Article Review Instructions

We do two article reviews. The first review is based on a title listed on the course schedule, and each student selects one of the available articles. The second review is based on one of several articles suggested by each student and related to the area of their research proposal.  

Research article review #1 Instructions

1. Chose one of the available readings. 
2. Team up with other students who are reviewing the same article.
3. Create a google document for collecting your notes about the article.
4. Read the article and take notes. Read it again.
1. Highlight the most important parts.  Make notes.  Work to understand all parts of the research.  Do follow up reading on the methods if you don’t understand them.
5. As a preliminary step to writing, answer the following questions
1. Questions to answer while taking notes
6. After you understand your research well enough to answer those questions you can begin writing your "abstract" or summary of the research article.
7. Create a google document, and then copy paste the following template into your document and use both the formatting and the instructions embedded inside
1. Template for article review #1

Research article review #2 Instructions:

There are two key differences between assignment 1 and 2. First, in assignment #2 you need to find an article to review first. It needs to be sociological research on a topic that interests you and the reported research must include the analysis of data. Second, you will need to revise your abstract based on comments from classmates. To do this, you will need to share your document with some of your classmates.

1. Post three possible research papers including title of research and a link to the full text of the article on the article options spreadsheet. 
2. I will leave a comment that indicates which (if any) of the articles are suitable for our course. 
3. Create your google doc, set sharing to anyone with link can comment. Then share it with the two classmates in your writing team. 
4. Follow the other instructions for review article #1, and use the same template, with one addition.
5. Additional section: add a paragraph to your conclusion that explains how the reviewed article relates to you research interests and possible project topics. (this will increase the max word count by 200 words)

Quiz Intro

Time to use your brain!   Go to the google documents folder "Grad Methods" and open "Collaborative Quiz Review Notes".   In that document you will find instructions, the quiz questions, and a link to the quiz.   Please complete your quiz before the start of next week.  i.e. I will start evaluating the quizzes on Monday Morning.
Cheers.

Proposal, IRB, and Survey Instruments

Brandon Brooks completed his Masters Thesis from our OU Sociology program this summer.   Brandon solidified his ideas about what he wanted to study during the spring quarter of his first year.   We worked together all summer and through the next year, going from a proposal draft to a finished thesis about 15 months later.  
    Many features of his thesis project were extremely ambitious, involving extensive data collection, and the integration of survey research with social network data collected from a newly created FaceBook app.   Brandon was initially interested in how students FB networks might change during their first year at University, therefore he designed a two stage data collection plan:   he administered the survey and FB data collection at the start and the end of Fall quarter of 2009.   The T1 and T2 surveys ask different sets of questions, but record the FB data from both time points.
    The project evolved a bit, such that the analysis reported in his thesis only relies on the data collected during the first wave of Fall quarter.   In a sense, Brandon collected far more data than he needed to perform a single thesis project, however, in doing so, he pretty much guaranteed that he would be able to ask more than one question of the data, and in the end was able to report some new and interesting results.
In two weeks we will discuss his thesis and a paper the we are revising for submission to a journal on information and society.  
   This week we will concentrate on a draft version of his thesis proposal, his IRB materials, and the survey instruments that he created.   The course drop box also includes a couple chapters from our text book that should be helpful in assessing Brandon's project.  If you have questions on the project or our class meeting this Tuesday, please post them as comments in this thread.   - Ted    [ps, that photo is actually of a different Brandon Brooks]

Science, how does it work?

Today we will discuss questions like:   What is science?  How does it work?  How do our notions of science relate to how and why we do research?  We have four readings to kick off our conversation with:

• Sagan Chapter 1, The Most Precious Thing 
• Sagan Chapter 2, Science and Hope
• Feynman, Cargo Cult Science
• Stark  Becoming a Sociologist