The Beginning...

What is the PIP?

The Mini PIP: the precursor into the research task that dominates a Society and Culture students HSC, the PIP. At present I understand the PIP as being a personal interest project in which a Society and Culture students investigate and report into a topic of interest to them, which has relevance to their own life: their micro. It takes several months to complete and incorporates a wide range of both primary and secondary research, theorists, concepts, and tonnes of evaluation. Primary research has to be conducted, thus engaging students into their world, and by means of questionnaires, interviews, focus groups and content analysis, gives them answers to their hypothesis. Basically, the PIP is a big research task, that takes lots of time and lots of effort, but is rewarding, fascinating and engaging; and most importantly, if you pick the right topic, you will be actually interested in doing it!

The Domestic Violence PIP

Overall, this PIP has been really good (no wonder it got 40/40 and a Band 6!). It is clear and precise, with not much blabbing on, and is really engaging; which I find great! It fluently incorporates hundreds of concepts, and has excellent inclusion and integration of secondary research. The results of primary research are easy to understand, and give an excellent insight into the society this PIP is analysing. Also, the PIP is very humble, with excellent personal reflection and really does answer the question well.

The only issue with this PIP is that I find that the evaluation to be lacking, or is not explicitly clear. This is not to deny that this PIP has good evaluation in it, it just needs to be more explicit in some paragraphs.

My Mini PIP

I have decided to run with the idea of looking at social justice. Specifically, grassroots social justice versus global social justice campaigns and their effectiveness in creating change. It fits into the concepts of society, persons, environment, time, globalisation, technology, power. It fits into my micro as it looks into grassroots social justice campaigns, such as what I am trying to achieve in my Human Rights Committee (HRC) which I run, and how effective they are in comparison to global movements such as #BringBackOurGirls, #KeepHopeAlive or even BandAid. I am hoping to find out which form of social justice campaigns work out the best, and also which ones actually make some change on society. Methods wise, the current plan is to conduct a focus group with the HRC and even possibly the SRC (time permitting) and find out their stance on social justice, and the ways in which they engage in these campaigns. I also hope to conduct a questionnaire, aiming to get a wider understanding of the ways in which society connects with social justice campaigns, and whether they believe they are contributing to change by these methods. Also, if at all possible I would like to interview a representative from a NGO such as Amnesty International on which campaigns they find more effective in creating change. Hopefully the findings will be interesting, different to what I’m expecting and that this PIP topic can lead me into the big PIP easily.