SOCI 101 (McEntee): Assignment

Sociological sources, what does that mean?

Dr. McEntee requires you to cite sociological sources. A sociological source needs to be a scholarly source and either A) written by someone with a degree in sociology/working in the field of sociology or B) published in a sociological journal. So how do we determine if it is sociological?

A) written by someone with a degree in sociology/working in the field of sociology

Many databases have an authors' affiliations section for each article's record. It may indicate either their degree or that they work in a university's sociology department. You may also consider departments like cultural anthropology, human geography, or others mentioned in Dr. McEntee's course materials to be sociological in nature.

If none of the information is available, you can take to a search engine like Google to see what kind of information you can dig up about an author.

B) published in a sociological journal

Any journal that has sociology (and no other discipline named) in the title or is published by the American Sociological Association (ASA) may be considered a sociological journal. Some big ones to note that do not have sociology in the title, but are indeed sociological journals, are Social Forces, Gender & Society, and Continuity & Change.

For the research question: Are vaping companies targeting kids with their advertisements?

The first step is to identify the most important parts of the question, the keywords, that get to the base of what we what to research.

The keywords might be:     

• vaping
• kids
• advertisements

Now we need to brainstorm some of the different ways we can think about these key concepts. Those alternate keywords can be synonyms, broader, or more narrow terms.

JUUL is specific brand of vapes; it gets more narrow. Children is just another way to say kids; a synonym. Advertisements are just one facet of marketing; it's more broad. All of these are legitimate ways of coming up with alternate keywords. You never know which one will be best for a particular database or website until you start looking! What works well in one, might not go over very well in another.

Use the same exercise with your own topic. Just grab a sheet of paper and write it down. You want something you can come back to and continue to expand on as you learn more during your searching.

Remember for this assignment you are required to find the following as a minimum:

• 2 new sociological sources (published in the last 10 years)
• 2 new semi-scholarly sources (published in the last 2 years)
• 2 new data sources (at least one of which is a map, graph, chart, image used as a slide in the Power Point presentation)

PART I: Team Reference List

Due 11:59 p.m. Two weeks before final exam (11/30 for 101.004 and 12/4 for 101.003)

• 1 ref list for the team, alphabetized
• Each source must be referenced correctly and labeled
  • by Type (Sociological, Semi-Scholarly, Data)
  • and by student who supplied it (or team)
• Source selection for your team work is key to the quality of the argument your team is making.
  • Your team sociological source should provide the framework for your Presentation, other sources should support, supplement, and clarify that framework.

Part II:  PowerPoint Presentation AND Notes; 

Due 11:59 p.m on 12/7

Part III:  Team Presentation: 

Final Exam Period