We're going to Jordan!

This is Heidi Woofenden and this is our first blog post. We're all super excited to go to Jordan to do research this July. We'll be going the 6th to the 27th to collect research on body image from Tafila Technical University (TTU) and hopefully Yarmouk University and Amman University. I'm focusing on religiosity's effect on body image, Kaitlyn Baptista will be focusing on media exposure's effect on body image, Bonnie Fletcher will be focusing on the effects of health behaviors on body image, and Ashley DeMello will be making cross-cultural comparisons of Jordanian and American body images overall and in all of these specific areas, and focusing specifically on the differences between the young men and women in both cultures.

We've been doing much prep work over the past months. We're currently in the process of putting together an Institutional Review Board (IRB) proposal to get our research approved. We've already gotten the funding for the research from the school but now we must submit a proposal to our IRB and those of the two Jordanian universities to make sure our research is justified, ethical, etc. This is quite a project! Of course we're also trying to learn as much as possible about Jordanian culture so as to be able to assimilate ourselves as best we can. We've met with several Jordanian graduate students currently studying at BSC and are planning more meetings and outings with them for the coming months before we depart. They couldn't be more friendly and helpful. I've also been talking to a current TTU student on Facebook and he's shed light on a lot of questions and concerns I have. We've been doing lots of independent research as well and sharing whatever we find with the group. We're very excited but also apprehensive because we don't quite know what to expect from a country so different from our own. We'll find out soon enough!