Before the semester began, I had a completely different idea of what my research project would look like. My initial plan was to research racehorses, hopefully focusing on conformational differences or injuries in the racing industry. During the beginning stages of our planning, though, I realized that this idea was not going to fly. It would be too complicated to pull together specific pictures and data without an extensive amount of bias and extra expertise. With the timeline and resources I had, I could not properly execute the racehorse project. 

Next step was to completely change gears and brainstorm. I turned to my next interest, some sort of sociology and behavior. All of my ideas related to this topic required consent and experimental studies that would have been too challenging to execute as a high school student with the time and resources I had. 

As I was trying to figure out where to go next, my thoughts fell on my love for reading. After hearing examples from old projects, I had an idea. I could combine my interest in analysis with my enjoyment of dystopian novels! I had to brainstorm the logistics to figure out how I was going to combine the two. Trying to figure out how I was going to quantify the literature to find results was the hardest part. Finally I landed on my project, and although some minor adjustments have been made, I am able to effectively execute my project with the time and resources I have available to me. 

By researching the portrayal of women in dystopian literature as compared to the sentiments of the time period in which the novel was written, I am hoping to fill the gap surrounding real world comparison to dystopian novels. There has been plenty of research done on the accuracy of nonfiction books as well as the factuality of historical fiction, but there is no research that could be found on the influence historical events had on dystopian fiction, specifically women in dystopian fiction. By exploring this topic, I am able to recognize patterns of influence from important events in history. The sentiments towards women through 1850-2012 could have had an effect on the way that dystopian fiction was imagined. Of course, the author's personal political/religious affiliation could have influenced their portrayal of the future, but highly charged political/religious opinions are important to the outcomes of history. Because of the sway that the author's viewpoints could have, the author's personal outlook and upbringing will be evaluated in my data analysis. Once research and comparison is complete, I am hoping my project will provide further understanding of the influence that historical events have on dystopian fiction. 

Currently, I have finished reading four out of the five books in my project. Those four books have been coded for connotations and converted into percentages for each connotative category. Because I am still in the middle of the final book, no research on historical events has been done as to not create bias in my coding. Although I have seen the final percentage results of the other books, I have not thoroughly evaluated patterns. This means that I am unsure if my data is currently supporting or rejecting my hypothesis. As we are nearing the end of February, I am nervous that my time management surrounding the reading will end up causing me to have less historical understanding than I would like. Preferably, I will be able to extensively research the history of these time periods, but the priority is to have a good understanding of the events specifically surrounding women and women's rights as well as the author's personal ideologies. 

As far as changes I have had to make, the only adjustments have been to remove the term "adjectives" from my project and change that term to "descriptive words" as there are many verbs and adverbs that create an important description of the characters that I am evaluating. I also was originally planning to just evaluate American historical events, but because of the settings/author's heritage of some of the books, I will now be evaluating North American history as a whole as well as British history surrounding women's rights. 

I do feel as though my system to collect connotation data is mostly sound, other than the obvious downfalls of human error, as the google sheet that I am using to calculate percentages is programmed to do the math for me. This way, I can save time to read more instead of spending hours counting up each page's data points. (See images below for example of google sheet and connotation coding). 

I look forward to discovering the results of my project after comparison. For the moment, I am continuing to read and collect data, then I will move on to historical data collection before starting my analysis and comparison process. Thank you for following along on my journey! 

[top left: picture of books with sticky tabs showing quantities of connotations on each page]

[top right: screenshot of google spreadsheet with percentages calculated]

[bottom left: picture of pages with highlights and quantities of connotations on sticky tabs]

After finishing all five books and entering the data into the spreadsheet, I was able to analyze all of the results. There was an overwhelming amount of purple (against the status quo (ASQ) neutral), but the most important patterns to analyze were the positives and negatives for both groups (ASQ and For the Status Quo (Trad)). With an understanding and comparison to history, different patterns can be observed. For example, an increase in the push for women's rights could potentially have had an influence on the decrease of negative ASQ (blue) over the course of all of the books (see the segmented bar chart with results below). Another example could be the focus on equality during the civil rights movement possibly encouraging the author to make the ASQ and Trad groups have no significant differences in proportions in Facial Justice. This can be done for each connotation type across history. 

Although these patterns can be observed, there are a lot of limitations to the research. This project did allow for a conversation to be started on historical influence in dystopian novels, which had not yet been done before, but a lot of the limitations make the finding indefinite. Because of the limited sample size of five books, there was not enough data to apply these findings to the population. Additionally, these findings were put together by one person, and human error and unintentional bias could have caused my data to be inconsistent or incomplete. Furthermore, dystopian novels are fictional. Author bias and creative liberty should be taken into account when analyzing the data, as many of the author's own opinions play a large role in how the characters are portrayed. 

Even with limitations, the research does appear to show some evidence of historical influence. Patterns do appear to follow historical trends, and although the influence cannot be confirmed, these potential patterns do open up the possibility for further research. Further research could be improved through a more specific methodology, meaning connotation and describing words have to be more deeply analyzed and confirmed before adding the words to the data set. This could be done through AI or just an extremely specific guideline for the readers. More readers should be included to help reduce unintentional bias, and a larger sample size should be acquired to ensure the true population is being represented. 

Reflection Questions:

1. If you could revisit your research process, what would you do differently and why?

If I had to go back to the beginning of the research process, I would want to define my coding a little better. I do not think that the coding was specific enough to have fully accurate data. Although the coding was effective enough to finish the project and gather data, the data could have been more accurate if the guidelines for coding were more specific. More specific coding guidelines would just make the observed patterns closer to what was actually portrayed in the novel, as well as reduce the bias that comes from a single reader. 

2. What was the most important research skill you developed as a result of this process, and how might you apply it to your future endeavors?

Although it is more of a life skill, I feel like the most important skill I further developed was my time management. Reading and coding five books in less than three months was ambitious, especially because reading took me three times as long with the extra steps of highlighting and counting. Learning how to break down my reading and focusing during planned reading time was essential to completing my project. 

Graph of final data for each book

Now that my entire study has been completed, I would like to reflect on the entire process. 

To begin, I learned so much more about the topic I was researching. Diving into new books from that perspective was different and enlightening. Reading to evaluate the way that specific characters were described by the author created a new understanding of the book. By evaluating these books in this way, I was able to dive deeper into the way that characters were developed and the way that the story was laid out. Using history to analyze the patterns seen in the data helped me to understand the books and their historical significance more. In the future, I will be reading books with more of a focus on the way that the characters were described to hopefully understand the book further. 

Creating the final products: the presentation and the paper, I learned how to organize my time and lay out my products. The presentation was challenging to make concise and correct, but I was able to pull it off. Completing my presentation made it easier to write my paper. Essentially, the presentation was a shorter version of my paper, so all I needed to do for my paper was rehash it in detail. Finalizing both products consisted of my work to understand how to explain my project to people who were not familiar with it at all. I am very proud of the finalized products and I am hoping they will be successful. 

I learned about myself a lot too. I learned that I can finish a project that big as long as I plan it out, even if I am juggling other things. I can be ambitious and get done what I want to do. I also learned that I can still read efficiently and enjoy books again. I used to read all the time and now I feel a lot better about being able to enjoy and finish books. I feel more confident in my ability to complete a project like this from scratch and do it well. 

Thank you to everyone who supported me with this project and through life this year. I would not have finished this project without the help of my parents, my mentors, and my friends. I am so excited to take the skills I learned into my next adventures. My time at the University of Kentucky over the next 4 years will be greatly impacted by AP Research and my high school experience. As an equine science major and a business major, the techniques I used to juggle all of my senior-year projects, especially this one, will be extremely valuable. 

If you are interested in reading my finalized research paper, click HERE.