Research Paper, Sociology

Project description
Writing assignment #2: Proposing Sociological Research

Purpose and Description: This paper assignment is designed to help students continue to develop their sociological imagination through learning how to develop a sociological research question and research plan. The final product of this assignment is a paper that proposes a sociological study. For this assignment students are asked to:

(1) identify a social issue or problem that interests them;

(2) develop a research question that can be answered with empirical evidence;

(3) conduct a library search of previous research on the question; and

(4) develop a plan to gather/identify data to address the research question.

Requirements for the Paper:

Your paper needs to be typed, double-spaced, and approximately 3 to 4 pages in length. You should use a 12-inch font and 1-inch margins on all sides. Your paper should include the following: a title, an introduction, a discussion of previous research, and a data and methods section. PLEASE USE THESE AS SECTION HEADINGS IN YOUR PAPER.

(1) Title: Write a title for the research that gives the reader an idea of the content of the proposed study. To learn how sociologists title their studies, look at several pages from the “References” section of our textbook. Pay special attention to titles of journal articles that are most likely reporting research findings. This is also a great way to help to develop an idea for your proposed study.

(2) Introduction: The introduction should introduce the research question to the reader and explain why the question is sociologically interesting and important. To accomplish this you should briefly describe the parameters of the problem or the extent of the social problem you are proposing to study. For example, if you are interested in studying the origins or causes of social inequality in Dona Ana County you may want to outline the extent of social inequality that is present, which is information you can get from the census website: www.census.gov. Your introduction should also make it clear why the research question that you plan to study is important to study. Why is the information gathered through the study important?

(3) Previous Research: In this section of the paper you need to discuss what sociologists already know about the topic or research question. You must find and discuss at least two published research articles. The best way to identify published articles on your topic is to do a search using a library database called SocINDEX. Follow the below steps to access the SocINDEX database:

Go to the library homepage
Under “Find Information” click on the line: “Articles, Books, Journals, etc.”
Under “Articles Indexes – By Name” scroll down to SocINDEX and click the “Go There” button.
You should now be on the page where you can conduct your search of sociological articles on your topic. Type in one to three keywords on your topic and narrow your search as necessary.
(4) Methodological Approach: In this section you will discuss what data you will use and how you propose to obtain the data, as well as the sample and target population of your study. You may propose to use existing data (such as census data or other data set) or to gather new data through a survey, interviews, observations, or some other method of data collection. You will want to review the material from the textbook for this section, which covers the methods of sociology. This section should tell the reader the basic design of your study and what empirical evidence you are using to answer your question.
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