Whatever You Want

My topic for Survey is the opinions of men and women on the idea of women one day being admitted into the NBA. I have given out twenty surveys to people at my workplace and there are ten women and ten men who I am surveying. I will interview two of these people one male and one female. The reason why I am going to survey and then interview is because I would like to see the survey takers reaction to the questions on the survey. I want to see an in-depth reaction that I couldn’t possibly see from a bubble on a survey. The questions I will be asking would be simple and straight forward, such as “In your opinion can a woman physically handle playing in the NBA” and “Is it fair for women to play in the NBA when women have their own league aka the WNBA”. These questions are simple yes or no questions but for a more in-depth answer I will be conducting a one on one interview with one of each person from the opposite sex. My reasoning for conducting this research is that I would like to find out people opinions on this subject because I feel this could be an actuality in the next five to ten years. Based on the law of averages there will eventually be a woman in the NBA, only time will tell. Many NBA players have commented on this and there haven’t been too many negative comments that would discourage this idea but there have been concerning comments such as “she wouldn’t be able to bang around with the big boys” a quote from Shane Battier of the Miami Heat. Along with the comments from players there are comments from coaches as well, such as UConn’s women’s basketball head coach Geno Auriemma who said, “it would be a sham” “The fact that a woman could actually play right now in the NBA and compete successfully against the level of play that they have is absolutely ludicrous.” Of course this would be a very controversial move by the NBA to let a woman play in their league and it would have its pros and cons but we will never know until it happens. These comments lead back into old sexist ideas that women aren’t good enough or equal to men. The idea of “changing the balance” has all these NBA players all bent out of shape. This country has come too far to let a game be so one dimensioned that if a capable woman comes along and is willing to play and give it all she has she cant play because she’s a girl. For all the women who have fought to vote, to have equal jobs, to be able to be looked at as an equal to be told that they cant play the same game in the same gym as a man is going to change, this is the first step because just as everything else a fire starts with a spark and this is that spark. During my research that I conducted I found that there were some mixed feelings about the topic in hand. As I said earlier, I surveyed 20 people, 10 male and 10 female. Out of the 10 male there were 6 who disagreed and 4 who agreed with the fact that women should have a chance in the NBA. Out of those 6 who disagreed 4 were over 24 years old and 2 were within the age group of 18-21. The females on the other hand had a more dominant percentage with 9 who agreed and 1 who disagreed. It was very shocking yet predictable at the same time when I tallied the results of the surveys. I expected to have many more people to disagree but it turns out there weren’t. The reactions I got when I did the focus group study was a little more interesting in the sense that there were the 10 male and female participants in the room and they were given 3 questions from the survey that would stir up conversation and there were many different comments that went around the room. There was one sample error that came up after all the surveys were taken and I had written a question that made people think I was testing them instead of asking an opinion. The question was “Is the NBA strictly for men” I should have changed that to “Do you think the NBA should be strictly for men” there were a couple of questions about that and I couldn’t take the results of that question into consideration because of the error that was made, the results due to my error were not accurate. While in the field I conducted my research as an outsider, I stood back and observed the group as they were talking amongst the group and one by one they said something and they each had something to say when their turn came. This research was done at my job, I surveyed everyone on their break and I asked them if they could stay a little later after work and talk about everything in a group for an hour or so. The way things were conducted allowed me to observe as an outsider but still be able to chime in as an insider when I wanted since I was the one who put the whole group together and since I was there the whole time and I was able to connect to what everyone was saying. My role didn’t really affect the flow of the group, if anything my role boosted the conversation because as time went on I would throw in another question to get conversation brewing again. The topics of race and gender were brought up and that was the main center of attention for the most part. The girls didn’t really like that the guys would be so strongly convinced that women couldn’t play because of their lack of strength or their lack of physicality needed to play the game. The men on the other hand didn’t think it would be fair for a woman to play because of her physical abilities as well as concerns that they had about the rules and regulations that could change due to a woman now playing in the league. From my observation my conclusion about the study did not change because from the information that I received I am still strongly backing my conclusion. During the focus group study there weren’t any additional questions but there were some interesting points about how women could make the NBA more profitable because a team that has the first woman on their team would be always remembered as the first team to ever sign a woman to their all men team.