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You will measure your ability to apply the logic of inquiry to a particular research project, which you will imagine,
Suppose you wanted to undertake a research project to study some aspect of racism. This is a very difficult task given problems defining what it is, and how to identify it, especially if it becomes necessary to determine the motivations underpinning the behavior.
According to Devah Pager and Hanah Shepherd (2008:181): “Persistent racial inequality in employment, housing, and a wide range of other social domains has renewed interest In the passible role of discrimination. And yet, unlike in the pre-civil rights era, when racial prejudice and discrimination were overt and widespread, today discrimination is less readily identifiable, posing problems for social scientific conceptualization and measurement. *
Read the 18-page article by Pager and Shepherd. Consider it to be your “Literature review.”
https://scholarhavard.edu/pager/files/annualreview_discrimination.pdf
Having read that article, design your own research project to study some aspect of racism. Answer the following questions, as if you were beginning a research project. For each of the questions, be sure to answer why you are making these choices. The ability to convincingly answer why you are making the choices Is just as important as the choice, itself: Express how your choices relate to specific insights from the literature review.
For example, with regard to your research question, will you be re-examining a topic in light of the contemporary era? You will be conducting a research on a new population?will you address an aspect of the topic that has yet to be addressed? Will you be linking variables In novel ways?
The following are the questions that you should answer.
1) What t your research question?
2) Will your projecr be exploratory, descriptive, or explanatory?
3) Will your approach be Inductive or deductive?
4) What are your independent and dependent variables?
5) What is your hypothesis?
6) How will you conceptualize racise for the parposes of your project? What will your indicators of racism bez Wil you eluster these indicators into identifiable dimensions of racism?
7) How will you conceptualice the other variables?
8) Operationalize your vanables.
9) What is the level of measurement (nominal, ordinal, interval, or tatio) for each of your variables?
10) What is your unit of analyais?
11) How will you ensure face validity, criterion-related validity, construct validity, and content validity?
12) What ethical considerations will you make? What safeguards will you put into place?
13) Will your project be cross-sectional or longitudinal (specify trend, cohort, or panel)?
14) What is your population?
15) Will you use probability or non-probability sampling? Describe. Why?
16) What is your sampling frame?
17) If you plan to do surveys or interviews, how will they be administered? Why?
18) Is your research quantitative or qualitative?
19) For the qualitative aspects of your project, how will you go about coding and analyzing Grounded Theory? Explain.
20) For the quantitative aspects of your project how will you go about coding and analyzing your data? How will you use univariate, bivariate, and/ or multivariate analysis? Explain. Do you plan to use descriptive or inferential statistics or both? Why?
Helpful Resources/Tips:
Read the article “The Sociology of Discrimination: Racial Discrimination in Employment, Housing, Credit, and Consumer Markets” Annual Review of Sociology. Vol. 34:181-209 (Volume publication date August, 2008}
•Use The Practice of Social Research, by Earl Babbie as a reference text. You should not, need any other sources beyond these 2 sources.
• You should brainstorm and map out your project ideas before you begin answering the questions
Number your responses as they are above. Do not try to link them into paragraphs as If you are writing a research paper. Just answer the questions clearly, thoroughly, and directly.
Do not make these Two mistakes you can make on polar ends or the spectrum are. 1） Hiding behind flowery writing. It will be easy to determine if you know what you are talking about no matter how ” Pretty” your prose sounds.
2） Answering the questions with one sentence or just presenting a definition from the textbook with no demonstrated understanding of how it applies to your particular proposed research design.