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Tom Hiddleston as Loki, the Norse god of mischief.
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Last year, Margo created a survey to gauge attitudes toward bullies by their middle school peers. The questions took months to draft and vet for bias. The Institutional Review Board checked her protocol against NSF rules for the ethical treatment and informed consent of human subjects. The survey was tested on a dozen middle schoolers. Three of them misunderstood the wording of question 17. Six more rewrites.
Next Margo sought guinea pigs. She needed a representative mix of
ethnicities and genders. Some urban
schools, some rural. Private and
public. Bible Belt South and affluent
Northeast. Six weeks of research,
e-mails, and snail mail. The begging
phone calls to sixty principals: “Yes
sir. Completely anonymous. I know, sir.
You’re absolutely right; the school day is precious. I promise. Fifteen minutes, max.”
