In this unit we will spend time on the internet getting information related to the theme topics. Ideally, this information will be used for your research proposal. If you have not yet chosen a topic of your research proposal, use this assignment as an opportunity to develop ideas through learning more about your area. Complete the following form. If you have a floppy diskette you can click here to open a Word 6 outline to complete. You will need to save this document on a diskette.
Read the whole assignment first so that you don't have to backtrack. You can search for the various materials in whatever order you want. The easiest way to do this assignment is by working through this web page and using the links provided, although you are free to go your own way.
You will use these to search for information about your topic on the internet. This sectionis just a summary--there are details on how to do each of these below.
Your goal is to use the internet to:
Find places on the internet where people discuss issues like yours.
Find official information (especially statistics) from state or federal government.
Find existing data sets that are relevant to your topic.
Use the General Social Survey to identify a variable that relates to your theme.
Use SDA to make a table showing the responses of men and women to your GSS variable and describe any differences.
Use search engines to find at least 8 web pages that have to do with your theme (and are not already on the theme page) that you think are worth knowing about, interesting, etc.
Identify organizations (of any type including advocacy, educational, research, and political organizations) from which you can get further information electronically, by phone or by mail.
Find discussions by reading the web pages and looking for terms like "chat" or "bulletin board." Also, a "listserv" is a way of having group discussions via email. You might seriously consider listening in (and even join in on) one of these discussions to get some ideas for your proposal. No one will know you are there unless you announce yourself. List at least 2 discussion "places." A good place to start is DejaVu/Google newsgroup search Directory of scholarly e-lists or (not working) E-Mail Discussion Groups . Give the name of the discussion place, where to find information about it (a web address, a discussion archive, and what type of format it was (listserv, newsgroup, chat room etc.)
Official Information,
especially statistics and government reporta can be found all over the internet, whether
at the Census Bureau, the Department of Justice or the anywhere else. Here I would like
you to tell me (or attach a copy of) at least 1 set of government statistics having to do
with your thene, including the source. One good place to look is the list of federal
Agencies that produce statistics from FedStats. A
good general source on finding statistics is "The Numbers Game:
The Top 10 Sources For Statistics" by Paula Bernstein Read her strategies and try
some of her links. As always these are just jumping off points. You may also want to go to
the library and use the Census CD-ROM. You may find some statistics inside government
reports. You may also be able to get some official statistics off of unofficial websites.
You can also try just using a internet search engine, your
keywords and the word statistics.
Existing data sets can be found at the Inter-University Consortium for Social and Polical Research, among other places. You can search their archive using key words (Hint: Search Abstracts rather than titles). They also have a page listing other data sources. Find at least one data set on your theme either at ICPSR or elsewhere. Give the name(s) of the principal investigators, the title of the study and a brief (1-2 sentences) summary of the study. Do not just print the abstract.
The General Social Survey The General Social Survey has its own home page. Queens College also has useful GSS resources. Use the search, subject index, module index or another method to find a question relating to your theme. This may take a little bit of looking, but there is at least one question related to each theme. If you find more than one question, write them down for possible future use, but pick one as the focus for the next step of this assignment. Also, do not pick one with a lot of possible answers!
What is the question? (Give the question number, the mnemonic (short name) the text and the possible answers. Do not print this page!)
Make a Table Go to the SDA/ Survey Documentation and Analysis web page at Berkeley that lets you run GSS. Make a table that shows how responses to your variable from the general social survey create a table that looks at how men and women responded to your item. Print the table and write a sentence or two summarizing what it says (just take your best shot at this). Attach the table to the assignment.
How to make the table.
After you get to their page, select GSS Cumulative Data File, 1972-1996.
Select Frequencies or Cross tabulation
Where is says "row" type your variable's mnemonic (short name).
Where it says "column" type "sex" (The word!).
For Percentaging, select column.
Select Question Text.
Click on Run the Table
Find web pages by either using interent search engines or by starting on one page and following links out from there. Note that you can print much of what you see, or you can save it to a floppy disk to access again when writing your proposal. The web pages should not all be from the same place.
Do not print pages to hand in--only print pages that you want for yourself.
List the URLs (the thing at the top of the screen that usually start http://) and the titles of your web pages
Find organizations by looking on the web pages (don't forget to check out the organizations which made the web pages), paying attention to what people say in newsgroups and so on. Indeed, if you want to ask a newsgroup for information, I'm willing to accept it, but please don't all flood the same newsgroups. Another approach might be to email someone. Finally, check out the Library of Congress's organizational data base or the one maintained by the branch system of the New York Public Library (if you have a browser that supports JAVA then use http://www.nypl.org/catalogs/index.html# otherwise use telnet://nyplgate.nypl.org logon name leo). A source for non-profit organizations is Charity Search. If you use Charity Searh, you will probably want to search for itsweb page after identifying its name. Policy.com provides a list of advocacy groups from across the political spectrum.
For each organization give me an email address, a phone number and/or a mailing address. Get at least 3. And hey, think about sending away for some materials now before it is too late.