90210

Description of the Message

Beverly Hills 90210, a popular young adult's show is on Fox at 7:00 p.m. every Wednesday for an hour. The show deals with the lives of seven wealthy and attractive college students attending California University. The young adults are faced with everyday problems such as pregnancy, cheating, racism, and much more which makes the show appealing to watch because being a college student myself, I see many of the things I face daily and also I have grown up with the cast as the show has moved from high-school to college and now graduation. This particular show dealt with the issue of pregnancy and the stress of final exams and graduation. Therefore, I wanted to analyze a feature that said something about the show itself and how women/men are portrayed, so I chose to analyze clothing choices of the genders.

Description of the variables

This "cheesy" show happens to be my favorite, however, I have noticed that I did not like the way the girls, who are very thin and beautiful seemed to be clothed in very revealing, sexy clothing, while the males tended to be dressed nicely, but in a very normal way. Therefore, I decided to see if my research hypothesis that there is a pattern to how males and females are dressed stands up to the null hypothesis that there is no pattern.

The variables I chose to classify included the 1) clothing and 2) gender of the people in the show. I classified the clothing in three ways 1) neutral, 2) sexy and 3) very sexy. I chose these variables because it came to my attention, as my friends and I were watching, that the women always seemed to be revealing as much as they could in all situations, even just laying around at home. I wanted to see if what we noticed actually would stand up to the null hypothesis. Other variables, along the same lines could include, the attractiveness of the genders, their overall physique, and how they present themselves. All these variables seem to point towards the idea that women need to be very attractive, fit and present themselves as the more vulnerable sex, comparatively to the males. However, the variables of clothing and gender are the variables that I have chosen to analyze to see if my hypothesis is correct.

Description of the Coding Scheme

I used both a manifest and a latent coding system to test the variables of clothing for the different genders. The objective rules for each variable included: Clothing- the type of dress the characters wore in the episode. I counted each outfit the characters were wearing only one time, even if they were wearing it in multiple scenes. Moreover, I only counted the outfits the main characters were wearing and other people who where in plain view, as a main part of a scene. In other words, I did not count the background people who were not doing anything but acting as scenery. Therefore, using a manifest coding scheme, I looked at the surface level features and came up with the following levels of attributes for the clothing and placed each outfit into one of the categories. This is a very reliable way to analyze the clothing because the same type of cloths will always go in the same category and each set of clothing will fit somewhere thus making it exhaustive and exclusive. However, it may not be as valid as a latent scheme which uses more subjective rules. I chose a manifest scheme for the clothing because I was able to get clear cut categories for the clothing. Levels of clothing- the levels of clothing I chose are 1) neutral- defined as clothing that is basic, loose fitting, not low cut and covers the majority of the body (e.g., T-shirts, jeans and even business suits), 2) sexy- defined as clothing that is somewhat revealing yet not overly, short or tight. These outfits showed a little leg, up to the knee. They were tastefully elegant. (e.g., for males, unbuttoned shirts and tighter jeans, while females had nice medium length skirts showing the leg, but not all the way up to the mid-thigh, tight, yet sophisticated tops, showing the neck but not a whole view of their chests) 3) very sexy - defined as outfits that were very tight, short, low cut, lacked material (skimpy) and were usually black or shiny colors (e.g., for males, partially opened robes, boxer shorts with no shirts and for women, extremely short skirts and shorts nearly revealing their butts, low cut shirts showing a good part of the chest and dresses that were sleeveless and came to the mid thigh). Moreover, the categories were exhaustive/exclusive- each outfit could only go into one category and each had to fit into one of the three. The second variable I used was Gender, breaking it up into 1) males and 2) females. I used a latent coding scheme for this, because I found it impossible to categorize males and females into distinct categories, as with the manifest scheme. The latent scheme allowed me to code the genders in a more subjective way, thus, by just looking at a person I was able to tell with pretty valid results whether they were male or female. This method may not be as reliable however, because what made me determine a gender in one situation may be different from the determiner in another situation. Therefore, through looking at the genders, I was able to put all of them in only one of the two categories, male or female.

Description of Content Coding

My observations were made by first watching the show, which I also taped. Then I made a chart that included a male and female column and rows labeled neutral, sexy, and very sexy. I proceeded to watch the show over again and mark down in one of the three categories each time a main character or someone in obvious view came onto the screen with a new outfit. If it was a part of the episode with many characters at once I paused the tape and marked down what each character was wearing. If I had any question as to where an outfit fit into my coding scheme I asked my roommate, who was watching the show with me, her opinion. I came up with the following results:

The only problems I encountered were trying to figure out who I considered important enough in the individual scenes to count their outfits. In other words, who actually was just an extra and who was actually affecting the scene itself. I asked my roommate for help when I had any trouble. Moreover, after I made up my set of criteria for each level of clothing, I noticed that it was hard to code male and female ways of dressing the same because when men dress up they were fully clothed in suits while women were in tiny dresses. However, this further proved my coding scheme because it fit with my initial hypothesis that women were more scantily clad than males.

Description of the Chi-Square Analysis

I performed a multiple sample -- comparing if there was a pattern between the two variables: Clothing and Gender.

Research Hypothesis: There is a pattern to how men and women dress on 90210.

Null Hypothesis: There is no pattern to how men and women dress on 90210.

In a multiple sample you must first calculate T, the theoretical value which equals the Row Sum x the Column Sum / Grand Sum of the rows and columns. The first step is as follows:

Men and women in neutral clothing x the number of total men:
1) T= (34 x 27) /63 = 14.6 rounded to 15

Men and women in sexy clothing x the number of total men
2) T= (13 x 27) /63 = 5.6 rounded to 6

Men and women in very sexy clothing x the number of total men
3) T= (16x27)/63 =6.9 rounded to 7

Men and women in neutral clothing x the number of total women
4) T= (34 x 36) /63 = 19.4 rounded to 19

Men and women in sexy clothing x the number of total women
5) T= (13 x 36) /63 = 7.4 rounded to 7

Men and women in very sexy clothing x the number of total women
6) T= (16 x 36) /63 = 9.1 rounded to 9

After I calculated for T, I had to plug those numbers into the formula: Chi-square = sum of the (O, observed frequencies - T, theoretical value) squared / T, the theoretical value.

The answers are:

1) (22-15)2/ 15=3.3
2) (3-6)2 / 6= 1.5
3) (2-7)2/7 = 3.57
4) (12-19)2 / 19 = 1.32
5) (10-7)2/7= 1.3
6) (14-9)2 /9 = 2.8

Once I received the answers I added them all together = 3.3 +1.5 + 3.57 +1.32+1.3 + 2.8 = 13.79. Once I calculated the chi-square value, I had to calculate the degrees of freedom for a multiple sample: df = (R, the number of categories in each row - 1) x (C, the number of categories in each column, - 1), which gave me: df = (3- 1) x (2- 1) = 2. The critical value with a .05 certainty is 5.99 and with a .01 certainty is 9.21. My observation of 13.79 was bigger than both critical values, so I would reject the Null Hypothesis at a 99% certainty.

Interpretation of the Findings

Therefore, my finding of 13.79 is greater than both the critical value of 5.99 at .05 certainty and the critical value of 9.21 at .01 certainty, so I reject the Null Hypothesis that there is no pattern between the way men and women dress on 90210 with a 99% certainty. I accept the Research Hypothesis that there is a pattern to how men and women dress on 90210. I believe this to mean that women are dressed sexy to very sexy much more than men. Moreover, women were expected to reveal more and they did. I think this is due to the fact that on 90210 (and society in general) women are portrayed as the sex symbols, which is accepted in society, while men are still thought of as the workers, not needing to show flesh to get ahead or be watched on TV. I think this is a sad part of this program and society today, but I think it is done to draw viewers and sadly enough it probably works. (However, I do realize that I can not generalize society with one show of 90210.) Another interpretation maybe that it was just this particular episode that rejected the null hypothesis, although I really doubt it.

Assessment

If I were to do this analysis over again I would content code more than one episode at a time in order to see if it had any impact on my results. Moreover, I may change my categories to see if that would make a difference. Otherwise, everything went well with the analysis and I was not surprised to see at the end that the results rejected the Null Hypothesis and supported the Research Hypothesis that there is a pattern among the way men and women dress on 90210.