Research Project for Introduction to Research Methods

This resource was originally published in TRAILS, which is an online database of peer-reviewed teaching resources supported by the American Sociological Association.

This is a semester long research project to be used in a research methods course. The assignment involves scaffolding: topic proposal, annotated bibliography, proposal, final paper, and oral presentation. This assignment has been successfully used at a community college and results in projects that are suitable for professional presentation or could be used as graduate school application writing samples. The assignment focuses as much on library and writing instruction as it does on the research methods process.