Week 3 Update

(This week, we waited to post our weekly report on our citizen science project because we planned to complete a major part of the project after the AMNH trip: recording some of the video elements)

Over the last few weeks we have all been observing and taking note of the many occurrences of flirting that have happened around us. We have shared

and discussed our findings as a group and found that, just as the Kinsey Reporter’s data suggests, location plays a key role in the frequency of certain kinds of flirting. For example, Courtney has observed a lot of subtle flirting at her workplace, whereas I (Chelsea) have see a lot more overt flirting occurring on campus in the more social and public areas such as the quad and the student center. In concurrence with KR’s data, our observations conclude that the most obvious and most successful observed flirting attempts have happened in public spaces. However, this does not overshadow the fact that flirting regularly happens in all kinds of locations.

Today after the trip to the American Museum of Natural History, we were finally able to prepare our outline and film the components necessary for our interactive video presentation. We picked three different scenarios that we have observed, which we feel most effectively cover the wide spectrum of aspects that constitute flirting behavior, from physical contact and laughter, to compliments and gift giving. These scenarios were slightly modified in some cases to combine certain flirting behaviors we have scene in different scenarios, so as to provide the most well-rounded understanding of what this citizen science project is trying to accomplish. The main goal of the Kinsey Reporter project is to use the collective observations of citizen scientists to increase the volume of overall data that researchers can utilize to better understand the basis and methodology of sexual and courting behavior, both psychologically and physiologically. That is what we hope to properly demonstrate and accomplish with our video presentation.