data cropping

In Chapter 6, Luker gives tips for going about 'data cropping'. The first of which I found to be particularly helpful in the context of my own research. My proposal has to do with privacy and facebook. I was seeking to find out if there was a correlation between age and privacy concerns on facebook- both in terms of privacy settings as well as the types of information that is being divulged online. I chose to do interviews where I select and divide my interviewees into 3 age categories so that I can see if there if the variable I am trying to explain actually does vary. In other words, if age is a significant factor in both peoples' motivations for using the social networking tool as well as their actual behaviour online. If I am trying to say something more secific about the younger age group of facebook users and privacy, then it is important that I make sure to have some other age group to compare it to. This would be necessary for showing that the trend I observed was not merely a trend among facebook users in general.