These are the instructions for the research papers you write this semester. The instructions are the same for all the papers. The structure and instructions are the same for each paper, but the topic for each paper will be different. Each paper is 500-700 words. To maximize your likelihood for success, you will want to use almost all of the 700 words and you will want to write carefully and concisely.
You probably should look at the introduction to the paper in the syllabus and especially the sample paper first before reading these instructions.
You can find a video instruction of me interpreting these instructionshere (Links to an external site.)
This instructional video uses the example of inequality. You may still use inequality, as long as you don’t copy anything from the video. Also the video was made several years ago when people wrote 5 papers instead of the two that you have to write. Obviously you can ignore the instruction at the end of the video that talks about when to submit the 5 papers. You are only submitting 2 papers this semester.
There are four parts to the paper instructions below – 1. choosing a topic, 2. conducting the survey, 3. describing table findings, and 4. analyzing the news article.
Step 1. Choosing a topic.
Before starting the live survey interview, open the survey and read through the questions. Choose one of the 7 listed topics for open ended questions, which include the topics of death penalty, police misconduct, family problems, economic inequality, homelessness, music, or social movements. The open ended questions are written for you. You will choose which of the topics, and that will determine the open ended question and the overall topic of your paper.
Each time it must be a unique topic, so each of your papers is written on a different topic. If you submit a second paper on the same topic as a previous paper it will not be accepted. “Environment” is not a valid topic for a graded paper, since that topic was used for instruction and practice.. The topic will determine all parts of the paper — the title, the topic for the table, the topic for the open ended question, the topic for th news source, etc. See the sample paper for an example.
Step 2. Conducting the Survey.
Conduct an interview using the entire survey.
The proper link to access the survey is here
https://fresnostate.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_2atvFVjwMLpt9To
(this link may change so make sure to come back here and click the link each time you start a new interview).
The first question should have several sentences of introduction before asking about the zip code. If you don’t see these sentences in the first question, copy the URL above and paste it into a new browser. Or clear the cache on your existing browser.
To conduct the survey, you orally read each question to the respondent and document their answers by making the appropriate choices on the screen. Ask your respondent all the closed-ended, forced choice questions for all the topics in the survey. If they are unclear about any question, re-read the question. Do not interpret or change the wording of a question. If their answer doesn’t fit one of the choices, try to get them to choose one of the existing answer choices. Please give them the answer choices again, but if they repeatedly say something different, choose “no answer”. Hit next at the bottom of each screen until you get to the last page, then hit submit button to complete the survey. If you don’t hit submit at the end, you may not get credit for your survey interview, and your paper will not be graded until this is resolved.
You must fill out all the answers in the survey for your respondent during the interview. You ask all the forced choice questions in the survey — all the questions covering all the topics on each page of the survey must be answered. The only questions you may skip are all but one of the open-ended questions.
You will choose only one of the 7 listed open-ended questions to ask your respondent, and the other 6 open-ended questions will be ignored. In each of your interviews (one for each paper), you will ask a different open ended question, so by the end of the semester you will have conducted unique interviews with different people for each paper, and each one of these people is asked all of the closed-ended questions on the survey, and one unique open ended question.
After the open-ended question that you choose, there is a textbox where it asks you to enter your name, as the interviewer.
You will not get credit for the interview unless you enter your name in the textbox related to the open-ended question your chose.
All of the forced-choice, closed-ended questions must be answered. If your respondent wants to skip one, you still must choose “no answer”. If your respondent wants to skip more than a few of these closed-ended questions in the survey, they should be considered an unwilling participant, and you should complete a different survey interview with a willing participant.
If you submit a paper with skipped closed-ended questions, or with many “no answer” choices for these questions, the paper will earn a zero.
You should interview your friends and family. Do not interview people with whom you do not already have a relationship. Your respondents must all be willing participants.
Your respondent must be over 18, not in this class, and must have never taken the survey before.
Your interview is anonymous. That means you hide the name of the person you interview. Do not submit their name on the paper, the survey or the audio recording.
In your open ended interview question, you should ask the questions listed. Make sure all questions are not personal or stressful in any way. If the questions appear to be stressful to your respondent, then you should redirect to a different topic or stop the interview.
The number one ethical responsibility is to do no harm to people we talk to.
That means no more harm than everyday life. That’s why we make sure all discussion remains about public issues, not private problems.
Don’t get personal! We are talking about public issues, not personal problems.
If people begin talking about private problems, your job is to quickly change the subject to the level of public discussion. Ask the respondent to discuss these personal things with you after the interview is over. If the issue of getting personal persists, then you must stop the interview and contact the professor.
If you are at all concerned about people finishing the open ended question, you can tell the person before starting the interview which open-ended topic you will ask them about and tell them that you and them need to talk about this topic for at least 3 minutes. You shouldn’t give them the exact questions and they don’t need to prepare or anything like that, but sometimes respondents respond better if they know ahead of time about the open-ended question. It is your job to know your respondents and whether you need to tell them ahead of time what topic they will be discussing. Personally I tend to think that the default should be that you do not tell the respondents which topic they will be asked to discuss, but because you know your respondents, I will leave the decision to you.
Also, make sure they understand (and you carefully follow through) that we will not ask their names or relationship to you, and that all the data we collect will not include names or identifying information.
You need to audio record the interview, and submit the recording to our shared box folder. If you submit an accurate typed transcript as well (to this same Box folder), then this will be given a small amount of “extra credit” added to your paper grade.
If you want to only record the open-ended portion of the survey interview, that’s OK. Otter has a 20 minute limit on its free plan. The survey should take about 20 minutes, even with the open-ended question, but it could be longer depending on the situation. So I’m OK with recording either the full interview or just the portion with them answering your open-ended questions.
All of the interviews must be audio recorded, and all may be audio only interviews, although I encourage face-to face interviews where safe and appropriate. For the quality of the research, it is better if interviews are conducted in a face to face fashion where you can see the respondent and they can see you. I still encourage you to literally meet with the respondents when safe and appropriate, but many find audio or video interviews (zoom, skype, facetime, etc) their best choice, which is totally acceptable. In your paper, you must clearly state how you met your respondent — online or in person. The audio recording still must be completed even if you did a video. The interviews are supposed to be anonymous, so please DO NOT SUBMIT VIDEO FILES. If you can only record a video file, then you will need to transform it to audio first before submitting to Box. Zamzar (Links to an external site.) is the standard I have always used.
There are many tools available for recording telephone and other audio discussions. Ottervoice is my favorite. Google can help with this, as can a simple search on the play store. I suggest you look into ottervoice recorder, as it produces transcripts, which is an amazing feature. There are a lot of other software companies out there that provide free transcription — the best companies have a limited free plan; the Ottervoice free plan is very generous and their app for your cellphone is really great. If you use zoom for the interview, you can use their free transcription service that is built into your Fresno State zoom account.
Each audio recording must be at least 3 minutes for the open ended part There is no maximum for the recording. You must submit this recording to our shared Box folder (you were already sent an invitation to Box via email). The filename for the audio recording must be your full name and topic of the interview. If the recording is not uploaded, the paper will not be graded.
In your paper, you must summarize your respondent’s answer to your follow up open-ended questions in 1 paragraph (about 100 words).
Step 3. Describing table findings (about 300 words).
In this step you are describing the findings from tables on your topic. You access the data HERE. Or the same data are available in the Modules page of Canvas. You may download those documents and copy the tables you will use in your paper into your own paper before submitting. The output files are listed by topic. You will use these files to choose tables that you will analyze in your paper. You can simply copy the relevant table and paste it into your paper.
Providing a full analysis of one table and a summary analysis of the significance of at least 3 other related tables will allow you to meet the requirement.
You choose a chi squared chart that places in the row a variable on the same topic as you chose for your open ended questions.
For your main table, you must choose a significant table (i.e,. one that has a chi squared value of .05 or below). A picture of this table must be in the paper. Report the questions this table is covering. You must interpret the table by reporting and interpreting the chi squared value. To do this, you need to report the value, and interpret it. If it is below .05, you want to say something like “because it is below .05, that means there is a statistically significant relationship between the row variable, environmental concern, and the column variable, employment, so that people’s answer about environmental concern differed based on their employment.” Next is the most important part – reporting and interpreting the percentages (report all the percentages in those 2 most important rows).
It is a very good idea to present the percentages in order of highest to lowest in the row, to show the reader that you actually understand the findings, instead of just copying them (but its also acceptable to present them in the same order as the table — i.e, read across the row). Do not present the percentages by reading down the column – read across the row, not down the column. Before you start thinking about presenting the percentages, you have to slow down and figure out which rows you will discuss.
You can only discuss two rows and these must be the 2 most important rows.
It takes skill to choose the most important rows. The most important rows are chosen because they have the highest and/or lowest residuals (ideally these will be opposite rows — e.g., strongly agree and strongly disagree). Do not choose “other/refused/don’t know” as one of the 2 most important rows. The residuals that are positive (2 or above) represent much more than expected and the residuals that are negative (-2 or below) represent much less than expected. In your writing, you don’t report or interpret the residuals but you have to use them to choose the 2 most important rows.
Lets talk about the residuals a little bit more, because it is important and new and sometimes it is a stumbling point for students.
How do you choose the 2 most important rows?
So ideally they should be opposites — e.g., “agree” and “disagree” or “strongly agree” and “strongly disagree” would be ideal choices for the 2 most important rows. Also agree and strongly disagree and strongly agree and disagree would be different enough. So that gives you a lot of choices. So how do you decide? The real way to choose — meaning the accurate, statistical way to do it — is to look at the standardized residuals.
The two rows you choose should have the highest positive and the lowest negative residuals, compared to all rows in the table. .2 is higher than .1, while -.2 is lower than -.1.
What do these residuals mean? The residuals tell you why the table is statistically significant, because some responses varied more than would have happened randomly. The residuals tell you where the action is, so you really know what are the most important findings of the table.
You use the residuals to choose the 2 most important rows. You present all the percentages in those rows (do not present and interpret the findings by reading down the column — read across the rows). And then you have to interpret the pattern uncovered by these percentages. The findings will always be about the groups in the column of the table and the differences between them.
Which groups were most likely to give which answers? So in the paper you must not just report the all the percentages in the 2 most important rows, you must also interpret the meaning of those percentages you just reported in the 2 most important rows. Next, summarize the meaning of the findings you just reported in your own words, without using numbers. In other words, in ever simpler terms what the table is saying about the differences between (two of) the groups in the columns of your table.
When presenting the percentages in the 2 most important rows, don’t present percentages for the group “other”, “dont know” “refused” or similar meaningless groups. The most important reason that we ignore these is that the numbers of people in these groups is too small for their percentages to be meaningful. For example, perhaps a table might show that 50% of those that refused to answer a question chose “strongly agree” compared to all other groups who chose that answer choice at only 20%. That seems meaningful, but it is not because that 50% only represents a very small number of people. The second and also important reason that we ignore these groups is that they are meaningless or fake groups — a “don’t know” or “refused” group doesn’t represent anything socially important, at least not in the way that we talk about “real” groups that do matter — gender groups (male, female), race groups (black, white, native, asian), marriage groups (married, not married), etc.
OK, now, you have already reported everything from your main table. Its time to do a summary analysis of at least 3 other chi squared values. Your task is to glance through the chi squared values on at least three other demographics for that same row variable as your main table, and just describe which demographic variables have significant chi squared values, and which do not (i.e., report and interpret the chi squared values for these 3 other tables). Again, you will want to interpret the chi squared values (see above). This part of presenting and interpreting the chi squared value on 3 additional tables should take no more than 2 sentences.
In sum, you will choose a single, significant table and fully report the results from that table, and then choose at least 3 other tables — with different demographic variables for the columns and the same variable for the row as the table for which you reported full results – and report and interpret only the chi squared values in those 3 tables.
Here’s how it might be understood in steps,
1. download the file with the chi squared tables about your topic
2. choose a valid statistically significant table and describe the row and column variables
3. report and interpret the chi squared value
4. choose the 2 most important rows, using standardized residuals
5. report percentages for all groups in first row
6. Interpret findings from first row
7. report percentages for all groups in second row
8. interpret findings from second row
9. based on row findings, summarize overall table findings (without referencing percentages).
10. report and interpret chi squared findings for 3 other tables that use the same row variable as your main table.
You should be able to accomplish all 10 steps needed to successfully describe table findings, in less than 1 page(300 words).
Step 4. Analyzing a news article (about 300 words).
Find a relevant news article about the topic in your chart, preferably a local story. I suggest you use Google News or Fresno Bee. Logging in through the library (And even using their library databases) will improve your access, and help ensure you are not being asked to pay for an article. Do not pay for an article for this assignment. There are thousands published every day for free on any of our topics. The article you choose must be from a legitimate, recognized news outlet, not a person’s site or blog, and not a non-news organization’s site or blog. Write a critique of the article, as described below.
It is your job to find an article that relates to the topic of the chart.
The following are a list of topics to discuss in your discussion of the news article. Please, in your paper, use the keywords below (e..g, “The issue the author is discussing is . . . ” and “The author concludes . . .” and “The reasons the author gives for his conclusion is” . . . ). I’ve bolded the important keywords. Please bold the keywords in your paper (see the sample paper for an example).
1. What issue is the author discussing?
2. What conclusion is the author suggesting?
3. What reasons does the author present for supporting that conclusion?
4. What ambiguous language does the author use?
5. What assumptions does the author make?
6. What logical fallacies (or “Bad Arguments) does the author use? (Use at least one fallacy from the “Book of Bad Arguments”).
7. Is the author using strong evidence?
8. Is the author making reasonable statistical and causal claims?
9. What information is omitted?
10. Given the factors answered above, does this article present a strong argument and reasonable conclusion?
See below for more detail about each of these 10 factors.
Make sure you exactly use the bold words in your submission. Do not give the answer that it does not apply or was not found in the article. You should present your statements in the same order as listed here.
1. What issue is the author discussing? — What controversy is addressed?
2. What conclusion is the author suggesting? — What does the author want you to believe or do about this controversy?
3. What reasons does the author present for supporting that conclusion? — What beliefs or evidence is used to support the conclusion? This part needs to be fully explained. There is almost always some type of evidence, even if its an interview of a random person. Usually you will find some expert testimony or statistics. Sometimes it is just opinion or intuition or metaphors. The reasons are the logic about how to interpret the evidence and what that evidence means in the context of the author’s argument. You will need to describe the reasons used by the author.
4. What ambiguous language does the author use? What language — that is core to the argument — has multiple meanings? What are the multiple meanings that make the word or phrase ambiguous?
5. What assumptions does the author make? What are the unstated things that the author assumes the reader agrees with? Explain how the assumption works in your article.
6. What logical fallacies (or “Bad Arguments) does the author use? (Use at least one fallacy from the “Book of Bad Arguments”). Which bad arguments might the author be guilty of using? Explain how the author used a fallacy.
7. Is the author using strong evidence? Strong evidence is not based on intuition, common sense, individual personal experience, or individual personal beliefs/opinion, but on carefully collected and analyzed statistics, scientific analysis of interview data, and relevant expert testimony. Summarize the quality of the evidence based on these criteria. If there is space, you can also add additional detail about the nature of the evidence, if it is not covered elsewhere in your analysis.
8. Is the author making reasonable statistical and causal claims?
You need to address both statistical and causal claims. Reasonable statistical claims should at least give the source (which should be academic, scientific, or governmental, not from business or activism), and ideally will explain the year/date the data was collected as well as the exact population to which the statistical data refers. Even better would be to know how the data was collected, such as the questions that were asked, how people were chosen to be a part of the study, the margin of error, and other details about the process of data collection. Good critical thinkers know that each one of these issues can influence the outcome of the statistic, so ideally we shouldn’t fully believe a number, unless we know these basics.
A causal claim is one that says A causes B. Authors make all sorts of often-implicit statements about causation. These are causal claims. Your job is to identify and describe the causal claim the author is making, not necessarily to judge whether the claim is true, just whether it is reasonable or not. As we know, there are always multiple causes for everything, so if an author states or implies there is a single cause, then that is not reasonable. Also unreasonable are causal claims that are absolute — causation never works the same way in all times and places. Causation is never absolute, so we can never prove with 100% certainty that one thing is a cause of another thing. Reasonable statistical claims are never absolute, acknowledge their limitations and are based on valid evidence and statistics from a reputable academic or government source.
9. What information is omitted? To me one of my pet peeves is the omission of acknowledging the other side of the argument. Caricaturing the other side is a bad argument of using a straw man, but ignoring the other side is probably more common. If you want to be persuasive, you will acknowledge that your argument is not air tight and that some people might disagree. That’s why its a controversy (or issue), after all. But most writers don’t do that. They should be criticized for this. If they actually do acknowledge the other side, they likely are narrow in that acknowledgement, because the controversy always includes many sides (not just 2). It is rare to see a writer or speaker accurately acknowledge the complexity of controversy surrounding their topic. Most people just don’t have the time to study these issues, but I would venture to say that every issue has many sides and is far more complex than almost all journalists acknowledge.
10. Given the factors answered above, does this article present a strong argument and reasonable conclusion? This allows you to refer to your answers above — if your analysis shows some serious issues — and in most cases it should — then you should answer that either the conclusion or whole argument is questionable, but, as with each of the 10 points listed here, you have to succinctly explain your answer. Why did you give that answer?
Each of the above 10 topics represents a chapter in our course textbook. You are encouraged to look at the chapters for more guidance about these 10 topics.
It is your job to find an article that can be sufficiently analyzed with all of the 10 topics. Most news articles would work fine.
While most full news articles on your topic would be fine, it is possible to find articles where that could be the case where a required component is not applicable or not found, and if so, then you need to keep looking to find a more appropriate article. This is most likely the case with articles that are too short, or that are simply summaries of a book or of a single study. Some people think the opinion pages to be a good place to find articles. I personally disagree, as I think it is easier to analyze regular news articles, but you are welcome to use opinion articles because they might be easier for a newbie to analyze — again, it just has to be from a reputable news source and on your general topic.
Conclusion –Misc. Considerations************
The paper needs to have a bibliography. This should include the title of the news article and a URL link to the article. Papers without a bibliography may be given a zero. This actually can be defined as cheating (by the university). I don’t care about the format of your bibliography, just make sure it has the citation to your news source, including the URL.
Papers under 450 words will earn a zero. Papers over 750 words earn a zero. The words in the table, the bibliography, the title/header do not count toward word count.
I suggest you avoid using quotes, as they will not help your paper (they can only hurt your grade); if you make a mistake in citation by not providing quotation marks or full citation you will get a zero on the paper.
Papers should be submitted as a .doc or .docx format, with the word count at the top. I will not accept .pages or google docs or any online link URL to a file; if you submit a file with these file formats it will not earn a grade. I may be able to open other file types but if you want to be sure there’s no problem, use .doc or .docx.
Stop by office hours or email me if you have questions.
