Sociology Senior Research Seminar

Sociology W3996

Fall, 2006

T: 4:10-6:00

301M Fayerweather

Thomas DiPrete

415 Fayerweather

Office Hours: TBA

Email:

Teaching Assistants:

Natacha Stevanovic

Email:

Office Hours: TBA

Office Location: TBA

Greg Eirich

Email:

Office Hours: TBA

805B International Affairs Building

This course is for sociology majors who are working on their senior research paper or senior honors thesis. The senior seminar is organized as either a one-semester or a one-year course, with each semester counting for 3 credits. Students writing a senior research paper will generally take the research seminar for one semester. Students who are writing a senior honors thesis also have the option of finishing their thesis in one semester, but because the standards for an honors thesis are higher than for a research paper, honors thesis students would normally take the research seminar for the entire year. Students who are working on their honors thesis under the specific direction of a faculty advisor are not required to attend the senior research seminar, though they are invited to take advantage of the seminar to improve their honors thesis if they so choose. It is very important that each student decide which of these models that student is following by the second week of the semester.

It is not so much the quantity of pages produced as the scope and intensity of the research and the sophistication and depth of the analysis that distinguishes an honors thesis from a senior research paper. In general, neither a senior research paper nor a senior honors thesis calls for great length in the main text. The best model for a senior honors thesis would be a published paper in a mainstream sociology or social science journal. The text for such papers is typically 30-45 pages in length plus references, appendices and/or tables and figures as appropriate. It is in fact much more difficult to produce a tightly argued and heavily revised 35 page paper than it is to produce a loosely argued and lightly revised 80 page paper. The goal should be to produce a well-written and solidly researched thesis of moderate length. Senior research papers should also, of course, be tightly argued, and should reflect a solid effort applied over the duration of a single semester.

Because of the different time frames for a senior research paper and a senior honors thesis, the one-semester option contains different deadlines than the two semester option. After an initial period of formulating thesis topics, the honors thesis students doing the two-semester option will typically meet every other week, though the exact schedule will depend on the nature of the projects. Regardless of the formal schedule, honors thesis students will typically be in communication with Natacha, Greg, or me on a weekly basis. Because of their accelerated schedule, students in the one-semester option will typically meet as a group every week. It is in the nature of research that much of the work will be done independently, but we will provide guidance on a regular basis both in class and during office hours.

IMPORTANT: Students cannot shift from the one to the two-semester option after the first two weeks. This is designed to stop people from following the one semester model and not finishing their paper within the semester. However, one can always shift to the one semester model by finishing their paper.

The course is designed to provide students with ideas for thinking about thesis topics, strategies for conducting research and evaluating evidence, and assistance in design and analysis necessary for completing original research in the social sciences. Students are expected to present progress reports on their projects throughout the term. All written work should be edited, proofread, and typed.

Students who violate the Columbia University honor code in this course will automatically fail. Students who fail this course because of an honor code violation will not be allowed to take it in another year, replace it with another course, or re-submit their work for credit. There will be no exceptions to this policy, whatever the recommendations of the adjudicating bodies.

Readings for the course will generally depend on the particular content of the student’s project, and we expect each student to read extensively on subjects related to their research project. Collective readings will however, occasionally be assigned if we think them appropriate.

The schedule outlined below is necessarily provisional. Writing a research paper or an honors thesis is not a task that is easily scripted in advance, and we will often need to adjust the schedule to make sure we cover relevant issues.

Provisional Schedule

Sept 5

In this meeting we will introduce ourselves and describe the various possibilities for the course. You should leave understanding the choices you have to make and the general requirements of a thesis or research paper.

Assignment for Sept 12

  1. Prepare and bring to class either: a) a one-page summary of your research topic, including a description of the data that you intend to use, or b) three one-paragraph descriptions of possible topics you would like to explore. Be prepared to discuss these in class.
  2. Decide whether you are following the one-semester or two-semester option.
  3. If you are writing an honors thesis under the supervision of a sociology faculty member, plan to have met with this person by Sept 12. Bring a note that states you are working with him or her.

Sept 12.

In this meeting we will continue discussion of your ideas for projects and use this discussion to identify some general rules for picking topics. You should leave with a better understanding of what can and cannot be accomplished with the time and other resources available to you, and we should know whether you are writing an honors thesis (two semesters) or a research paper (one semester).

Assignment for Sept 19:

If you have previously identified a topic for your thesis, bring to class a revised two-page description of the project that incorporates or responds to comments and suggestions from the instructor, the TAs, and your classmates. If you had started with three possible projects, then propose a single project based on the discussions we have had in class in response to your original set of ideas.

Sept. 19: Begin Small Group Discussions, and Discussion of IRB

Those of you writing a two-semester thesis may in certain circumstances be required to get human subjects approval for your work. If this is the case you will need to go through the IRB process. All other students would benefit from a discussion of ethical issues in the conduct of social science research. Around this point in the semester, we will meet together for a discussion of the ethical conduct of research led by someone from the Columbia Office for Responsible Conduct of Research. After this presentation, we will break into small groups led by the instructor or one of the TAs. Each group will focus on issues relevant to the specific projects of group members, including the IRB process, the data requirements for your project, and appropriate strategies for collecting or otherwise obtaining access for these data.

Assignment for Sept 26

Produce a revised version of your proposal that provides greater clarification both of your research question and of the methodological strategy that you will employ in order to answer this question.

Sept 26 and Oct 3.

In these two classes we will break into small groups led by the instructor or TAs. We will focus the discussion on strategies for conducting a satisfactory literature review, and continue the discussion of methodological issues germane to your proposed research topics. Students who need IRB clearance will be assisted through the IRB process.

Assignment for Oct 10

  • TURN IN A WELL-DEVELOPED 5 PAGE PROPOSAL
  • Conduct a thorough search on your topic using the SSCI and the keywords you have developed.
  • Organize all of the secondary sources that you have found into a database that you can refer to throughout. Start to build your reference section.
  • From the abstracts of the articles you have found, determine which articles you must read and which are better skimmed. Identify the central articles in your research area, if any.
  • Summarize your results and be prepared to discuss the issues you have faced in developing the initial reference list. This summary should take the form of an annotated reference list.
  • Those working on surveys should have their preliminary questions blocked out. Those working in the field should be able to describe the field setting in class. If this is the case, bring a short description of each.

Continuing Schedule for one-semester students

By this point in the semester, the schedules of the one-semester model and the two semester model will begin to diverge. For one-semester students, the next few weeks will consist largely of individual or small group meetings with the instructor or TAs, and the setting and meeting of benchmarks each week that are tailored to your specific project. For each week, you will be expected to post progress reports to the course website, and you will be expected to be prepared to discuss in the group or individually your progress on your project. The goal of these meetings will be to keep you on schedule to produce a research paper by the end of the semester. This paper will be the basis for your grade.

Continuing Schedule for Two-Semester Students

Two semester students will be working on more ambitious projects than one semester students, and from this point onwards, their progress through the various stages of a research project will be slower because they will be going into greater depth as theydevelop satisfactory literature reviews and suitable methodologies for the carrying out of their research project.

By the end of October, students on the two-semester schedule should have accomplished the following tasks:

1.Continue honing and expanding your literature search.

2.If your thesis requires that you have access to the field, or have access to primary data sources in archives, you should have established access by the middle of October.

3.You should have a well-developed, annotated, and organized set of materials for your literature review by the middle of October.

4. If you have survey questions the survey instrument should be in the last stages of preparation by early November.

By November, students on the two-semester schedule should have accomplished the following tasks:

1. Write a four-page summary of your thesis. This summary should identify the problem, the theoretical issues, the data you will use, what others have said about the topic, the likely answer you will find, and why this answer is important.

2. If you are conducting a survey, your survey instrument should be prepared for evaluation and testing by students in the class.

3. If you are in the field, you should have made access twice and come to class with well-organized field notes describing what you saw and what you did not see. You should be prepared to defend the relationship between your observation and the argument you intend to make.

4. Write the first draft of your literature review section. Bring multiple copies to class. We will tell you how many later. This should be organized and coherent.

5. Start to draft the first data and methods section materials. This involves describing your survey, field setting, etc. if you are doing an historical project using primary sources, you will use this section to describe these sources.

6. You should be starting to think about data analysis methods and what you will need to analyze your data. We will continue to discuss these issues in class along with your field experiences or survey experiences to date and other issues related to collection of data. Those doing larger scale quantitative projects should have organized the structure of the working dataset that they will extract from a secondary data source, and those intending to do analysis projects should by now be familiar with STATA.

By December, students on the two-semester schedule should have accomplished the following tasks:

  1. Complete a first draft of your methods and data section.
  2. Sketch in outline form the structure of your research results section. You can usefully do this whether or not you have findings at the time of this exercise.
  3. Sketch the introduction to your thesis. This should identify the important issues you are addressing and the relevant audiences who should be interested in your results.

Dec 5

This is the last class of the first semester and we will use this opportunity to assess how far we have gone and issues that need to be addressed in the next semester. If everyone is on schedule, they should have most of their data collected, their literature reviews completed, a title, abstract, data and methods section and introduction in decent shape. This is what you will hand in for your grade, plus all of the materials that will eventually go into your appendices, for example, the survey instrument. We will discuss the next semester work, which will involve more individual meetings designed to get you finished by the end of the spring semester.

End of Semester Assignment for Two-Semester Students: Hand in a progress report about your project. Include a draft of any sections of your paper that you have finished. Include a copy of any research materials (interviews, statistical analysis, survey instruments etc.) that you have produced so far. These materials will be the basis for your grade.

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