For the ethnology group, taking a survey was the most effective way to gather information in both a confidential yet comprehensive and detailed manner. Collecting information from the students in LCC 4406 and their friends provides an accurate and broad picture of relationships in their cultures since each individual is in effect somewhat of an expert on relationships. The classroom resource of subjects was also the most easily accessible and resource available to utilize.

Surveys were given to several people who attend Georgia Tech or the European University, and also to several friends who do not attend these universities (to provide diversification of our data). These surveys were completely confidential and were emailed back to the group where they were compiled into a spreadsheet and analyzed. The group members and class members filled out anonymous hard copies of the survey so as to protect anonymity. The actual survey consisted of Demographic, background romantic, and relationship questions, which were fairly specific to the areas on which the introduction was focused. The demographic and background information provided insight as to what experiences subjects are drawing upon and their romantic background. Respondents were not obligated to fill out all of the questions if they felt the questions were too personal.

In addition to surveys, textual resources are employed to clarify terminology and to lay the groundwork for the research. Information of language origins, religious ideologies, and economic structures are examples of some information obtained from textual sources. Furthermore, case studies were carried out to obtain more detailed answer to the general survey questions. These answers were compared with the collected survey data and not taken as the norm, but as possible explanations to the general pattern of the survey results. The findings were then compared with the textual resources to see if any correlations existed.

The large majority of the Sociology group’s research was based on surveys and interviews. Surveys were distributed to the American and Russian students and were posted to message boards on www.oxygen.com and www.ivillage.com. These two sites were chosen because of the high volume of female parents that are traditionally more active and curious about child development. The message boards were also used to diversify our subject. Only relying on students and our friends and family members would possibly skew the data, making it only applicable to a certain segment of the population. Therefore, utilizing the Web provided access to a wider variety of people to ensure an objective, well-rounded subject base. Unfortunately, the Web does not completely solve the problem of collecting a large enough sample of people to generalize due to the monetary resources currently required to gain access to the Web; for example, in under-developed countries, Internet access is not as prevalent nor accessible. Interviewing allowed us to gather more detailed information from our subjects. The subjects chosen for interviews were usually friends or family members that were willing to spend the extra time it took to interview (sometimes up to thirty extra minutes). In both cases, the sociology group made sure to remind our subjects that their responses would be kept confidential, and to entice people to respond, we offered to share a copy of the final report with each subject if they so desired.

The political science group relied heavily on the internet and occasionally used textbooks for general data. The background of the political systems in Russia and the United States was researched through both textbooks and various sites on the Internet to gather information about the presidential elections in each country and to create a brief background of the government structure of Russia and the United States.

Next, the research focused on the filtering mechanisms in place concerning media coverage of politics. This second branch of research discusses three main points. The first point is the accessibility of the Internet as a tool for gathering political information. The second point of this study ties closely to the first, analyzing the structural form of information on the Internet. This point includes studying search engines, search paths, website timelines, chat rooms, and utilized student feedback as collected by the questionnaire. The third point in this study focuses on the reliability of the Internet as an informational source. This point analyzes the qualifications of web resources, tabulates and analyzes student responses, and directly discusses article bias techniques used by writers in both the United States and Russia.

The means used for gathering information to study the effect the Internet has in both small and large corporations in the United States as well as in Russia was largely through the Internet. All the members from the economics group performed searches with web search engines to find data related specifically to Russian and US businesses. The economics group also evaluated Russian and US business websites for their specific offerings relating to e-commerce. Furthermore, interviews were conducted with several managers whose companies utilized the Internet. Finally, since this topic is so current, minimal research was performed in the library relating to studies done about the Internet’s usage and expected growths. The information collected provided the economics group with a solid basis for comparison between the different businesses and was used to draw significant conclusions.