Contemporary Politics and Issues
Independent Research Essay Assignment
One of the major requirements for this class is for you to undertake an independent research project so that you can write an analytical essay that is worth 15 percent of the final course grade).
Identifying a topic and completing your research. The purpose of this project is to give you an opportunity to discover and analyze what social scientists are saying about a controversial political or policy topic that you find especially interesting. The exact amount of research necessary to complete the paper will vary some depending on your specific topic; however, in all cases, you should plan on spending a minimum of several hours to identify a suitable topic and gather enough materials (at least five high-quality, peer-reviewed journal articles or an approved equivalent) so that your paper will do each of the following:
(1) Identify a contentious and important political issue that is attracting the attention of both of pundits and social or natural scientists.
(2) Summarize and compare the main claims (i.e., their specific arguments) being advanced by pundits from different political perspectives.
(3) Summarize and compare the main findings of at least two social/natural scientists whose views on the same claims are informed by empirical scientific research methods.
(4) Analyze the main similarities and differences between what pundits and social/natural scientists are saying about your topic, considering how their methods, evidence and presentation of arguments differ?
The research essay assignment. The findings of your research will be reported in a 1800-2000 word (approximately 5-7, double-spaced pages) analytical paper, that addresses each of four elements just noted. It is due at the start of class on last day that we meet for regular seminars). The content grade for the paper will reflect the quality and depth of your research efforts, while the rest of the grade will be assessed with the grading rubric used for your other analytical writing (see: www.highpoint.edu/~msetzler/generalissues/papercritlower.htm). Per the Honor Code, you may not submit work for which you have received or will receive credit in another class. Of course, you may not plagiarize, which means that paraphrased ideas need citations, and any writing that is not set off by quotation marks must be entirely your own wording. Even with a citation, “patch-writing” is a form of plagiarism (i.e., don’t take another author’s writing and attempt to pass it off as your own writing by substituting various words but otherwise keeping that author’s syntax, style, and core ideas with modest alteration).
A couple of final tips to get you started. Identifying an interesting topic that is attracting the attention of pundits should be a pretty straight forward exercise if you use one or more of these resources: realclearpolitics.com (a website that aggregates political opinion articles from a wide range of views; the content of this website changes every day), realclearworld.com (a companion site to RCP that covers international commentary), your syllabus (which provides numerous examples of the kinds of issues that attract both punditry and social science research), and your instructor (who much enjoys working one-on-one with you on individual projects).
In order to analyze how social scientists are addressing your topic, you will need to locate several peer-reviewed journal articles, think tank publications, or essays written by social scientists for general audiences. The best place to locate each of these types of materials is Google Scholar (http://scholar.google.com/). Unlike the regular version of Google, this specialized version mostly restricts its searches to academic sources. If you are working on the campus computer network, Google Scholar has added feature of returning searches that include links (they are located on the right side of items) that connect directly the electronic resources maintained by our library. If you need any help getting started, please don’t hesitate to contact me for a meeting.