SOCI2000: Model Project

Lecture Slides

Slides for Week 1 Lecture

Women Exposed: The Hairrifying Truth

This is an example of a high quality presentation in Week 13 from students in a class I taught at Singapore Management University.

1. Content Advice

Please note:

  • the research question for this project is ‘Why women remove pubic hair?’;
  • the video contains occasional swearing; and
  • the video and presentation slides contain some sexual content (discussion about reasons why women may or may not remove public hair, in the context of sexual relationships; and excerpts from a Buzz Feed video of women discussing how grooming habits have changed in pornography from the 1970s to the 2010s).
First two slides of 'Hairrifying Truth' presentation.

Figure 1: First two slides of ‘Hairrifying Truth’ presentation.

2. What it does well

Some of the things this presentation does well include:

  • It is an interesting and important topic (it effects most women, and it is not clear exactly what women’s motives are)
  • It addresses an academic theory (intrinsic vs extrinsic motivation)
  • It has a simple study design that very effectively tests the theory, and explores the larger issues in a way that is easy for the audience to understand
  • It mainly uses surveys - qualitative and qualitative - which is very similar to what you are asked to do.
  • The qualitative data (why do you trim down there?) is very effectively analysed using thematic analysis, and this then related to the larger theory
  • The quantitative analysis (How do you trim? vs Have you had sex with a man/women/no?) is very simple, but convincingly tested with a few simple statistical tests.

Overall it is well presented, easy to follow, effective at communicating all the various aspects of the research - importance/motive, topic, method, data, analysis, and conclusions.

3. Video, slides, script.

Video of Presentation (YouTube)

Slides (PDF)

Last updated on 27 February, 2020 by Dr Nicholas Harrigan (nicholas.harrigan@mq.edu.au)