Methods and Results

Methods
The methods I plan to use to answer my research question will be the survey and the experiment methods. I want to ask 50 women and 50 men a series of questions and see how they feel about communication between men and women. There will be a 2 part survey. One portion will have open-ended questions such as, do you give all your attention to your spouse when he/she is telling you something?, do you tell your spouse that you are not interested when he/she is telling you something?, How would you take constructive criticism at work if your boss was a man or woman? On the close-ended portion of the survey, I will ask questions like; do you have an open mind when someone is telling you something that you disagree with? Check Yes or No; can you discuss a matter by just coming out and stating it? Check Yes or No. In addition, I want to do a field study experiment using 5 different couples. I want to observe them in a natural setting and see how they communicate with each other. I want to view the men bringing up a conversation that interest them and see how the women reacts and vice versa.
Results:
For both of these methods, I anticipate the independent variable will have a strong effect. For the survey results, I believe there will 35% of men and 40% of women that will prove that there is a strong difference in communication when it comes to gender. The other 15% of men and 10% of women will think that gender does not affect communication. I think that the results of the survey will shed some light on a situation that people did not notice before, and the respondents will start communicating more effectively with the opposite sex. As far as the results for the experiment, I think that 4 out of 5 of the couples will notice a large difference in their communication with each other.