SYG 2000
Hurley

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Your assignment is to read and evaluate the sociological research article presented to you in class by Professor Hurley. You may not use any other article. This is your most important assignment of the semester, both in terms of your grade and in terms of meeting the Gordon Rule requirements for this course. The word requirement for this paper will be a minimum of 1800 words.

For the purposes of this assignment, you are to assume that you are an editorial assistant to Senior Editor Drew Hurley of the Santa Fe Sociological Review (a prestigious national sociological journal). Your task is evaluate this article in terms of its consistency with our "Style Guide" [which happens to exactly duplicate the model of the Scientific Method given to you in class]. To do so, you need to answer each of the following questions, by number, completely and in order.

1. Provide the full bibliographic citation for this article, following the MLA handout given to you in class.

2. What research problem did the author(s) identify? What is the nature of the author(s) interest in this topic?

3. Summarize the author's REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE. What previous studies of this topic were cited? Does this review provide a reasonable background on this topic?

4. What hypotheses did the author(s) propose? Did the author(s) specify relationships between Independent and Dependent variables?

5. What method of research evaluation did the author(s) outline? How did the author(s) indicate that evidence would be used to test the hypotheses?

6. How did the author(s) actually conduct this research? Where, when and how did the actual research take place? Briefly, describe all of the key steps involved in this investigation.

7. How was the data analyzed? Was it qualitative or quantitative? How was the data used to support the research conclusion(s)?

8. Briefly summarize the data. Cite the most important data: numerical or quotational.

9. What were the formal conclusions? Were the research hypotheses upheld or rejected?

10. What implications for future research on this topic was cited by the author(s)? Did the author(s) make an attempt to put these conclusion into a scientific or social context? Describe this context.

11. What are the research weaknesses of this study? What methodological procedures could (should) be strengthened? How?

12. What are the major strengths of this study?

13. Overall, what do you like best, and least, about this study?

14. What is your specific recommendation? Should we publish this article or send it back to the author(s) for substantial improvements?

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