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Sociology 201 Project 2023-24

Project report assessment brief

Over Michaelmas term, you have undertaken pilots of research methods, around the theme of “redefining, reclaiming, and reframing work.” To do this, you were required to refine research questions, considered different philosophical approaches, and reflected on your research practice. In this project report, you will present, discuss, and critically analyse your research methods. You should include: research topic and questions; methods and why you chose them; initial findings/patterns; methods of data analysis; limitations of your study; and your key lessons learned.

You must choose two of the following methodological pilots for your project:

• Collect and analyse 10 examples of visual or textual data – e.g. photographs, advertisements, brochures, newspaper articles, blogs, essays, social media posts. (NB if you choose more extended formats such as television programmes then please discuss with a tutor how many of these are sufficient) 

• Conduct a total of 3 hours of observation in at least two settings. 

• Conduct 2 semi-structured interviews (30-45 minutes long) based on an interview schedule that you have designed. 

• Collect at least 15 responses to a questionnaire. The questionnaire must include 10-15 questions that mix question types (e.g. scales, multiple choice, and open questions). 

• You can choose another method if you discuss this with your tutor before submission.

Follow this project template to ensure you include everything. The word counts are guidelines and you have some flexibility.

Project report (total word count 3000-3500 words)

NB: the word counts included here are suggestions and will total 3000 words. You have a word count of 3000-3500 words, so you may need more or less for each section, depending on your own research and writing style. You should include something in all sections of the project report.

Research topic (100 words)

What aspect of work you decided to focus on – and why this is important to contemporary social problems? Outline the topic in one sentence, then briefly explain why you chose it.

Research question(s) (250 words)

List your research question(s). You may have one overall question or have tailored your research question for each method and therefore have two questions. Then explain how you decided on this research question and why research questions are important – with reference to literature.

Research populations (150 words)

Who was your target research population? Why did you choose them? Provide a brief explanation of how you chose to focus on this particular population, with reference to your research question.

Research sampling and recruitment (250 words)

Provide a brief explanation of your sampling strategy for each pilot and provide an overview of any key characteristics of participants (where relevant). Also note how you recruited participants and using what methods. These key characteristics might include anything that would be helpful for the reader to know in order to appropriately contextualise your research design, or the participants’ data.

Methods pilots (750 words)

Which two methods did you pilot? Why did you choose these? Outline the practical process of choosing and then undertaking the methods. Reflect, with reference to the literature, on why these two methods pilots were most appropriate for your research questions.

Research ethics (250 words)

Provide an account of the ethical considerations of your project, and how you dealt with them. For example, in all methods pilots, how did you anonymise data? How did you provide informed consent? You should detail what the key ethical concerns were (anonymity, consent, safety from harm) and how you dealt with them (participant information sheets/consent forms). Any documents used should be included in the appendix as blank documents.

Timeline of key activities and obstacles (250 words)

Include a list of 10-15 activities or events that were important for the management and completion of your project. You can include seminar activities if key decisions took place in them that informed your research project. Each item should include a date and then a short (1 sentence) description. E.g:

1.  10/10/2023: choosing research questions

2. 20/10/2023: Writing sample questions

3. 28/12/2023: Coding data…

Data analysis and coding (250 words)

In this section, you should outline the processes of analysis and/or coding that you used to understand your data. You should note if you transcribed interviews and how (e.g. manually or using technology), how you undertook coding, how you identified themes. You should also include in your appendix some examples of this, which you might refer to in this section.

Data results/findings (500 words)

In this section, you should detail the initial findings and patterns of your methods pilots and what they say in relation to your research questions.  

Concluding reflections (250 words)

To finish your report, you should provide a brief summary of what you have learned from the process up undertaking this research, the limitations of your research methods, and what you would do differently if you were doing the project again. This is not about the results of the research, but about your own research practice.

Bibliography

This should include at least 5 academic references related to methodology, as well as additional references related to the topic of your research. You should have around 20-30 references in total.

Appendix 1 – Ethical agreement

Include a copy of your ethical agreement here. This can be found on Moodle under the “assessments” tab.

Appendix 2 – Participant information sheets

This should include a copy of the participant information sheet, or consent statement (for surveys) that was provided to participants before they participated in your research. You may have one or two versions, as appropriate to the methods you chose. If you asked participants to complete a signed consent form, then you should also include a BLANK copy of this. Signed copies should be kept securely but not included.

Please remember to remove your name on the Participant Information Sheets and the blank consent form as this assessment is marked anonymously.

Appendix 3 – Examples of data analysis

This section should include up to four pages of your data analysis, with at two from each pilot. In some cases, you might paste images here (e.g. of handwritten notes), and in others it might be typed text or charts or graphs.

· For visual or textual analysis, this might include annotated (coded) images, notes about key themes in a video, lists of key themes that arose during coding, etc.

· For observation, this might include pages of memos written to summarise and draw out themes from fieldnotes, lists of key codes that were used to categorise themes in fieldnotes, annotated drawings or images

· For semi-structured interviews, this might include summaries of key themes in interviews, pages of coded interview transcripts, or a selection of key quotations related to particularly interesting themes and discussion of what these suggest in terms of insights

· For questionnaires, this might include tabulations that describe the relationship between multiple questions, graphs that represent particular relationships between variables, or charts that count up answer to particular questions and are accompanied by text that begins interpreting what these counts might mean