Term paper assignment

During this quarter we will collect some social network data about our class, in class.  At the first class meeting, at the first mid-term, and at the second mid-term, you will all be asked to list the names of the people in the class that you know.  At the first class meeting, we will also ask people to report their gender and ethnicity.

We will compile your responses and make them available on the web site in the form of UCINET data files.  You will need to download these data files, and use the UCINET software to perform some data analyses.  These data analyses will be written up as a short empirical research paper.

Your research paper will seek to test the following two hypotheses about the formation of social network ties:

• Ties between actors tend to become  reciprocated.
• The likelihood that two actors will form a tie is increased if they are homophilous.

Your research paper is not to exceed ten double-spaced pages, including references and graphics (it may be shorter).  Like all scientific research papers, yours should contain the following sections:

• Introduction and problem statement:  The introductory statement is usually one or two paragraphs that states what problem the research will address, and why this is a significant problem both for theory, and for application/policy.
• Theory and hypotheses:  What sociological theories can be deduce the research hypotheses?  Are there alternative or competing theories that would make different predictions?  
• Data and methods:  Describe the "who-what-when-where" aspects of how the observations were made that you are using to test your hypotheses.  Describe how the data were collected, and the reliability and validity of the measurement.  Describe how your are going to analyze the data to determine whether they support or reject the research hypotheses.
• Results:  Provide a basic description of the data, overall, and their main features (e.g. network size, density, etc.).  Provide the results of whatever tests or comparisons that you made to test the hypotheses.
• Discussion/conclusion:  Do the results seem to support, or lead you to reject the hypotheses?  What are this implications of your results for the theories that you used to justify the hypotheses?  What might the implications of your research be for real-world problems?  Did your research suggest any new questions to be explored in further research?

The paper will be due at the last regular class meeting.  A discussion board will be provided in our class web-site where you can give and get advice in working on the term paper.  You may work together doing the research for the term paper.  However, each student must do their write-up independently (we will check closely, and plagiarism will result in no credit for the assignment).