In this course we will explore a range of topics studied by ...

In this course we will explore a range of topics studied by sociologists to help us betterunderstand our social world and our place in it. Sociology allows us to connect our personalexperiences to a broader social context and to understand the larger social forces that impact ourlives. A sociological perspective illuminates how personal choices and individual destinies areshaped by larger social forces and sometimes constrained by the broader societal context. Thiscourse will engage and perhaps challenge your views on a wide range of issues that affect us all.The course will provide you with the tools to critically evaluate ‘common-sense’ understandingsof society which are all too often rooted in myth and assumption rather than evidence. Thecourse aims to develop important academic skills including library research, effective writing,critical thinking, and active reading. There are a range of topics covered in this course includingsociological theory, methods, culture, socialization, inequality, family, globalization, crime anddeviance, gender and sexuality, and work and the economy.Learning OutcomesThe learning outcomes of this course are consistent with McMaster’s Undergraduate DegreeLevel Expectations. (seehttp://cll.mcmaster.ca/COU/pdf/Undergraduate%20Degree%20Level%20Expectations.pdf).In this course students will develop a comparative and critical analysis of a topic using peer-reviewed sociological articles and present this analysis in both a written and oral format. Thisconnects to several of the undergraduate degree level expectations including developing a depthand breadth of knowledge and development of communication skills.Avenue-to-LearnPlease check Avenue-to-Learn regularly for: announcements, marks, lecture slides and podcasts,practice multiple choice questions, and other resources. The Academic Integrity and LibraryQuiz is on Avenue, as are links to the online library modules and turnitin.com. Instructions forusing turnitin.com are on Avenue. Please do not email the instructor from Avenue as the emailRequired ReadingsWe are using the 7th Edition of these two textbooks; these two textbooks are sold as a package:Brym, Robert J. 2014. New Society. 7th Edition. Thomson Nelson.Brym, Robert J. 2014. Society in Question. 7th Edition. Thomson Nelson.Additionally, you will need to buy:Becker, Howard S. 2007. Writing for Social Scientists: How To Start and Finish Your Thesis,Book, or Article. 2nd Edition. University of Chicago Press.EvaluationPresentations (one per term, done in tutorial)Grading rubric posted on Avenue6 Quizzes (Multiple choice and True or False questions)Written during lecture timeAssignment #1: Grading rubric posted on AvenueIncludes:1. Completion of online library modules thatprovide instruction on searching SociologicalAbstracts database. We will provide a link tothese modules from Avenue. You must completethese modules as some of this material will beincluded on the Academic Integrity and LibraryQuiz.2. Receiving a mark of at least 80% on theAcademic Integrity and Library Quiz.(Paper copy submitted in lecture; electronic copysubmitted to turnitin.com on Oct. 20)Essay: Grading Rubric posted on Avenue (Paper copysubmitted in lecture; electronic copy submitted toturnitin.com on March 5)Late Penalties: 5% per day for assignment#1 and the final essay. There are no make-upassignments to try to improve your mark in the event you do poorly on a quiz, assignment, oressay.TutorialStudents will prepare two presentations (one each term; each presentation is worth 5%) and agrading rubric will be posted on Avenue. The presentation is based on the student’s written work(assignment #1 and essay).QuizzesEach quiz will be written during lecture time and will consist of multiple choice and true/falsequestions. Each quiz is NOT cumulative. You will only be tested on material covered since theprevious quiz.Assignment #1Description: Select a topic that interests you and has been studied by sociologists. Find 5 peer-reviewed sociological articles. You will need to identify a specific issue or question to narrowyour scope. For example, the general topic of families is too broad a topic, however a morespecific topic of ‘boomerang’ children (adult children who return to live with their parents)would be doable. The general topic of crime is too broad, however a more specific topic of theoverrepresentation of aboriginals in the Canadian criminal justice system is focused. Theassignment will be the basis for the final essay due in March.Includes:1. Receiving a mark of at least 80% on the Academic Integrity and Library Quiz. This is anonline quiz to help you learn about academic misconduct, plagiarism, and libraryresearch. You will receive a penalty of 20% for Assignment #1 if you do not completethe Academic Integrity and Library Quiz and receive a mark of 80%.2. Submission of paper copy and electronic copy to turnitin.com. (If you require assistancewith turnitin.com please contact our Instructional Assistant Gerald Bierling). You willreceive a penalty of 20% for Assignment #1 if you do not submit to turnitin.com. If youdo not wish to submit to turnitin.com you must give Dr. Colavecchia a second paper copyof your assignment.Part A: Requirements for Selection of Sources (20 marks)Requirement #1: All 5 articles must be closely-related reflecting a narrow focus. 10 marksYou must use Sociological Abstracts database to locate these articles.Requirement #2: All 5 articles must be sociological. 10 marksNot all articles within Sociological Abstracts database are sociological. There are various waysof determining whether your article is sociological. First, check the journal name. Sometimesthese explicitly include “Sociology” or “Sociological”, however there are sociological journalsthat don’t have “sociology” in their name (i.e. Journal of Marriage and Families). Additionally,sometimes sociological research is published in related or interdisciplinary fields, such ascriminology. Thus you shouldn’t necessarily exclude an article because it is published in a non-sociological journal. A second way of determining whether the article is sociological is to checkthe author’s institutional affiliation (whether they are working in a sociological department ornot). The best way of ensuring that the article is sociological is to read the article and make thisdetermination based on the content of the article. If you are uncertain about whether an article issociological meet with your Teaching Assistant during their office hours and bring your article.Requirement #3: All 5 articles must be peer-reviewedDeduction of 5 marks for each non peer-reviewed article included. To ensure that your articlesare peer-reviewed select the “peer-review” option when searching for articles.Requirement #4: 2 out of the 5 articles must have been published after Jan 1 2006.Deduction of 5 marks if one article is not recent. Deduction of an additional 5 marks if twoarticles are not recent.Requirement #5: Length of articles must be acceptable.Deduction of 5 marks for each article that is deemed to be of insufficient length. Do not includeshort research notes which tend to be less than 10 pages in length. Peer-reviewed articles tend tobe 10-30 pages in length.Part B (50 marks)For each article, answer questions 1 and 2 below.Answer each of the following questions in your own words and in sentence format. No pointform is allowed. You are expected to paraphrase others’ words and are discouraged from usingany direct quotations in each of the following answers (with the exception of short phrases orterms that may appear in quotations, ie., Colavecchia uses the term “moneywork” to describe thelabour involved in managing family finances).Answer Questions 1 and 2 for each of your 5 articles (10 marks per article * 5 articles=50 marks)1. In 2 or 3 sentences outline the key research questions of this study. (5 marks)2. In 4 to 6 sentences describe the key findings of the study. (5 marks)Format: Provide full bibliographic information for the article using APA (author, year ofpublication, article title, journal name, volume number, page numbers) followed by youranswers.Part C (30 marks)3. In 6-10 sentences compare the research questions that are pursued in your 5 articles. Youneed to make explicit connections across the 5 articles. You must use in-text citations toindicate the specific articles you are referring to, or comparing. Be very precise in youruse of in-text citations. If you make a statement and the in-text citation lists 3 articles thismeans that the statement you have made only applies to the 3 articles. The in-textcitations do not need to consistently include all 5 articles, however you need to show thatyou are making comparisons across as many of your 5 articles as possible.4. In 6-10 sentences draw connections between the findings of your studies. Again, youmust use in-text citations to indicate which articles you are referring to.Please note: Questions 3 and 4 are asking you to draw connections across the articles in terms oftheir research questions and findings. You are encouraged to use this comparative analysis foryour final essay and you are permitted to go beyond this and to draw connections across yourarticles in relation to other issues, including but not limited to: theory, social policy, andmethodology.Referencing: You must use APA (American Psychological Association) referencing format. Itis important that you are careful about your referencing in order to avoid plagiarism. We will beusing Turnitin.com to detect plagiarised assignments and essays. In the event that there isplagiarism the student will receive a zero for the essay. Further consequences might also arise asplagiarism constitutes academic misconduct at McMaster University. Presenting someone else’swords as your own is plagiarism. Presenting someone else’s ideas as your own is also plagiarism.When using someone else’s words, the student must put the words in quotation marks and citethe source (author, year of publication, page reference). When using someone else’s ideas (andthe student’s own words) the student must cite the source (author and year of publication). Ifyou are unclear about what plagiarism is please speak to Professor Colavecchia.EssayDescription: The essay will build on assignment #1 and will be a synthesis and critical andcomparative analysis of your 5 articles. Another way of saying this is that you are showing thereader that you comprehend the complexity of the research and can engage with it in a thoughtfulmanner. You need to develop connections across your 5 articles without resorting to merelysummarizing each article. The objective of the paper is to analyze the topic from a sociologicalperspective by drawing on sociological research. What does sociological research have to sayabout your topic? The following are suggestions for what you might want to discuss in yourpaper.Comparisons across 5 articles in relation to:? Central research questions pursued by researchers and significance of the questions? Key findings (Address complexity here; avoid temptation to simplify findings)? Theoretical approaches (Differences in theoretical approaches taken by the variousresearchers studying your topic)? Methodological approaches (i.e., How might differences in methodology or samplingimpact the findings?)? Policy Implications (i.e., How might you explain variation in policy suggestions made byresearchers studying the same topic?)? Directions for future research (these should be grounded in the findings of your studies)Format: 8 pages (excluding Title page and References). Do not exceed page limit.Double-spaced, 12-point font, number your pages.Thesis Statements: Many of you have written position papers where you take one side of adebate and use selective evidence to support your position. This essay is NOT a position paper;it is a synthesis and critical analysis of sociological research. Rather than a one-sentence thesiswhere you take a position on an issue, the kind of thesis that you are writing for this essay is onewhere you will take a few sentences and be very specific about what sociological research has tosay about your topic.Here is an example of a thesis that is incorrect because it is based on opinion rather than beinginformed by research on the topic: In this paper I will argue that divorce has negativeconsequences for children’s emotional, physical, social, and academic well-being and I will usesociological research to support this position.Here is an example of a thesis that is correct, and the main reason that it is correct is that thethesis has been informed by sociological research rather than being based on personal opinion orexperience: Research on the impact of divorce on children throughout the life course suggeststhat there is no singular uniform outcome for children (cite specific source). This researchdispels the myth that divorce is devastating to all children. This essay will examine recentsociological studies on the role of non custodial fathers. It examines the ways that involvementwith non-custodial fathers impact children’s adjustment to parental divorce.Sources: Same 5 peer-reviewed sources as Assignment #1. If your TA indicated on Assignment#1 that particular articles needed to be replaced you must do this for your essay.Using Quotes:? Do not use long quotations to fill space throughout your essay? If you are going to use quotes, make sure they are short, be selective in what you decideto quote, and ensure that you have integrated the quote into your discussion (need toexplicate quote).? Do not just stick a quote into your essay without doing something with the quote.? Limit the number of quotes you use by putting others’ work into your own words. Youmust cite the original author’s ideas even if you have put it into your own words.Writing and Organization: How you structure your essay is important. Organization is notmerely a reflection of writing style. An organized essay reflects clear logic and reasoning. Avoidsummarizing each article in sequence. This reflects poor organization and an underdevelopedanalysis. You must demonstrate that you have read and synthesized the research cited in yourbibliography. Your essay should be organized around major ideas, themes, findings, orarguments, not by each individual article.Many of you learned in high school that an essay has a one sentence thesis followed by threepoints, or three body paragraphs. This rule is not appropriate for university academic papers andshould be disregarded. You will take several sentences to identify the specific issues that youwill examine in the paper. This takes the place of a one-sentence thesis statement. You can haveas many points as you want in the paper, keeping in mind that it is better to focus on fewer issuesin greater depth than to cover numerous points superficially.Subheadings: The student can use subheadings, however the use of subheadings does notnecessarily mean that the paper is organized. Ensure that the material you have in each sectionunder the subheading is organized. Group similar ideas in the same paragraph and usetransitions when you are moving from one issue or idea to the next. The reader should knowwhere the writer is headed and it is the writer’s job to make this clear. Do not jump from onepoint to the next without adequate discussion or analysis. It is better to focus on fewer issues, andto examine them in greater depth, rather than touching on many issues in a superficial manner.There is no singular way to organize this paper as it is dependent on the specific issues that eachstudent is addressing in their paper. Thus, no two papers will be organized in the same way.Introduction: The essay must have an introduction where the student is explicit in highlightingthe issues that will be addressed in the paper. Be as specific as possible in this introduction:what are you planning to address in your essay?Conclusion: Include a conclusion at the end of the paper which highlights what was discussed.You might also point out directions for future research (which connects to ideas that were raisedin the essay).Common Areas of Weakness:? Basing an essay on inappropriate sources (sources that are not sociological; or sourcesthat are not closely related)? Inadequate critical reading and reflection of articles; poor comprehension of articles? Summary of articles rather than synthesis and analysis of articles? Clarity of expression (often tied to problems with sentence construction and paragraphconstruction)? Inappropriate use of quotes (too many/too long quotes that are not integrated into thediscussion)? Inclusion of unnecessary bibliographic information within text of discussion (authorname and year of publication is sufficient, you do not need to include article title orjournal name as this information appears in the References)? Inadequate editing of work? Essays that are too short? Poor organization, discussions that address each article sequentially rather than havingthe discussion be organized by idea, theme, or findingSuggestions:? Go to the library for help if you need assistance with library research? Write multiple drafts of your essay (as many as possible)? Have others proofread and edit your work (i.e. to identify sentences/sections that areunclear)? Invest time at the beginning in selecting articles that address similar issues. Don’t justpick the first few sources you find? Go to the Student Success Centre for assistance with your writing? If you are unclear about what constitutes plagiarism speak to the Professor? Start early, don’t procrastinate!Turnitin.com: In this course we will be using a web-based service (Turnitin.com) to revealplagiarism. Students will be expected to submit their work electronically to Turnitin.com and tosubmit a paper copy in lecture. Students who do not wish to submit their work to Turnitin.commust still submit a copy to the instructor. To see the Turnitin.com Policy, please go towww.mcmaster.ca/academicintegrity. Instructions for using Turnitin.com will be provided.Calendar of Topics and ReadingsDate Topic ReadingsThursday Sep 4 Introduction No readings assignedMonday Sep 8Thursday Sep 11Monday Sep 15Thursday Sep 18Monday Sep 22 Assignment #1 Assistance Ch 3 BeckerThursday Sep 25Monday Sep 29: Deadline forAcademic Integrity andLibrary QuizThursday Oct 2 Quiz #1Monday Oct 6Thursday Oct 9Thursday Oct 16 Families Ch 10 NSMonday Oct 20: Assignment#1 Due in lectureThursday Oct 23Monday Oct 27 Quiz#2Monday Nov 3 Mass Media Ch 5 NSDate Topic ReadingsThursday Nov 6Monday Nov 10Thursday Nov 13Monday Nov 17Thursday Nov 20Monday Nov 24 Quiz #3Thursday Nov 27Monday Dec 1Monday Jan 5Thursday Jan 8Monday Jan 12Thursday Jan 15Monday Jan 19 Essay Assistance No ReadingsThursday Jan 22Monday Jan 26Thursday Jan 29 Quiz #4Monday Feb 2Thursday Feb 5Monday Feb 9Thursday Feb 12Feb 16-20 Reading WeekMonday Feb 23Thursday Feb 26Monday March 2 Quiz #5Thursday March 5 Essays Due in LectureMonday March 9Thursday March 12Monday March 16Thursday March 19Date Topic ReadingsMonday March 23Thursday March 26Monday March 30 Quiz #6Thursday April 2 Course Wrap Up No readingsMonday April 6 Pick up of Graded EssaysACADEMIC DISHONESTY:Academic dishonesty consists of misrepresentation by deception or by other fraudulent meansand can result in serious consequences, e.g. the grade of zero on an assignment, loss of creditwith a notation on the transcript (notation reads: "Grade of F assigned for academic dishonesty"),and/or suspension or expulsion from the university.It is your responsibility to understand what constitutes academic dishonesty. For information onthe various kinds of academic dishonesty please refer to the Academic Integrity Policy,specifically Appendix 3, located at http://www.mcmaster.ca/policy/Students-AcademicStudies/AcademicIntegrity.pdfThe following illustrates only three forms of academic dishonesty:1. Plagiarism, e.g. the submission of work that is not one's own or for which other credit hasbeen obtained.2. Improper collaboration in group work.3. Copying or using unauthorized aids in tests and examinations.In this course we will be using a software package designed to reveal plagiarism. Students willbe required to submit their work electronically and in hard copy so that it can be checked foracademic dishonesty.DEPARTMENTAL/UNIVERSITY POLICIES:Do NOT fax assignments. Please see your instructor for the most appropriate way to submitassignments.The Sociology staff do NOT date-stamp assignments, nor do they monitor the submission orreturn of papers.The McMaster Student Absence Form (http://www.mcmaster.ca/msaf/ is a self reporting tool forUndergraduate Students to report absences that last up to 5 days and provides the ability torequest accommodation for any missed academic work. Please note, this tool cannot be usedduring any final examination period.You may submit a maximum of 1 Academic Work Missed request per term. It is YOURresponsibility to follow up with your instructor immediately regarding the nature of theaccommodation.If you are absent more than 5 days, exceed 1 request per term, or are absent for a reason otherthan medical, you MUST visit your Associate Dean’s Office (Faculty Office). You may berequired to provide supporting documentation.This form should be filled out when you are about to return to class after your absence.Students should check the web, the white board and the Undergraduate Bulletin board outsidethe Sociology office (KTH-627) for notices pertaining to Sociology classes or departmentalbusiness (eg. class scheduling information, location of mailboxes and offices, tutorialinformation, class cancellations, balloting, TA job postings, etc.).Computer use in the classroom is intended to facilitate learning in that particular lecture ortutorial. At the discretion of the instructor, students using a computer for any other purpose maybe required to turn the computer off for the remainder of the lecture or tutorial.The instructor and university reserve the right to modify elements of the course during the term.The university may change the dates and deadlines for any or all courses in extremecircumstances. If either type of modification becomes necessary, reasonable notice andcommunication with the students will be given with explanation and the opportunity to commenton changes. It is the responsibility of the student to check his/her McMaster email and coursewebsites weekly during the term and to note any changes.Effective September 1, 2010, it is the policy of the Faculty of Social Sciences that all e-mailcommunication sent from students to instructors (including TAs), and from students to staff,must originate from the student’s own McMaster University e-mail account. This policy protectsconfidentiality and confirms the identity of the student. It is the student’s responsibility to ensurethat communication is sent to the university from a McMaster account. If an instructor becomesaware that a communication has come from an alternate address, the instructor may not reply athis or her discretion.