Sociology 497

Sociology 680 - Grading Criteria

This course consists of several forms of class participation including traditional testing, readings, discussions, and virtual meetings. The criteria for your class grade will be two examinations, one essay midterm taken in class and the other a take home final, in addition to classroom led discussions and a critical application term paper. Plus and minus grading will be in effect.

TESTS

There will be two exams, a midterm and final, each worth 25% of your grade. The midterm will consist of specificdata sets to be used in conjunction with the techniques and procedures used in multivariate methods, involving measures of association, discussed in class. The final will be a take home review of selected publications in which you will be required to perform a critical analysis of reported findings, method for analysing those findings and suggestions for improving on same.

PROBLEM SOLVING

Each week, you will be required to choose a data set and perform a multivariate analysis, using the techniquediscussed in class that week. In so far as practical you will also be asked to briefly give a verbal summary of the findings to the class. The evaluation of those analyses and the verbal presentation to the classs will constitute 25% of your final grade

PAPER

The paper will result from the choice of a dataset consistent with your reserach interests. You will perform a secondary analysis that results is a "mini publication". That is, you will research the literature, critique the data set, and perform an analysis that is consistent with the level of measurement and underlying assumptions of the data. It will consist of an introduction, methods, results and discussion sections, together with an appendix and technical references. During the last week of class, each student will present a 15 minute PowerPoint discusssion of this paper to the class. Evaluation of the written and oral presentation will constitute the final 25% of your grade.