My investigation is based on the issue 'should gay men be allowed to adopt'. My aims are: (1) To find out how the media portray gay adoption

Introduction

My investigation is based on the issue ‘should gay men be allowed to adopt’.

My aims are:

To find out how the media portray gay adoption
To uncover the attitudes of the general public toward gay adoption.

I am interested in this issue because I believe that it is unfair that gay people suffer more prejudice than straight people when adopting a child. I think they should just be given the same checks as straight people.

My first aim links into the parts of the syllabus; The Media and Power and Authority.

My second aim links in with The Family, Power and Authority, The Media and Stratification and Differentiation.

The common assumption that people make is that children need female role models. This is also linked to the view that children are better off in a two parent, mixed gender family. Where this is problematic is that lots of children are not living in this ‘perfect’ nuclear family. For instance, there has been a rise in single parent families, meaning that many children are brought up by their mother with no male role model. Children also sometimes live with their father one week and their mother the next week. Ultimately the contemporary family is more diverse. Today, more than in the past, gay couples are more widely accepted, but there is still a longstanding taboo hanging over the idea of two men bringing up a child. This is less so where there are two women, because they do not need to adopt, and people also believe that it is women’s natural goal to bring up a child. The debate over gay men adopting is fuelled by the media who often make people scared of the idea.

Methodology

For this investigation I used a number of methods to create my report. When distributing my questionnaires I first used a pilot questionnaire to test my style of questions. From this study I found that some of my questions were badly worded or contained spelling mistakes. This turned out to be very helpful as a lot of my questions were very badly worded and could cause some confusion.

When writing my questionnaire, I was careful not to include any questions that may cause offence to my interviewees. The subject, ‘Finding out the publics attitudes to ...

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Methodology

When writing my questionnaire, I was careful not to include any questions that may cause offence to my interviewees. The subject, ‘Finding out the publics attitudes to gay adoption’ could raise some problems. For example it was difficult to ask peoples sexuality because to many people that is a very sensitive and private issue. I also accepted that asking peoples religion was too much of a personal question. I realise that these questions could have been asked while conducting a private, confidential interview, but I did not have the time to conduct this type of survey.

When composig my introduction to my investigation i visited some local libraries to find information on the questions I was asking. I found a number of books that helped me greatly in my report such as ‘Social Science in Question’ and ‘Ordering Lives’. Some of the data in my pilot questionnaire came out as qualitative. I changed this data in quantitative using groups. For example when asking the age in my questionnaire I used groups like 18-30 etc. When I had collected my data I had to put it into a spreadsheet program called Microsoft Excel. From there I could transform my data into a number of charts and graphs, to symbolise my findings.

I distributed 18 questionnaires to complete my study. I took some of my questionnaires over the phone with the samples giving their answers to me. I think this may have affected how open people were with their answers as they may have been embarrassed.

I also sent some around my street asking them to deliver them back to me. This method of distribution was a failure as out of 15 questionnaires I only got 1 back. I also got family to do my questionnaires making sure I had a good mix of male and female and age groups. This was to make sure that my sample was representative of the population.