Grad Student 101
Workshop
Instructor: Heidi Lyons
Finding a Topic
Look at the Articles in the Syllabus
Initial Exploration
– Academic Search Premier
– Google Scholar
Talk to Your Professor!
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Research Question
Narrow your Focus
– What Relationship do you Want to Look at?
Is the Question Clear?
Does your Question fit into Previous Work?
Is the Study Possible?
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Is the Study Possible?
ICPSR
– www.icpsr.umich.edu
CFDR Data Holdings
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Doing Research
BGSU University Libraries
– SocINDEX
– Social Science Citation Index
• Subject Index
• Source Index
• Citation Index
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Other Databases
Sociological Abstracts
GenderWatch
Ethnic NewsWatch
Ohio Link
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Finding Major Journals
BGSU University Libraries
– Journal of Marriage and the Family
• Browse
• Search
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Searching Hints
And, Or, Not
Using “#” or “*”
– Adopt*
– Wom*n
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Record-Keeping for your Sources
Index Cards/Excel
Topic
Methods
Significant Findings
Other Comments
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Record-Keeping for your Sources
– Authors Full Names in Order
– Journals : journal name, date, volume
number, and page number
– Books : book name, city of publication,
publisher’s name, publication date
Example:
Adolescence References
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Introduction
Outline the Research Question
Why is this Important?
What are you Going to do?
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Literature Review
The Relationship Between Your Study and
Previous Work
How Your Paper is Different
Do Not Make it a Laundry List
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Literature Review
Start Broad and End Narrow
Only Report what Directly Relates to Your
Question
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Lit Review Structure
Look at Peer Review Journals
Elaborate on your Theory
Discuss Previous Research
Statement of the Problem
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Stating you Hypotheses
Formal Relational Statement
– Clear
– Type (Casual or Correlational)
– Direction (Positive or Negative)
– Imply that it is Testable
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Stating you Hypotheses
Bad: Attitudes and Union Type is Associated with
Infidelity.
Good:
H1: Controlling for sexual values, attending
religious services more frequently is associated
with lower likelihood of infidelity.
H2: Cohabiting is associated with a greater
likelihood of infidelity.
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Methods
Sample
Measures
Procedures/Data Analysis
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Sample
Data
– Sample Size
– How were Subjects/Recruited?
– Nonresponse
– Any Oversampling
– General Sample Selection
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Measures
Operationalize Variables
– Open VS Close-ended Questions
– Range of Response
– Scales
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Procedures
How are you Going to do it?
What Statistics are you Using?
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CFDR Help!
Ask Meredith for Programming Help
– Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday 1-2 p.m.
CFDR Webpage
– Annoted Output
– SAS/SPSS/STATA Questions
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