What you need to do:
What question do you have about society, your community, relationships, or another area? This should be a ‘why’ or ‘how come’ or ‘how does’ type of question. (For example: Why do people get a divorce?) You may ask the instructor if your idea will work for this assignment (hint: it probably will work).
State your question (this counts as the research question or hypothesis even if is not a statement of ‘X causes Y”). Then describe why you would want to know the answer to this question (the purpose of the research).
What type of data would best suit your purposes here? (Collecting numbers, observations, stories, secondary data, etc.). Why?
Now that you have the above three questions answered, which of the research methodsdescribed in class or the textbook best fit your study? (Includes surveys, interviews, field research, participant observation, ethnography, experiment, secondary analysis.) Why does it fit best? Include using marshmallows in your study.
If you were to actually conduct this study, what would your next steps be? All students will have to think about how to find participants and gain their consent. After that the rest of this question depends upon which research method you chose. (If I am asking why people get divorced, I would want to find support groups for divorced people and go speak with them about my study. Then if I am doing a survey I may just want to know where to send it. If I am interviewing them, I would set up individual interviews.) If you are doing an interview or a survey you must in this section come up with five questions you know you want answered in your study. If you are doing observations (field research, ethnography, participant observation) what are you looking for? What would this actually take to make happen?
Which of the three ethical guidelines(informed consent, protection from harm, right to privacy) are you most concerned about with this study? Why?
Finally, choose two other research methods from those discussed in class or in the textbook and discuss why you did not choose those methods. What did they not do that your method will do? What would make using those other methods difficult?
To hand the assignment in you may do any of the following:
Write a paper
Make a powerpoint/Google slides/etc
