During my Spring Semester of 2022, I completed a project in SOCL 351, Sociology of Family Violence. As a member of a group, I completed research on a particular form of family violence in order to create an informational product to help educate others on how to prevent family violence. While completing this project I learned that intimate partner violence is a plague for many college aged individuals. I learned about the reasons people who are experiencing, or have experienced, intimate partner violence choose not to report it. Only around 12% of people who experience IPV of college age actually report it because of fear from the abuser and fear of ridicule from others. Police also have been known to be dismissive of the abused as well. These are shocking statistics that I was not aware of before completing this project.
There were strengths and weakness for our groups’ project. I believe that the project could have been enhanced if we had a survey asking students if they would use the Instagram account. The timeline of the project did not allow us to promote our account so not many people know that it exists yet. Strengths include research on a very relevant topic with an actual tool that can educate and help others affected by IPV.
Personally, I gained strengths in the area of teamwork and criticism. Our group split up the work relatively equally based on our strengths. I received critiques on my writing, and was able to handle it well and fix what was wrong. The ability to accept criticism is an important skill for positive growth that I hope to carry forward in my professional career.
As for our group dynamics, I am not as technologically inclined as Peyton and Kenzie, so they handled the creation, posts, and links on the Instagram account. I completed a large portion of the research, proposal and the outline of the project. I could have really improved on being more technologically inclined because I felt as if I was unable to contribute to that portion of the project as much as I would have liked. This will be a personal goal for myself moving forward.