Delicate situation, need advice/opinions

[Charity4Ever]

Here's the situation. I'm getting my Master's degree in experimental psychology, and my area of interest is in the psychology of religion.

I'm currently playing around with ideas for my thesis and so far I have three particular areas of focus that I think would be interesting. One of them is how negative social factors affect something like either religious conversion or religious well-being, particularly with Messianic Jews.

The thing is that I have to take a Research Design course next semester. In that class, I'm going to have to write at least one paper that deals with the work that's related to my thesis. This class will be taught by the same professor I have for one of my classes this semester, and she's Jewish.

I don't know whether to continue to think about, consider, look up literature and stuff on this area of focus or just drop it altogether and focus on the other two I was playing with. I guess I'd rather not waste my time poking around with it if I know it's going to be an issue or cause me to fail my class or something.

Any input or whatever would be appreciated!

[ShoutToTheLord]

Do you think you could approach your professor and talk about your proposed thesis? You could use her body language and or comments to decide if she would grade you fairly........ Pray and then go with what God leads you to do.

[Charity4Ever]

I'm not sure I could approach her directly for a number of reasons--I'm worried that suggesting it to her may have the same effect as just going ahead and doing my thesis on that topic, and may cause unnecessary risk to myself regardless of what thesis topic I do.

I will definitely talk to my advisor about it (another faculty member) at least first. Although, he may not be able to look at it from the right angle. Which is also why I want advice and opinions here.

Anyone else have any input?

[TechHead]

I have a question.

Could you write how these social factors affect both Jew and Messianic Jews?

I ask, because there would be a part of the paper that would relate to her experience as a Jew, while the other part could show how Messianic Jews respond the the same type of negative social factors. This is just an idea.


Tech.

[blitzkreig]

I'm thinking that data is going to be very hard to come by when it comes to Jews ... Messianic or otherwise ... the population is so small and it is unlikely to be collected and available from the usual census sources.

Wouldn't poverty (income) and Christianity be easier to correlate ... I think it is even supportable by Scripture ...

[Charity4Ever]

blitzkreig: The data wouldn't be from census sources but be an online questionnaire study and I would probably go through the MJAA or other organizations, or through directories.

Income and Christianity has already been studied to a large extent already in a wide, wide variety of ways and has already shown to be significantly correlated. Typically, the research needs to be original.

Tech: Not easily. This thesis would actually be an empirical research study and because of its properties it would be way too broad. Too look at both would probably be best done in two separate studies!