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

Developing and Testing Your Methodology
If you are collecting original data, it is critical to test your instruments. Not testing
your instruments will likely result in you not getting the data you really want and being
unable to answer your research question. It is recommended that you test your instruments
in the summer between your junior and senior year so you are ready to collect
data in September.
Data collection instruments vary depending on the method you are using. If you are
fielding an original survey, your instrument will be your survey questions along with
the directions you provide respondents. If you are conducting qualitative interviews,
your instrument will be your interview “guide” or list of questions. If you are doing
ethnographic observations, your instrument will be your note taking guide (for yourself).
Surveys
In general, survey questions will collect data that is both exclusive and exhaustive—
that is, you will provide your respondents with answer choices that all differ conceptually
from one another and that cover all possible answers. For example, if you ask
someone about their religion, your categories cannot be “Christian, Catholic, or Jewish”
because Catholics are also Christian. You would also be leaving out people who
are Buddhist, Hindu, atheist, other Christian denominations, etc.
You need to think carefully about the wording for each survey question. Changing
the wording just slightly can alter people’s answers. For example, a March 2009 USA
Today/Gallup poll about the economic crisis found that a majority of Americans favor a
temporary “government takeover” of major U.S. banks, but only 1/3 of Americans favor
a temporary “nationalization” of major U.S. banks. When collecting demographic
data (age, gender, education, class, etc.) from your survey respondents, you might consider
using questions from the U.S. Census or General Social Survey—that way, you
will have categories consistent with national data and questions that you know have
been heavily field-tested.
You need to think about how to operationalize your key variables of interest—that
is, how will you measure them? If you are interested in students’ anxiety, for instance,
how will you ask them about it? Will you use the word “worry?” “Anxiety?” “Nervous?”
These can mean slightly different things to different people. You should develop
a draft survey and make an appointment to discuss it with your adviser, sending it to
them well in advance of your meeting so that you can get feedback. Then you should
read through each question with several friends—ask them to read the question and describe
to you what they think you are asking them. You might realize that the wording
you have chosen is not clear. Finally, you should pilot your survey—you should have
people that you will not include in your actual data collection fill out the survey, alerting
you to any problems they had while completing it. Were your categories clear? Did
they misunderstand how to fill out any part of it? Ideally, you should find guinea pigs to
fill out the survey who have similar characteristics to your actual proposed sample. If
you are planning to collect data from non-native English speaking college students, for
example, try to find some friends or acquaintances who fit this description to fill out
your survey.
If you are collecting
original data, it is critical to
test your instruments.
A Guide to Writing a Senior Thesis in Sociology | page 21