thesis.

(b) Coding categories: a presentation of the coding framework

used to categorize the completions with examples of typical statements to illustrate the tenor of the responses and distinctions between the different response categories.

(c) Ratterns of similarities and differences between the sexes:

analysis of the distribution of completions with particular emphasis on comparisons between the sexes in the proportions falling into the various categories.

(d) Discussion: discussion of the implications of the patterns

of similarity and difference between boys’ and girls’ completions as indicators of value orientations that affect choices related to life chances.

6.7 Coding design

The relatively unstructured wording of the stems generated

responses that were highly varied in content, style, and length. The types of response elicited included expressions of future expectations, hopes, uncertainties, evaluations of roles, statements about personal preferences and life satisfactions, philosophical observations, and

comments addressed to the researchers.

6.7.1 Multiple response categories

The diversity of content favoured coding into more than one

response category. The initial coding differentiated responses in

some detail. For example, on Stem 1 ("Ten years from now I expect to

...") hopes for the future were differentiated from possibilities for the future (e.g., "hope to be married" versus "possibly be married"). ' However, since the purpose of the research was to examine group

differences between the sexes primarily in the area of orientations toward major roles and social activities, in a second coding stage many responses involving finer distinctions — as between, for example,

certainty or uncertainty about future expectations — were aggregated into single response categories representing more general value-

orientations. Codes for "hope to" and "possibly be married" were

aggregated into one category reflecting an interest in (concern for) marital status roles [Table 7.1, Category 1(b)].

In a single completion to any one stem, the number of categories mentioned could range from no replies, i.e., 0 categories, to as high

as five categories. Boys and girls varied with respect to the rich­

ness of their replies and therefore the number of coding categories

used. In order to compare patterns, a graph was constructed for each

stem showing the distribution of girls and boys by number of

categories, for example, the proportions giving no reply, one category

only, two categories, and so on. The significance of the comparison

is not so much the differences between stems in the number of categories mentioned, as it is the differences in the pattern of

completions within each stem. A comparison of the two sexes on all

ten stems shows that boys tended to give more nil and one category

completions; girls, more two or more category completions.

Limited comparison of quantitative patterns of completions

6 The 10 graphs, Figures 7.1 through 10.2, are included in the

sections in which the particular stems to which they refer are discussed.

between stems is worthwhile as a broad measure of the students’ over­ all reaction to the issue tapped by a particular stem. While

variation in the frequency of multiple response categories is partly a function of the nature of the coding frames themselves, this by no means accounts entirely for discrepancies between stems. For one thing, the coding categories reflect the content of the completions: the richer the content, the greater the likelihood of multiple coding. Secondly, marked differences existed between stems in the "no reply" category. Figure 6.1 shows that the proportion of boys leaving the stems blank was higher than that of girls on all but three stems, 8 (Future concerns), 7 (First job), and 1 (Future expectations). The large number of boys giving no reply to Stem 10 (The trouble with boys) is discussed in Chapter 10. In general, differences

between the sexes in their styles of completing these stems support findings [see Oakley, 1972:79-98; Hutt, 1972:94-98; Maccoby and Jacklin, 1974:351-355] suggesting, first, that in the school setting, girls tend to be more co-operative than boys and to comply more

readily to requests to perform set tasks, and second, that girls tend to be more verbal and fluent than boys when it comes to sharing their feelings with others.

6.7.2 Coding categories

Completions to each stem were classified into an average of eight major categories selected on the basis of the patterns found in the data in an initial examination of ten per cent of the questionnaires. Responses falling into the major categories were multiple coded.

There is a table for each stem to show the distribution of the sample by categories of response by sex. A double line demarcates the

categories that could be multiple coded. On Table 7.1, for example, an individual respondent might be coded for one or, hypothetically, all of the eleven main categories.9 The sub-categories (or classes) within these double lines were counted only once. This means that the

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As noted earlier, however, and as may be seen in Figures 7.1 through 10.2, a majority of students tended to mention only one, or at the most two, categories in their completions.

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numbers falling in the major categories add to more than the total number of boys and girls in the sample. However, the sum of the

classes of responses within the double lines is equivalent to the total number of students in the sample who mentioned that category.

6.7.3 First and second statements

Certain categories for which it was found in the initial

examination of the data that the students tended to mention more than one sub-class were coded for first and second statements. For example, in reply to Stem 2 ("If I marry I would like my husband/wife to ..."), 20 per cent of boys and 31 per cent of girls mentioned more than one personality trait that they considered desirable in a spouse, e.g., "happy and rich", "loving and fun", "intelligent and faithful". The idea behind coding such completions for both first and second state­ ments was to obtain another possible measure of difference in the

priorities expressed by the two sexes. However, for many of the

categories the frequency of second mentions turned out to be too small for any meaningful comparisons. Hence, except where noted otherwise, the material in the tables refers to first statements only.

6.7.4 Examples of coding categories

In discussing the content of the stems, considerable illustrative use is made of typical completions used in distinguishing between the various categories and sub-classes. These are reproduced in the text verbatim as they appeared on the students' schedules. In each case, the whole completion is reproduced and the particular word or phrase being used as an example is italicized. The categories used in coding the completion are included in brackets at the end of the statement. This method was employed in order to show the responses used in

categorizing the statements in the context of the entire completion to the stem.

CHAPTER 7