Module 3

Module 3

 

This week, you’ll continue to narrow and refine your topic. You should find that your topic evolves the more you think about it. If your topic isn’t evolving, you’re probably not thinking about it enough. It can be helpful to have the big picture in mind from the start, so here are some things to keep in mind about how you’ll explore your topic:

 

* Keep in mind the nature of this course – research methods in the social sciences. You have a lot of leeway to choose a topic of interest to you, but you do need to approach it from a social scientific perspective. If you cannot yet do that, your topic will need to continue to evolve. I am available to help you think it through by email.

 

* In addition to the Literature Review, you’ll also be conducting a survey later in the semester. It might be a survey of opinions or a survey of experiences, there are many ways to focus your survey. Don’t worry if you can’t yet imagine how you’ll form a survey to enhance your research; just know that this will be part of what you’ll be doing. 

 

* Once your survey is complete and you have your results, you’ll be analyzing your data and interpreting the results in the context of what you’ve learned about your topic overall. 

 

* You’ll bring everything you’ve learned together in a formal paper.

 

* Finally, you’ll present your research.

 

With that in mind, please read chapter 3 of Writing Literature Reviewsagain, carefully. Note that the process described is extensive - 14 steps! It is designed to help you question and challenge your initial concept by learning about the relevant existing research. Your topic will become more unique as you learn about what others have already written about it… and what hasn’t been written yet. 

 

Your task this week is to improve your research topic by going through, and documenting in your Module 3 blog post, the 14-step process described in Chapter 3. If you feel it is appropriate to skip a step, explain why that step did not seem necessary.

 

At the end of this process, and keeping in mind how you will use the topic over the course of the semester, you should have a much stronger topic with which to proceed. Again, I am available to help by email. Just let me know if you need that help.