1 Bobbi Thompson COMM60153-074 October 20, 2021 Methodology Participants The current study will focus specifically on young men and women that are current members of a Greek Life organization at Texas Christian University. To maintain a diversity of experience, participants will be recruited from various fraternities and sororities on campus and Greek Life members of various ethnic backgrounds, aged 18-24 will be invited to participate in the study. A total of 40 participants will be recruited to participate in this study. Participants must be a male or female identifying student that is a current participating member of a Greek Life organization at Texas Christian University. Participants will be over age 18-24, and able to consent to participation. Individuals who are not both part of a recognized Greek fraternity and currently enrolled in TCU will be excluded. Data Collection This study will involve semi-structured interviews which will be scheduled with participants via email (see attached protocol). Interviews will last approximately [30 minutes]. With participant permission, interviews will be recorded with the voice-memo recording app for later transcription. Audio files will be transcribed verbatim using an online mechanical transcription service (e.g. Temi [https://www.temi.com]). At the start of interview, participants will first be asked to complete a demographic questionnaire (see Appendix C), and then following the questionnaire participants will engage in individual interviews with the researcher, conducted in a location of their choosing on campus 2 (for example: neutral, informal locations such as a coffee shop, reserved conference/library room, park, or other public place, or their own place of living). Interviews questions will focus independently on participants’ organizational identity as members of their specific Greek Life organization as well as surrounding topics that may have had a hand in shaping the social identity of participants when they were initiated into their sorority or fraternity. For question examples: (see Appendix D). Additionally, if the participant chooses to do their interview through online measures, Zoom will be used. During online interviews, participants will be asked to keep their cameras for the duration of the interview but will be free to utilize the chat feature as they like and change their names to pseudonyms. The interviews will continue until the point of theoretical saturation, or until the maximum sample is reached. Data Analysis The present study will analyze data from interviews using the narrative method of theme analysis (Boje, 2001, p. 123), to answer the questions of “How do TCU students assimilate to Greek Life culture?” & “How do TCU students perform their Greek life identity?”. The study will use three cycle coding: first, open reading to develop impressions, second, developing a coding schema of recurrent themes, and third by coding individual lines of data into the schema (Tracy, 2013, p. 187).
