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Katie Menges

Instructor Cindy Keller

RSM 541 School Library Action Research

2 April 2017

Evaluation of a Published Research Project

Initial Reactions

I have read articles about this study before, but until this module, I had never actually

tracked down the study itself. Of course, as a lover of narrative fiction I adore the Harry Potter

novels; however, I had not fully realized the impact these books can have upon readers. This

study was very interesting to me because it describes not only one, but three studies conducted

with different age groups. The studies investigate the psychological effect(s) that fictional

characters can have upon our real-world perceptions. From the first sentence of this article -

which happened to be a Dumbledore quote - I was hooked and eager to read more. Although at

times the jargon was difficult for me to adjust to, I found that this article made me re-think some

of my upcoming units for this Spring, and also affirmed some of my previous units and lessons

that I have had with my students.

From reading this article, I can say without a doubt that it matters what we read to our

students, and how we formulate our discussions in class. We need to ensure that we are

providing positive characters for students to feel a connection to, and negative examples of

characters for students to vilify. We stand to really make a difference if we structure our read-

alouds along this premise, and our students could truly gain life skills from such lessons. This

really invigorates me to redesign some of the discussion prompts that I had left for myself: there

is a lot to be gained here!

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Reflective Checklist from Leedy & Ormrod, Practical Research: Planning and Design, 9th

edition

1. Include a citation for the research article. Did you find it in a journal reviewed by

experts in the field before it was published? That is, was the article in a juried

(refereed) publication? The answer to this question should be yes, and explain how

you know in the critique.

Full Citation: Vezzali, L., Stathi, S., Giovannini, D., Capozza, D., & Trifiletti, E.

(2015). The greatest magic of Harry Potter: Reducing prejudice. Journal of

Applied Social Psychology, 45(2), 105-121.

The Journal of Applied Social Psychology is a juried publication; there is a highly

qualified editorial board (viewable here:

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1559-

1816/homepage/EditorialBoard.html), and stringent author guidelines (viewable

here: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1559-

1816/homepage/ForAuthors.html).

2. Does the article have a stated research question or problem; that is, can you

determine the focus of the author's work?

Yes: The aim of the present research is to examine whether reading the novels of

Harry Potter improves attitudes toward stigmatized groups (Vezzali et al. 108).

In all three studies, we tested the moderating role of identification with the main

positive and negative characters. In particular, we expect that reading the novels

of Harry Potter will have positive effects only among those who identify more

with Harry Potter and/or who identify less with Voldemort (Vezzali et al. 108).
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3. Is this an article that describes the collection of data, or does it describe and

synthesize other studies in which data were collected (meta-analysis)?

This article describes three separate research studies, including data collection.

The first study was an experimental intervention realized among Italian

elementary school children (Vezzali et al. 108). Participants for this study were

34 fifth-grade students from Northern Italy, and the study measured their attitudes

toward immigrants.

The second study was cross-sectional and conducted with high school students in

Italy, measuring their attitudes toward homosexuals.

The third study was also cross-sectional and conducted with undergraduates in the

UK, measuring their attitudes toward refugees. This study was conducted online.

4. Is the article logically organized and easy to follow? What could have been done to

improve its organization and readability?

This article was organized well, and included a wealth of psychological

information relevant to the studies.

The article could have been broken down into three separate studies to improve

initial readability, but then there would have been additional writing required at

the end; I would not suggest making this change, unless individuals intend to read

only one of the studies.

5. Does the article contain a section that outlines and reviews studies on this topic? In

what ways is this previous literature relevant to the research problem?

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The article provides a section, Extended contact, out-group attitudes, and Harry

Potter, in which the authors explain research that has already been completed on

types of intergroup contact and perception.

Explaining the previous literature is immensely helpful for those without a

psychology background, to explain terminology and also to establish what new

information the authors hope to discover/prove.

The reader receives valuable information regarding future terminology:

According to the extended contact hypothesis, simply knowing that an in-group

member has one or more out-group friends is sufficient to reduce prejudice

(Vezzali et al. 106).

There have already been studies done using ad hoc stories about in-group and out-

group characters forming friendships, which have proven successful at improving

attitudes toward stigmatized groups; this study plans to use real, published novels

rather than stories written by researchers for target groups.

Harry Potter novels were chosen for three reasons:

These novels are already published and require no ad hoc preparation

These novels are popular and popular books are generally appealing

(Vezzali et al. 107)

Individuals can associate fantastic characters with real-world group

members (Vezzali et al. 107)

...whereas extended contact has been operationalized as knowing in-group

members who encounter out-group members, we propose a new type of extended

contact where in-group members are replaced by a character -- felt similar to the
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self -- who is in contact with stigmatized fantasy group members (Vezzali et al.

107). This explains how this study is different from others, yet builds upon

existing theory and experimental data.

Finding such an effect would also represent the first evidence that extended

contact produces secondary transfer effects, that is the generalization of the

effects of contact with one primary out-group to attitudes toward secondary out-

group(s) not involved in the contact situation (Vezzali et al. 107).

6. If the author explained procedures that were followed in the study, are these

procedures clear enough that you could repeat the work and get similar results?

What additional information might be helpful or essential for you to replicate the

study?

The elementary-school study would be simple to recreate, as the procedures are

fairly simple and straightforward. While the authors do not provide specific

discussion prompts, one could reasonably expect to create ones own discussion

regarding passages of Harry Potter in which Harry interacts with a marginalized

group member and in which Harry does not have interactions with marginalized

group members.

7. If data were collected, can you describe how they were collected and how they were

analyzed? Do you agree with what was done? What additional things would you

have done if you had been the researcher?

Data collection for this study is really interesting: they did a series of action

research studies, with the goal of increasing external validity and

generalizability of the results with each subsequent study (Vezzali et al. 112).
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Data collection for Study One: 34 fifth-grade students in Italy

5th grade students were given a questionnaire to establish their attitudes

toward immigrants before the study began.

Groups of six children met with an instructor once a week for six

consecutive weeks to read and then discuss their passages:

The experimental group read passages that were related to issues

of prejudice and their consequences (Vezzali et al. 108).

A control group read passages that were similarly interesting, but

not related to prejudice.

One week after the last session, the students were given a questionnaire to

measure the dependent variables.

Data collection for Study Two: 117 high school students in italy (16-20 year

olds)

This study focused on attitudes toward homosexuals

Two (ostensibly unrelated) questionnaires were given during classes:

One questionnaire was concerning the liking of the series of

Harry Potter...and with book reading and watching television in

general (Vezzali et al. 111).

The other questionnaire was introduced as a research on social

studies, and it included items concerning relations with

homosexuals (Vezzali et al. 111).

Researchers compared the data from both questionnaires to establish

correlations between data sets. Simple slope analysis revealed that

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reading the books of Harry Potter was associated with more positive out-

group attitudes among participants who identified more with Harry

Potter...but not among those who identified less (Vezzali et al. 112).

From the data, they determined that book reading improved attitudes

toward homosexuals only among those more identified with the positive

character (Vezzali et al. 112).

Data collection for Study Three: 71 undergraduate students from a university

southeast of England (18 - 44 year olds)

This study focused on attitudes toward refugees.

Volunteers participated in the study in exchange for research credits

(Vezzali et al. 112).

Two ostensibly unrelated online questionnaires were given:

One questionnaire was about the series of Harry Potter and book

reading and watching television in general (Vezzali et al. 112).

One questionnaire included items concerning relations with the

out-group (Vezzali et al. 112).

When perspective taking was the dependent variable, the expected

interaction between number of Harry Potter books read and identification

with Voldemort was significant (Vezzali et al. 114).

8. Do you agree with the interpretation of the results? Why or why not?

I agree with the interpretation of the results because within each study, results

were statistically significant. Moreover, each study came up with results that fit

the hypothesis for that particular study. However, it should be mentioned that
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each individual test was small; the strength of the interpretation comes from

combining these different studies conducted with disparate test groups.

9. Finally, reflect over the entire article. What is, for you, most important? What do

you find most interesting? What do you think are the strengths and weaknesses of

this article? Will you remember this article in the future? Why or why not?

As a lover of the Wizarding World of Harry Potter, I will definitely remember this

article in the future. As a teacher who likes to show students how to treat others

using examples from literature, I will certainly apply principles from this article

into my own practice.

This articles greatest strength was, in my opinion, the successful application of

psychological principles to published literature. This allows educators to take

already published literature and use it to positively influence the perceptions of

their students.

The greatest weakness of this article was the action-research style with which it

was conducted: the test groups were not large enough to generalize to a general

population in order to derive a statistically meaningful result. However, the

authors duplicated the study in three scenarios, performing similar tests on

different ages and groups from different countries. The fact that the research

shows a positive correlation in all three studies allows us to extrapolate a

generality, but I would still personally like to see more data.

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Works Cited

Leedy, Paul D., and Jeanne Ellis Ormrod. Practical Research: Planning and Design. Vol.

9. Boston: Pearson, 2009.

Vezzali, L., Stathi, S., Giovannini, D., Capozza, D., & Trifiletti, E. (2015). The greatest

magic of Harry Potter: Reducing prejudice. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 45(2),

105-121.