The rough outline: heels and marital status

My first attempt at organizing a research plan based on my observations from yesterday.

1. Observation:

The best shoes seem to be on the feet of professional women without rings on their left ring fingers.

2. Hypothesis:

Unmarried DC women wear taller, skinnier pumps to the office than do married DC women.

3. Operational Definitions:

unmarried: women under 35 years of age without rings on their left fingers

DC: a four-block radius of the ConnAve/M St. intersection

women: individuals who, based on my close assessment, were born with female reproductive organs

pumps: a woman's dress shoe, which includes a wedge with a pump-like toe (i.e. not espadrille or sandal wedges), that has at least a half inch of elevation

married: women under 35 years of age with rings on their left ring fingers

to the office: I will make the assumption that any woman wearing professional or business casual clothing - like porn, we know it when we see it - is a woman going to the office

4. Testing the Hypothesis:

Each week, as often as I can, at some point between 11:30am and 3pm, for every pump-wearing married and unmarried woman under 35 years of age, I will record, based on my expert judgment, exactly how high (.5-inch on up) and how skinny (super-stiletto, stiletto, stacked, chunky, block) each of their heels are.

After a week of recording this information, assign reasonable quantitative values to each heel height and each heel width to simplify the analytic process.

For example:

Height

.5 to 1-inch heel: 1 point
1.5 to 2-inch heel: 2 points

2.5 to 3-inch heel: 3 points

3.5 to 4-inch heel: 4 points

4+: 5 points

Width

super-stiletto heel: 5 points

stiletto heel: 4 points

stacked heel: 3 points

chunky heel: 2 points

block heel: 1 point

Height and width point totals will remain separate so as to allow for comparisons between unmarried/married women's heel height and unmarried/married women's heel width -- adding the two numbers would make it impossible to discern between the two.

5. Data Analysis:
Still in the works...this is the crux of the study, obviously, and I will be counting on the regression mastery of C to help me achieve the most accurate, error-free analytic product possible.

6. Weaknesses:

Clearly, not every woman wearing a ring on her left ring finger is married and not every woman with a bare left ring finger is unmarried, but in the interest of avoiding cat-fight after cat-fight, I am instead going to work from the assumption that a ring on that particular finger - including all stones and all metals - is tantamount to "currently married." The exceptions on both sides will hopefully cancel each other out, or at the very least reduce the amount of error.

Another foreseen weakness that threatens the robustness of my results involves the under-35 age limit. Because I've now become one of those women who doesn't like being asked "How old are you?" by anyone in any situation, I refuse to impose this query on anyone else. I have three women in mind - all "regular" women, not celebrities - who will collectively remind me what an average woman of that age looks like. Sure, I might end up including a tremendously well-preserved 42 year old Chinese woman and skipping a bare, weathered faced I-don't-need-to-be-pretty-to-make-partner 26 year old, but again, like above, I plan on these two exceptions ultimately cancelling one another out.

7. Conclusions:

To be seen

8. Recommendations:

To be seen