Explain your reasoning for choosing this method, how you would find your sample, and what kind of questions would you ask (if survey or interview), or what you’d look for (in secondary data).

ask a question that social science attempts to answer. Think about the kinds of questions we address, and what kind of question you might like to look at. You will not actually be researching this topic beyond this paper. The purpose of the assignment is to get you thinking about social science and how and when we use it.

Once you have established your question, you will look to which specific social science would be best suited to answer it. Let’s say you want to know about voting patterns by ethnic groups (do not use this example). You may think about look at this psychologically or sociologically, maybe even economically. But after deducing the areas and methods each use, decide that this is really a question for a political scientist. Then ask yourself how a political scientist would go about researching the question. Would they do surveys? Interviews? Historical documents? Participant observation? Content analysis with newspaper articles? Experiment? Why did you choose this, and what would you be looking for in your data? Maybe interviews with people in a particular neighborhood asking why they voted for the person they did. Then perhaps a psychologist could contribute by looking at the individuals and how they see themselves in the political process. This is just an example. Your specifics will be different. The paper should go as follows:

Question: One paragraph, including how you thought of it.

Discipline: One paragraph – which one you choose, and why.

Research method: About one page. Explain your reasoning for choosing this method, how you would find your sample, and what kind of questions would you ask (if survey or interview), or what you’d look for (in secondary data).

Discussion: One to two paragraphs. What do you think you’d find? I’m not going to ask you to actually do the research; it’s all theoretical but you should be able to make an educated guess about what might be learned. You may also choose a second discipline and/or method that could add to your understanding of the topic, in an interdisciplinary way. How would this add to it?

Finally, one paragraph conclusion about what this research could contribute to what we already know and how it could be used.

Total about 500-750 words, submitted online below.

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