SOC 500: Research Methods--Statistics

Content: Introduction to statistical methods in the social sciences. Topics include summarizing evidence with graphs and numbers, developing and assessing composite measurements, generalizing from a sample to a population, and determining the relationship between two or more variables. The course will prepare you to understand and evaluate research reports in social science publications and in the news media. It will also enable you to do original research of your own. You will learn how to ask meaningful questions of quantitative data and to draw sound conclusions from the evidence you produce. The overall goal of the course is to increase your statistical literacy and prepare you to take additional courses in statistics and research methods.

Particulars:  Computer assignments, final paper.

Content: Introduction to research methodology and design for sociologists, including introductions to philosophies of social science, research design, sampling, measurement and measurement assessment, experimental design, quantitative techniques and qualitative methods. The emphasis will be in developing practical research skills to design and implement a research project.

Texts: Various methodological texts and monographs.

Particulars: “Hands-on” instruction involving a class research project and individual research projects. Assignments and a final paper. Permission for registration required from professor.

Same as PSYC 532

Content: There are two sections to this course. In the first section we will examine and critically assess the theoretical statements of selected theorists who have contributed to the foundations of the symbolic interaction perspective. Major theorists covered will include Mead, Cooley, Blumer, Goffman, Couch, Kuhn, and Stryker. The second section will cover recent theoretical developments in the symbolic interaction tradition on the following topics: the looking-glass self, reflected appraisals, identity processes, identity and stress, emotions, social identity theory, and identity negotiation. Recent major theorists include Gecas, Burke, Stets, Thoits, Heise, Smith-Lovin, Snow, Anderson, Cahill and others.

Particulars: 5 page critique, short responses and 1 major research paper.

Content: The goal of this course is to extend applied mastery of multiple regression beyond elementary OLS regression.  Extensions advance in three directions: (a) ad hoc complements to regression such as non-linearities and interactions; (b) simultaneous equations systems, path analytic as well as non-recursive structural equations; and (c) time-series (and "pooled" time series) regression.  The focus will be especially useful for those interested in applied competence in quantitative cross-sectional, time-series and/or pooled analysis of aggregate data.

Texts: Probable texts include: Gujarati, D.N. Basic Econometrics. Kennedy, P., Guide to Econometrics. Selected articles and Sage Monographs

Particulars: Sociology 500 is a prerequisite. Evaluations will be based on three exams (worth 20% of grade each) and several computing assignments (worth the remainder).

Same as RLSR 730

Content: What do religious phenomena mean to their participants, seen as members of society?  We explore answers to this question over successive generations of development in the work of classical social thinkers (e.g., Weber, Durkheim, Du Bois, Marx, Freud) and contemporary theorists (Bellah, Douglas, Geertz, Asad, Bourdieu, Foucault, Ortner).  Topics include the culturally constitutive meaning of religion in practice as symbolic action and embodiment, theodicy and soteriology, powerful hegemony and prophetic transformation; the social and moral functions of ritual, myth, and religious experience; religious evolution, social modernization, globalization and nationalism; contemporary religious fundamentalism, politicization, (de)secularization, gender and class differences, and cultural conflict.  Particular attention is given to the Black Churches, American Evangelicalism, global Catholicism and Islam, U.S. mainline Protestantism and moral advocacy in public life.

Texts: include Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life; Weber, The Sociology of Religion; Geertz, Islam Observed; Mary Douglas, How Institutions Think; Talal Asad, Genealogies of Religion; Pierre Bourdieu, "The Genesis and Structure of the Religious Field"; Colin Campbell, The Romantic Ethic & the Spirit of Consumerism; Robert Wuthnow, The Restructuring of American Religion; Christian Smith, American Evangelicalism; Jose Casanova, Public Religions in the Modern World; Marla Frederick, Between Sundays: Black Women and Everyday Struggles of Faith; Stephen Ellingson, The Megachurch and the Mainline; and Charles Taylor, A Secular Age.

Particulars: Active participation in seminar discussion; one short paper and class presentation; term paper.

Content: This seminar analyzes the major processes of political economy and development and can serve as an introduction to more specialized course work and research in this area.  Topics include the analysis of power, the dynamics of capitalist development, state and nation formation, class and class formation, and social movements and revolution. The first part of the course will critically examine the major theories which have come to define the research problems in these areas.  The second part of the course will cover recent theoretical and empirical work in these areas.

Particulars: Requirements for the course are:

(1) active participation in the seminar

(2) one or two presentations on the assigned readings in a section of the course and

(3) several short critical analyses of the readings.

Content: Serving as an introduction to fundamental issues in the philosophy of science, this course covers major concerns in constructing good theoretical arguments.  Topics include: problem formulation, concept formation, problems of causality, deductive and inductive reasoning, causal diagramming, levels of theoretical analysis, formalization, and evidence and testability.  We will analyze examples from a variety of theoretical perspectives as well as student work in several exercises throughout the term. 

Texts:  Kuhn, Structure of Scientific Revolutions; Nagel, The Structure of Science; Laudan, Science and Relativism; Stinchcombe, Constructing Social Theories; Cohen, Developing Sociological Knowledge: Theory and Method; plus articles on reserve.

Particulars:  Exercises, class participation and presentations, term paper/research proposal.

Content:  TBA

Particulars: TBA