SOCIAL PROBLEMS: Soc. 112
FINAL PAPER
Spring 2000
Potential Paper Topics
1. Taking a Shot - An In-Depth Look at an Attempt to Help Society.
Select a social problem that is important to the group and is one in which you can actually
gain access to. Research the nature of this problem, how extensive it is nationally and how
extensive it is in your area. ("Area" can mean a group member's home state or town, the campus,
the city of Scranton or the county of Lackawanna). Then, find an organization who's goal is to
alleviate this problem and interview 3 people affiliated with this organization. The interviews
need to last a minimum of 20 minutes each and the interviewer must ask a minimum of 20
questions (some of these may be "made up" as you go, depending on respondent's answers).
Make sure you gather information that addresses what the respondent feels is the greatest
individual, local and political difficulties in minimizing this social problem. Specifically, what
steps does this organization take to minimize the problem? Where are they successful? Where is
there room for improvement? Based on their responses and the scope of the problem, how
successful does your group feel they are? Why? How does what your respondents say fit with
the literature on this topic? How are they similar, different and why?
2. How Much Does the Public Really Know About the True Nature of Social Problems?
Select a social problem that the group finds important and survey other's attitudes about
it. Research the nature of the problem, how extensive it is and what is believed to cause it. Then
conduct 50 surveys to see how extensive others (without them knowing the facts that you
generated) feel the problem is, what they think the main causes are, and their idea of what needs
to be changed. Your survey needs to contain 10 questions, one which asks the respondent's sex
and the other which asks the respondents age. How do the views of respondents differ according
to sex? Age? (Hint - to do this, you need to make sure you survey similar amounts of people in
terms of age and sex.) How do their views fit with what you learned by reading the literature?
What theory best explains the view of most of the respondents? Why? How do these fit with
some of the proposed changes you wrote about?
General Requirements (Applies to all, unless otherwise noted).
Since this is an introductory
level class, the methods of data collection do not need to be very sophisticated. The purpose of
the paper is simply for you to explore a topic on your own.
I. Introduction - What is your topic? Why did you pick it? What is it's social relevance? What
is your thesis?
II. Literature Review - This should flow from your Introduction by going into more detail about
what we already know with regards to your topic. You need a minimum of 7 citations (A
minimum of 4 need to be from academic journals or books. The Internet can only be used for
statistics or discussion of specific programs for change). Specifically:
- How extensive is this problem?
- What do researchers claim the causes are?
- What are some ideas for change?
- Mention your thesis again and relate it to the literature.
III. Methods - describe what you did to collect your data. What method of collection did you
do? Who did you interview / survey? How many? For both groups, I need a copy of your
survey questions or interview questions at the end of the paper. Your questions should relate to
the information that you discuss in your literature review so you can draw comparisons at the end
of the paper.
- For Interviews - What were the positions of the people you interviewed (counselor,
administrator, client)? Describe them in terms of race, sex, estimated age (do not ask
this), highest level of education. (Make sure you give them pseudonyms - you need to
protect their identity and let them know that you will). Where did you conduct the
interviews? How long did they take?
- For Surveys - How many people did you survey? How many males? Females?
Where did you distribute the surveys? How did you ensure anonymity? Your method
section will be a bit shorter because the majority of your work is in constructing a closed
questionnaire.
IV. Results - How the results are presented differ by the paper topic:
- For interviews - Your results section will consist of snippets of the interviews so
make sure you take detailed notes. You need to pick the responses that strengthen the
thesis of your paper. You do not need to use all the responses for all of the questions - be
selective. Use the pseudonyms to refer to who said what.
1. How did the respondent's answers fit with what you found in the literature
review? How were their views similar? Different?
- For surveys - You will construct 2 tables. One which presents a shortened form of
your questions and the percent of respondents who responded "yes" and another which
compares the different responses for males and females (more on this later). Which views
were the strongest? How did males and females differ in their responses?
- How did the respondent's answers fit with what you found in the literature
review? How were their views similar? Different? What theory fits their view?
V. Discussion - Here you present a brief recap of what your thesis was and how you approached
it. The meat of this section will be explaining why you think your respondents views were similar
and different to the information you collected in your literature review. Finally...
- For interviews - Evaluate how successful your group feels the organization is in
fulfilling its mission. Why do you feel this way?
- For surveys - Provide some ideas, based on what your respondents feel, that might
work to alleviate the problem you chose.
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Questions? You can e-mail at wolferl2@epix.net