I am doing a research project on Same-Sex marriage and if it should be legal or not. I know that this board has quite a few homosexuals floating around, so I was wondering if some people would care to share their opinions on the topic for my research.
"I know that this board has quite a few homosexuals floating around"
What about your original post could POSSIBLY make potential respondents not trust your research? Will people who contribute to your research give proper consent? Has your research been approved by an IRB?
It is a research project. I am not sending it to the government. I am not reporting for CNN. I am merely looking for the humble opinions of the users of this message board.
There needs to be safeguards in place. People participating in research need to be informed of any risks and benefits to participating in your research study so that they can give you their consent in an informed manner. Informed consent is paramount to the process. Respondents need to be told who is conducting the research, what the goal of the research is, and what is going to be done with the information collected. They need to know how you are going to aggregate the data.
As it is, I would suggest that no potential respondents, even on a "humble message board" reply to the request of any "researcher" in 2014 who is tossing around the work "homosexuals" like it's 1964.
The project is a debate. I need yes and no sides to the argument. Thus why I ask the public for their opinions. The public will obviously have differentiating opinions, so I feel like this would help me out with my research by finding the real opinions of real people.
I'm sure you'll find a ton of conflicting opinions regarding this particular topic on a Broadway theater message board. It should be one hell of a debate!
Research projects do not deal with "opinions", they deal with "facts". And if you are conducting a poll, you need a randomly chosen sample, which Broadwayworld.com is most assuredly not.
If I were your Sociology professor I would flunk you.
People giving you their opinions are what is called "self selectors" and what it isn't is research.
Self selection bias needs to be accounted for.
Perhaps you might want to place yourself somewhere that has a lot of homosexuals floating around and then randomly select a few of them and ask their opinions. Choose a location where more than half the men are likely to be floating homosexuals, and pick a random number of them (say, every third guy who crosses your path) and then ask them their opinions. Be sure to have an approved informed consent form to go over everything they need to know in order to ethically conduct your research.