A Guide to Writing a Senior Thesis in Sociology - WJH Home Page ...

More documents

Recommendations

Info

A research question is a specific problem or puzzle that can be addressed with evidence in the typical length of a senior thesis. A research question is anchored in a discipline, it deals with a narrow topic, and it is testable with page 8 | Before You Begin. . . empirical data. Sample Email: Recruiting an Adviser Taking the first steps and emailing a faculty member can cause some students anxiety. Here is a sample email in case you are worried about making the first connection. Dear Professor X, My name is Chris Student, and I am a sociology concentrator planning to write a senior thesis next year. I am still developing my thesis topic, but I plan to investigate how first generation immigrant teenagers develop ideas about future career paths. I was wondering if you would be able to meet with me to discuss my thesis project and the possibility of serving as my adviser. Please let me know what dates might work for you. I look forward to meeting with you! Thank you, Chris Student Turning a Topic into a Research Question What is the difference between a research topic and a research question? A topic is a broad subject area while a research question is much narrower. A research question is a specific problem or puzzle that can be addressed with evidence in the typical length of a senior thesis. A research question is anchored in a discipline, it deals with a narrow topic, and it is testable with empirical data. What do we mean by “anchored in a discipline”? The social sciences deal with many of the same issues—economists, political scientists, and sociologists have all written about cities, crime, education, the arts, immigration, wars, the media, the family, etc. Developing a sociological research question requires situating your topic within the sociological debates and literature. How do you know if your question is sociological? Nearly every topic can be answered in a sociological way; sociology is a discipline concerned with explaining how groups of people interact, and so we focus on things like stratification and inequality, culture, and organizations to name a few. Sociologists think about how individuals fit into larger shared systems of thought, resource distribution, and power, among other things. For example, we think about how people share beliefs, values, and accepted behaviors and how this can explain differences between groups. If one racial/ethnic, gender, age, or nation-based group has a different system of thought than another, can it explain why one group is more successful than another? We also think about resource distribution. Why do some groups in society have so much more than others, how did it get to be this way, and what are the consequences? Rather than thinking about the inequality among individuals, we examine whether shared characteristics of race, class, gender, education, etc., can explain these differences. We also think about power. How do positions of power in organizations, governments,
and social groups come to be? Why do some positions hold more power than others? How do we assess which individuals should fill these roles? How is power perpetuated by systems and/or individuals? How narrow should the research question be? The end product of your thesis is 60-100 pages, with 1-3 chapters (20-50 pages) describing your findings. You will be working on the paper for 7-10 months. Your topic should be a specific question that lends itself to 1-3 sub-questions to discuss in your findings chapters, and it should also be broad enough to sustain a nearly year-long project. (Typically students have more trouble developing a narrow-enough topic rather than a broad-enough topic!) Your question must be testable with empirical data. If you are going to write a theoretical thesis (which is rarely undertaken by concentrators), you may not be actually testing the question, but it has to be something that could be tested by others, given the right data source. With this in mind, how should you move from topic to research question? • Brainstorm several narrower “slices” of your topic. Are you interested in a particular group of people within a topic? What particular aspect of the topic are you considering? Are you more interested in how people interpret or feel about something? Or are you more interested in people’s outcomes? • During the brainstorming process, talk with your adviser, faculty members, graduate students, classmates, and friends. Don’t be afraid to say to your adviser, “I’m really interested in the prison system and I would like to write a thesis on this. How can I begin?”They may have a research question they think needs to be answered or can point you to relevant literature. Do not be afraid to talk to a number of different faculty members about the same topic or idea or about several topics or ideas. Often their comments and questions will help you refine the topic further; sometimes we don’t realize things aren’t clear until we try to explain it to someone else! • During this time, you should also start to read broadly on your topic. You are not undertaking a literature review quite yet, but often reading through what has been done will lead you to questions that have not been satisfactorily answered, debates that continue to occur, an implication or follow-up to an argument that has not been explored, or a question that you think can be explored with different methodology. o One place to look is the Annual Review of Sociology, a journal comprised of literature reviews. If there is a piece on your broad topic, it might identify the major debates or sub- fields. You can also ask your adviser for a list of the major books or works on the topic. As you work through the major literature, focus your reading in an increasingly narrow area. Scan footnotes for further references that may lead you to a work that sparks your specific interest. • After brainstorming several narrower topics, start developing questions. A research question should be specific: What is the specific phenomenon you are interested in? For whom? In what way? For example, if you are interested in the educational attainment of immigrant students, what specific outcome are you interested in? For what group of immigrants? What do you want to examine that relates to this outcome—language? Culture? Social integration? A Guide to Writing a Senior Thesis in Sociology | page 9
Page 1 and 2: Department of Sociology Faculty of
Page 3 and 4: A Guide to Writing a Senior Thesis
Page 5: Table of Contents Time Management a
Page 8 and 9: page 2 | Sample Timeline Schedule f
Page 10 and 11: If undertaken for the right reasons
Page 12 and 13: You should talk with your adviser t
Page 16 and 17: page 10 | Before You Begin. . . o Y
Page 18 and 19: Examples of Moving from Topic to Re
Page 20 and 21: Often, quantitative methods are use
Page 22 and 23: Worksheet: Choosing a Method Method
Page 24 and 25: part two page 18 | Preparing Your R
Page 26 and 27: page 20 | Preparing Your Research
Page 28 and 29: page 22 | Preparing Your Research I
Page 30 and 31: page 24 | Preparing Your Research c
Page 32 and 33: You are now ready to start recruiti
Page 34 and 35: page 28 | Preparing Your Research W
Page 36 and 37: part three page 30 | Collecting You
Page 38 and 39: page 32 | Collecting Your Data You
Page 40 and 41: Back up your data using an external
Page 42 and 43: part four page 36 | Analyzing Your
Page 44 and 45: page 38 | Analyzing Your Data You c
Page 46 and 47: part five page 40 | Drafting the Th
Page 48 and 49: page 42 | Drafting the Thesis Your
Page 50 and 51: Start with the six important questi
Page 52 and 53: If you present any tables or figure
Page 54 and 55: page 48 | Drafting the Thesis belon
Page 56 and 57: page 50 | Drafting the Thesis Note
Page 58 and 59: Think back to the hourglass analogy
Page 60 and 61: There are many resources around the
Page 62 and 63: part six page 56 | Turning in the T
Page 64 and 65:
Before you turn in the final draft
Page 66 and 67:
page 60 | Abbreviated Version of th
Page 68 and 69:
appendix two page 62 | Funding Sour
Page 70 and 71:
page 64 | End Matter
show all

A Guide to Writing a Senior Thesis in Sociology - WJH Home Page ...

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?