Sociology/Social Work/Political Science 311 
Social Research Methods I 
Thursday 1:15-4:00
307 Jennings Hall

Dr. Larry M. Logue
206 Jennings Hall
925-3328
e-mail: logue@mc.edu
Office hours: TR 11-1, MWF 1-4

Purpose of the course and learning objectives: This course is a survey of basic research methods and data analysis in the social sciences. "Methods" include quantitative techniques, and we will review basic statistical procedures and introduce more advanced statistics and computer skills; but methods also encompass ways of thinking that are essential to successful social research. The course will thus encourage you to appreciate the logic of empirical inquiry; to understand the ways in which research contributes to knowledge; to respect the ethical issues involved in research; and to value the practical skills necessary to critique social programs and evaluate one's own professional practice.

Required book (available at the Mississippi College bookstore):

Earl Babbie, The Practice of Social Research, 10th edition.

Attendance: Regular class attendance on time is mandatory. The Mississippi College catalog indicates that a student will receive an automatic F on accumulating four absences in once-a-week classes; you can expect to have your grade lowered proportionately for lesser numbers of absences. To have an absence excused, bring a written statement to class, even if you have been officially excused by an administrative notice or medical permit.

Assignments: Each week, you will be given an assignment from The Practice of Social Research and from the exercises at the end of this syllabus, and you may also be asked to complete an occasional computer assignment. Be sure to read the textbook chapters carefully and to furnish all the information requested in the exercises. You may be asked to take a quiz on the textbook material, and the exercises will contribute to your grade. You will also be given ample opportunity to comment in class on the issues raised in the assignments.

Grading: You have two options for your semester grade.  Under Option B, you will be expected to complete the weekly assignments and take two hour exams plus the final exam, for a maximum grade of B.  Option A includes the requirements for Option B, plus a proposal for a research project.  This proposal is meant to be a detailed plan for a project that you will complete in the second semester; the topic will be chosen in individual consultation, and instructions for the project follow this syllabus.  The proposal is to be submitted first as a rough draft and then in final form.  The draft will not be graded, but failure to submit an adequate draft by the deadline will lower your grade on the final report.  Option A makes you eligible for a maximum grade of A.  You will be asked to make a written declaration of option choice by November 3.  The calculation percentages and exam dates for the options are:


 Option A
 Option B
First exam (Sept. 29)
 20%
 25%
Second exam (Nov. 3)
 25%
 30%
Final exam (Dec. 13)
 30%
 40%
Proposal
 20%
 ------
Assignments/participation
 5%
 5%


The exams will include fill-in-the blank questions, problems to be solved, and discussions of issues raised in the course.  The assignments portion of your grade will also be influenced by class participation (that is, the degree to which you make a thoughtful and productive contribution to class discussions). Grading is on a "10 point" scale (91-100=A, 81-90=B, etc.). Makeup tests (for acceptable reasons) will be given as soon as possible after the exam that was missed.


Class schedule (specific assignments will be announced each week):

Aug. 25 - Introduction

Sept. 8 - Logic and theory in scientific inquiry

Sept. 15 - Cause and effect in social science

Sept. 22 - Introductory research design

Sept. 29 - First exam

Oct. 6   - Sharpening and operationalizing concepts

Oct. 13 - Using scales and indexes

Oct. 20 - Probability and sampling

Oct. 27 - The experimental method

Nov. 3   - Second exam

Nov. 10   - Computers and research

Nov. 17  - Designing survey research / Draft of research proposal due

Dec. 1    - Qualitative field research / Final version of research proposal due

Dec. 8   - Documentary analysis

Dec. 13  - Final exam

Other important dates:

Aug. 26 - Last day to add a class

Oct. 28  - Last day to drop a class

Academic integrity: Mississippi College students are expected to be scrupulously honest. Dishonesty, such as cheating or furnishing false information, including forgery, alteration or misuse of College documents, records, or identification, will be regarded as a serious offense subject to severe penalty. See the Mississippi College Tomahawk for further information; copies are available in the Office of Student Affairs, and at www.mc.edu/publications/tomahawk.

Students with disabilities: If students need special accommodations due to learning, physical, psychological, or other disabilities, they should contact the Director of the Counseling and Testing Center, 101 Lowrey Hall, 925-3353. For more information, see the Mississippi College Tomahawk, "Students with Disabilities" section.

Cell phones:  Please turn cell phones off during class meetings.
 
Instructions for Research Proposals

Important dates

Sept. 15  - Deadline for topic selection

Nov.  3    - Deadline for option A declaration

Nov.  17   - Draft of proposal due

Dec.  1     - Final version due

Assignment

Your assignment is to produce a carefully planned, thoroughly justified, and clearly written proposal for the research project that you will complete in the spring semester. The topic must involve analysis of data on an important social issue: your choice of topic must be approved by September 16. You should aim for ten typed pages, with one-inch margins all around, including references.


Content

Your proposal must make a convincing case that your project is worth doing. In the process, it should answer these questions:

* What is the issue? What is the precise question you will be exploring?

* What do we now know about it? Who has investigated the general topic you're exploring, what have they found, and what angle are you taking?

* What data will you be using? Where are the data from, how many cases are there, and are there any shortcomings of your data?

* What is your hypothesis? Based on what we now know, what do you expect to find, and how will you know if your expectation doesn't prove true?

* Why is this project worth doing in the first place? Can you formulate an answer to the question, "So what"?

Sources

You will need scholarly sources to demonstrate the current state of knowledge about your topic. The only such sources permitted for this proposal are books published by university presses and articles from scholarly journals. Internet sources are prohibited.   If in doubt about a source, ask. When you borrow ideas from scholarly works, use quotations only when the actual language of your source is better than any paraphrasing you could do. If you do use quotations, put them in quotation marks and cite the source. When in doubt, put it in your own words and then cite the source. Always keep in mind that using someone's ideas without proper credit is plagiarism.

Presentation

The content of a research proposal is obviously vital, but the style, grammar, and mechanics of presentation are equally important. These excerpts from books on successful proposal-writing underscore the point:

    You do need to put as much care into preparing your proposal as you have put into designing the project . . . . Look for the logic of     your arguments. Are there any holes? Move on to analyzing word choices and examining the grammar (Jane C. Geever, Guide to         Proposal Writing [The Foundation Center, 2001]).

    Every sentence must be examined and reexamined in terms of its clarity, grammar, and relationship with surrounding sentences. . .     .  If, in reading any sentence, a colleague or reviewer hesitates, stumbles, or has to reread the sentence to understand the content,     then the sentence must be examined for possible revision (Lawrence F. Locke et al., Proposals That Work [Sage, 1987]).

Because presentation is vital in social-science research, half of your grade will be based on logic, style, and mechanics; the other half will be based on how thoroughly and thoughtfully you answer the above content questions. Guides on writing skills are available and will be furnished on request.
Some useful Web sites:

Sample research proposal

Topics available in U.S. Census

Variables in 2000 Census

Subjects in General Social Survey (click on "Subject")

Weekly exercises:

Chapter 2 (pick one of these):

1. Chapter 1 discussed a possible relationship between education and prejudice.  Describe how you might examine that relationship, first using the inductive approach and then the deductive approach.

2. Chapter 2 describes several paradigms that guide research.  Identify and briefly summarize three paradigms you've encountered in other fields you've encountered in college (history, economics, or psychology, for example).  Please note that the paradigms you describe will be different from those discussed in chapter 2; you need to identify the paradigms appropriate to that field.

Paradigm #1 (and the field it's from):






Paradigm #2 (and the field it's from):






Paradigm #3 (and the field it's from):





3. Imagine that you're a social scientist who wants to apply the conflict and structural functionalism paradigms in a study of some organization you've been involved in as an employee or volunteer.  Give an example of how each paradigm would determine what you would examine in your study.

Conflict paradigm:








Structural functionalism paradigm:



Chapter 4:


Answer one of questions 1, 2, or 3 on pp. 115-116 of the textbook, or answer this question:

A survey question asked, "Do you think the use of marijuana should be made legal?"  The question was asked of different groups of people in 1980 and 1990.

Should marijuana be made legal?

                                             Year

                                1980                1990

Should                    24%                17%

Should not             76%                83%

1. Analyze the results of the table.  That is, first report the percentage differences between the two years for those who said "should" and then for those who said "should not."  Then think of an an explanation for the change.

        a. Report the percentage differences:



        b. Provide an explanation for the differences:




2.  Does this table reflect longitudinal or cross-sectional data?  If  the former, which type?  Why?










Chapter 5:

Pick one of these:

1) Select one of these concepts--religiosity, discrimination, patient anxiety, or marital happiness--then begin the operationalization process by completing these steps:

     a) Provide a nominal definition of the concept.



     b) Describe the dimentions you would use in developing an operational definition of the concept.  Why would you use these?







2) The grade point average is often assumed to measure the intelligence of a student relative to other students.  Give two rasons why the GPA may not be valid and two reasons why the GPA may not be reliable as a measure of intelligence.  Make sure your reasons address the definitions of reliability and validity.

       Two problems of validity:







       Two problems of reliability:






3) Sue is 20 years old and Mary is 40 years old.  Write statements regarding their ages that illustrate each of these levels of measurement, and explain why each reflects the definition of that type of measurement:

       a) Nominal (and why):



       b) Ordinal (and why):



       c) Ratio (and why):




Chapter 6:

Homework:
Suppose you want to measure the "quality" of colleges and universites.  Would it be better to construct an index or a Guttman scale?  Why?  Pick three items that might go into your index or scale.  Why use these three?  After picking them, what would be the next steps in constructing your index or scale?  You don't have to do them--just describe what they'd be.

Questions for chapter-reading:
What do indexes and scales have in common?  What's the difference between them?  Which is "better"?  Rules for making an index? 

Chapter 7:

Questions through p. 205:

Why do we do sampling?  Two basic types of samples?  Which is better, and how exactly does it avoid problems involved in the worse one?  What's a sampling frame, and what are the logic and principles involved in a sampling distribution?


Homework (for Oct. 27):

This list of sociologists is from a yearly guide to members published by the American Sociological Association:

  1. Lauren Aaronson
  2. Andrew Abbott
  3. James Abbott
  4. Kimberly Abbott
  5. Joan Abbott-Chapman
  6. Felix Abdala
  7. Saleha Abedin
  8. Thomas Abel
  9. Anthony Abela
  10. Ronald Abeles
  11. Christopher Abells
  12. Marjorie Abend-Wein
  13. Joel Aberbach
  14. David Aberle
  15. Pnina Abir-Am
  16. Joyce Abma
  17. Mitchel Abolafia
  18. Jill Abood
  19. Mitchell Aboulafia
  20. Deborah Abowitz
  21. Gary Abraham
  22. Brant Abrahamson
  23. Mark Abrahamson
  24. Glen Abrams
  25. Paul Abramson
  26. Jeana Abromeit
  27. Lorien Abroms
  28. James Absher
  29. Vicki Abt
  30. Janet Abou-Lughod
  31. Rikki Abzug
  32. Joan Acker
  33. Alan Acock
  34. Kazumi Adachi
  35. Stephen Adair
  36. Barry Adam
  37. Donald Adamchak
  38. Anne Adams
  39. Ben Adams
  40. Bert Adams
  41. Darrell Adams
  42. Douglas James Adams
  43. Janet Adams
  44. Joanne Adams
  45. Julia Adams
  46. Laura Adams
  47. Michelle Adams
  48. Randolph Adams
  49. Rebecca Adams
  50. Reed Adams
  51. Richard Adams
  52. Stacy Adams
  53. Christopher Adamson
  54. Michelle Adato
  55. Lu Ann Aday
  56. David Aday
  57. Michele Adcock
  58. Donald Addison
  59. Miriam Adelman
  60. Richard Adelman
  61. Pamela Adelmann
  62. Larry Adelmon
  63. Evan Adelson
  64. Francis Adeola
  65. Maurice Adib
  66. Edward Adlaf
  67. Chaim Adler
  68. Emily Adler
  69. Gerald Adler
  70. Glen Adler
  71. Leta Adler
  72. Marina Adler
Your assignment is to select from this list a stratified systematic sample of approximately ten names, beginning with a random start.  The stratification variable in this case is gender.  First, reorganize the list of names by gender (the simplest way to do this is to reogranize the numbers that go with the names).  If a person's gender isn't obvious, place the first such name in the female category, the second in the male category, and so on.  Next, select your systematic sample across the reorganized (i. e., stratified) list:

1. Reorganized list:












2:    Your sampling interval ________________

       Your random start ____________________

       The list of names selected:

                1. ____________________________

                2. ____________________________

                3. ____________________________

                4. ____________________________

                5. ____________________________

                6. ____________________________

                7. ____________________________

                8. ____________________________

                9. ____________________________

               10. ____________________________

                Note: Correctly drawn samples might result in the selection of 10 or 11 names.

3. Finally, explain the purpose of doing a sample in this way.







Chapter 8:

You've been asked to develop a study of the effects of watching  Sesame Street on children's gender-role orientations.  First, describe how you would design the study using a  true experimental design (select one from the textbook).   Next, describe how you would design the study using a preexperimental design (again, select one from the textbook).  Use your designs to answer these questions:

1. True experimental design you selected and why:




2. How you measured the dependent variable:





3. Describe your study in terms of your design:








4.  Advantage of a true experimental design?







5. Weakness of your design (including one source of invalaidity)?







6. Preexperimental design you selected and why:







7. How you measured the dependent variable for this design:







8. Describe your study using this design:







9. Advantage of preexperimental design?





10. Weakness of preexperimental design (including a source of internal invalidity)?
Chapter 9:
Each of the questionnaire items below has two or more things wrong with it. Point out at least two defects for each questionnaire item. Rewrite each item to correct the defects. Do not use open-ended questions as a rewrite to fix problems in closed-ended questions.


1. What is your religion?

Protestant                     Jewish

Catholic                        Episcopalian

Lutheran                       Other


Defects:

 

Rewritten:

 

2.At what age were you toilet-trained?

() Before six months old

() Between six months old and nine month old

() Between nine months old and one year old

() Between one year old and one and a half years old

() Between one and a half years old and two years old

() Between two years and three years old

() Older than three years old

() Not applicable


Defects:

 

 

Rewritten:

 

 

 

3. How much money do you make? $_______________ 

Defects:

 

 

Rewritten:

 

4. Suppose you were in a bookstore and saw a book displayed on a counter near the door that you wanted very much but could not afford. Would you steal it? 

        () Yes                                       () No
 

Defects:

 

 

 

Rewritten:

 

5. Are you a college student or graduate? If so, why did you decide to go to college? 

() I had a thirst for more knowledge

() I wanted to get a better understanding of the world

<>() I was too lazy to get a job 

Defects:
 

 

 

Rewritten: 

 

6. Do you agree or disagree that the trouble with welfare is that people get too comfortable and don’t want to go back to work, so the government should institute some job-training programs for people on welfare and then set a limited amount of time in which they can learn work skills and get a job? 

        () Agree                                   () Disagree 

Defects: 

 

 

Rewritten:

 

7. Do you disagree or agree with the President that the United States shouldn’t provide a national health care program? 

    () Agree                                   () Disagree 

Defects:
 

 

Rewritten:




 

8. Where do you get most or all of your information about current events in the nation and the world?

  () Radio                        () Newspapers             () Magazines                 ()Internet

Defects:

 

 

Rewritten:




 

9. Why do you think big cars are a bad thing for America?

 
Defects:

 

 

Rewritten: