Marissa Jenkins

Kim

MW 12-1:15 86306 (SOCI 1101)

12 September 2011

Writing Assignment #2

The last time I remember hearing information from the media that I found out later wasn’t true was the rumor about how the munchkin in the movie, Wizard of Oz, committed suicide on screen. The scene where the so-called “suicide” had happened was after Dorothy and the Scarecrow had met up with the Tin Man skipping along the yellow brick road towards Emerald City. I was told this a couple of years ago and I decided to investigate whether or not it was true.

To further begin my research I went to the local Blockbuster to rent the movie. After I rented the movie from the store I inserted it into my DVD player and waited for the scene to come up. As the scene came into play, I watched it and saw nothing happen. I watched it again, this time looking back towards the woods and there I saw something move. I rewound it and watched it again to confirm my sighting and yes I did see something moving in the background. From then on I believed that the rumor was true. That was until I mentioned my findings to another friend who said that it was not a munchkin hanging in the background, but a big bird. Yet again I decided to further investigate; however, this time I took it to the internet where I found an article where it indeed confirms that it was a bird. It was stated in the article that to give the indoor set a more “outdoors” feel, several birds of various sizes were borrowed from the Los Angeles Zoo and allowed to roam the set one being a crane moving its wings at the back of the set.

By doing this process to investigate my findings, I actually completed some of triangulation studies. The triangulation studies focus mainly on three different test methods: reliability, validity and generalizability tests. In watching the video more than once and getting the same result which was there was indeed something moving in the background, turned out to be reliable. It was reliable because the result I got was consistent. However, the fact that I believed what I saw moving was a munchkin committing suicide and not a bird moving made my findings not valid. The way to make it valid, meaning I had an accurate measure of the factor