Customizing the Body (PDF file) - Print My Tattoo

193 Methodological Appendix
a tattooist's work, published a piece on the stigmatized presentation
of tattooing by "scientific" analysts in a major tattoo journal,
and had a piece included in the catalogue accompanying a major
exhibit of tattoo art and photography mounted in Rome.
To supplement the data drawn from my direct and intimate participation
with the tattoo subculture, I conducted a series of
lengthy, semi-structured, tape-recorded interviews with tattoo recipients
contacted during the course of the research. I collected
interviews with 16 people (10 men and 6 women) who were representative
of the sex, age, tattoo experience, and social status categories
I encountered in the field settings. Their average age was
24 years (from 17 to 39) and, as a group, they carried 35 tattoos
(9 had one, 3 had two, and 4 had three or more).
A somewhat more structured body of data was drawn from the
four-page questionnaires completed by 163 tattooees contacted in
three separate settings. Fifty-six were filled out by tattoo enthusiasts
attending the 1984 convention of the National Tattoo Association
in Philadelphia, 44 were returned by clients in the "artistic"
studio, and 63 respondents completed the questionnaire folloWing
their tattoo experience in the street shop in which I initially began
to collect field data. Sixty-eight percent of the respondents
were men and 32 percent were women. They ranged in ages from
17 to 71 with an average age of 30 years. Sixty-two percent had
received some education past high school and 5 percent had graduate
degrees. Skilled craftwork, machine operation, and general
labor were the most common occupations pursued by the men;
service and clerical workers were most heavily represented among
the women. Twelve percent of the men and 6 percent of the
women were involved in professional or technical occupations (see
Figure 5).
Although I have a healthy skepticism with regard to the data
provided by self-administered questionnaires, I still chose to supplement
the qualitative information I had collected by using this
mechanism for the follOWing reasons. It provided me with a
broader general picture of the people who are tattooed, and there
was no systematic body of data numerically representing tattooees
in the United States (cf. Dube, 1985). I had little trouble in getting
the people in the tattoo shops to fill out the questionnaire, since