The Research Paper
You are going to write a 3500-word research paper for this class. This will start with the topic selection process and end with an academic paper that is similar to articles published in sociology journals. This is a long process and it will take a lot of effort, but you will also learn a lot along the way.
This page should be your starting place for any information you need about it. Its best to look here rather than any one of the assignment prompts because the prompts are all for drafts of the paper, not the entire paper/process.
Research Paper
Your paper will be a research paper because you are going to do library research to find academic sources (literature) to support the arguments you make in your paper. Students are often intimidated by the actual writing process but, in my experience, the research can be the most challenging aspect of the assignment. This is because it is difficult to even start the writing process if you havent got strong sources to build from. Students often take the process of searching for literature for granted and dont develop/practice those skills. I think this is because they assume that searching for stuff online is easy (we do it all the time!) and do not realize that searching for academic literature requires learning a new set of skills. Even if you have used the library databases to search for sources previously, it is unlikely that you are familiar enough with the process to complete this paper. In other words, you have new stuff to learn and you should take this seriously!
Social Problem Paper
The research you do will be to find sources about a social problem of your choice. I have some rules that you must follow (see the Topic Selection section below) but you a lot of flexibility in what you choose and how you write about it. You will, however, write about the source of the problem you choose. This means that your task is to offer a sociological explanation for the problem and that explanation has to be fully supported by academic sources. This is really important because it means it will not be enough to write a description of the problem and list how it affects people.
Paper Requirements
The following are the requirements for the final draft of your paper. Some of them will also apply to earlier drafts and activities. I will always thoroughly document the requirements for each assignment.
Length: 3500 words (thats roughly 12 to 14 pages)
Formatting: American Sociological Association (ASA) Style, this applies to think like in-text citations, references, margins, subheadings, and other details
Font: Times New Roman, size 12
Line spacing: Double
Must include a cover page, table of content, abstract, and references page
