Girls Inc. Asks O’Keeffe Girls About Social Media

May 7, 2019   |   By Cora Kruzicki

Published by Eastside News

The Girls Inc. sixth grade leadership class at O’Keeffe Middle School is taking social justice into their own hands.

The class has revolved around creating leadership skills for students by having the girls research a social justice topic that had meaning for the students at their school.

The topic the girls chose is how girls and women are portrayed in the media, including social media. After the girls identified the topic, they developed a survey to find out the opinions and knowledge of other girls in the school when it comes to the media and social media.

Before the survey could be created, the girls got information from Dr. Annalee Good, co-director of the Wisconsin Evaluation Collaborative at the University of Wisconsin, on how to lead a focus group, and how to write and administer a survey. Journey Henderson, an FYI Youth Evaluator with the Goodman Community Center, helped the girls create an online and paper survey to reach the O’Keeffe girls.

The survey asked O’Keeffe girls to use a scale of 1 to 10 to rate their opinions of their own leadership identity, self-confidence, social media and bullying. The survey also asked the girls if they see sexism in their school and to list examples.

In order to reach as many people as possible, the class held focus groups during lunch to get girls’ opinions in person, made it available online and passed out paper copies.

Once all of the surveys are in, the girls will use the results to plan an interactive workshop and to use as a baseline to see if opinions and awareness change when their entire project is done at the end of the school year.