SOC 315 "Choosing a Topic" Review Assignment
Email: akarnehm@ncwu.edu
Name:
Date:
The meaning of research is found in the word itself. RE – SEARCH. Scientific work requires you to explore and fail, explore and fail again*. Search and RE – SEARCH until you find topics that:
• Allow you to add your own unique ideas to books, articles and other ideas.
• Allow you to learn about systems of human nature and society that you have never heard of before.
To encourage you to SEARCH and then RE – SEARCH, complete the assignment below. Use some of the methods we discussed during the library seminar to discover at least one possible topic: for inspiration, think of issues in your major, find basic info in books, journal articles, your textbooks, lecture notes, and class discussion.
You are to come up with a topic to research and determine a set of keywords that will be used for your future research assignments. Answer each question listed below. If you complete this assignment before 8pm the night before it is due, you may email it to your instructor. Otherwise, please print this form and turn it in to her in class.
1) What is your topic? Ask in the form of a question, which addresses the impact or effect of one thing on something else.
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2) What are the keywords that are associated with your topic? List at least five keywords.
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3) List the methods that you used to choose your topic (methods are listed on the course guide at library.ncwc.edu). For each method, list the specific resources that you used to find information during your topic search. For example, if you used an Encyclopedia of Sociology, then you would list the titles of the reference books that you used. (We used to point these out during the workshop.) Several volumes. AKW
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4) How can you convince your professor that the information you found on your topic is reliable? Did you use internet sources? If so, how do you know they are reliable? Note: you may connect your reader to credible internet sources/statistics for your introductory material, but not necessarily the scholarly articles you’ll use to back up your topic. Focus on the latter.
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5) Which method or resource was most helpful in choosing a topic? and Why?
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*6) Now that you’ve written a resource question in #1, give a first shot at writing it in a research statement. Follow this trail, filling in the independent and dependent variables in the way that we’ll discuss them in class over time. The blanks may not necessarily be single words.)
I am investigating the impact of ____________________________________ on __________________________________.
Survey Research Project Assignment