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Group Projects

1. Many of our everyday perceptions and opinions are riddled with everyday errors in reasoning. In your group, make a list of 5-7 stereotypes and assumptions we have about our world (preferences between girls and boys, how different races act, etc.). Have them write these down on a piece of paper. Now, have the groups trade; groups are now tasked to list the ways in which these assumptions can be influenced by reasoning errors. Students should list the type of reasoning error as outlined in the text and then a two sentence description of why this is the case.
2. Divide students into groups of four. Have them pick a social issue that they are interested in but one that they do not know very well.  Assign one student in each group to investigate this issue in textbooks and online following a different type of research (descriptive, exploratory, explanatory, and evaluation). Have the students reconvene and discuss how each type of research adds to their overall understanding of the social issue.
3. Have students break into small groups. Have them identify a social work problem. Have them consider how to address this problem through a quantitative research orientation; they should write these considerations in a small proposal that outlines what their research question would be, what they would measure, and what they would hope to learn. Have them repeat this process with a qualitative research orientation.
4. Ask students to read news articles around a contentious and public policy question, such as abortion, race relations, or political fundraising. Have them discuss to what degree the media and the research being reported recognize diversity or emphasize the need for diversity in their work. How much research is conducted from a dominant cultural position and how much research solely studies those of the dominant culture? Ask them how this might impact the results of the study and subsequent policies.

Mini Projects

1. How Error Prone is Popular Reasoning?
This project provides an estimate of the frequency with which errors are made in reasoning about individuals, societies, and social processes.

1. Collect seven issues of a daily newspaper.  Locate the letters to the editor in each.
2. Read each letter to the editor and circle all those that make assertions about individuals, societies, and social processes; that is, about the social world.
3. Identify examples of any of the five errors in reasoning in those letters.  (Search through more newspaper issues, if necessary, until you find at least three examples of errors in reasoning about the social world.)
4. Speculate on the likelihood that the social world’s complexity, self-interestedness, human subjectivity, or resistance to change resulted in each of the errors.
5. Rewrite the text of one of the letters to eliminate the errors of reasoning within it, but without changing the basic point of the letter.
6. Suggest two or more criteria that newspaper editors could use to spot errors in reasoning in the letters they are asked to publish.

2. The General Social Survey

1. Locate the homepage for the General Social Survey at:  http://www3.norc.org/GSS+Website/. 
2. Locate the Introduction section in the upper left corner of the homepage and select “About GSSDirs” by double-clicking.  Read the “Overview of GSSDirs.”
3. In essay form, answer all of the following questions: 
   
   1. Does the GSS meet criteria for being “social science”?  Explain.
   2. What is/are the motivations for conducting the GSS?  Explain. 
   3. Based only on this reading, is the GSS intended for descriptive, exploratory, explanatory, or evaluation research (or some combination of the four).  Explain.
   4. Is the GSS quantitative or qualitative in orientation (you may need to browse more of the site to fully answer this question)?  Explain.

3.  Writing a Descriptive Report
This project assumes that students have some basic knowledge of summary statistics, namely, the mean.  If not, this should be carefully explained to them.

1. Locate a data set in your library or on the Internet (e.g., the US Census, the Unified Crime Report, the GSS).
2. Browse the data set to see what sort of information is available in the data set.  Select 2-4 variables that you understand well (e.g., population growth, violent crime rate, level of education, infant mortality rate).  It will be helpful if you find variables that you think are somehow related to one another. 
3. Create a simple table for each variable in which you display the data for each variable.  In some cases, it may be better to condense some of the data into meaningful categories to present the data as means (e.g., region of the US).
4. Write a short descriptive report in which you use these tables to describe the data that you have found.  This report should include information on the data set (such as how and when data was collected, number of respondents, etc.), definitions of the variables used, and patterns observed in the data.  Also in this report, you should begin to connect the patterns in the data to existing social theory.

4.  How Do Social Scientists Describe and Explore Attitudes?
This project asks students to conduct research on their classmates in order to demonstrate the importance of sampling, measurement, and external validity. 

1. Split students into groups of three-five and ask them to devise a very short set of questions designed to measure what other students think about a social work topic of their choosing (e.g., a current event, a school policy, a controversial behavior).  Make sure to instruct them that they must describe how many of their classmates share a certain opinion or attitude and suggest why they hold that attitude (that is, to propose both descriptive and exploratory questions).  Make certain to help them devise these questions in their small groups if they start to stray.
2. Instruct students to type up the questions, leaving sufficient room for answers, and make enough copies to distribute to their classmates (or a set number of their classmates, if the course is large).  Have them bring these copies to the next class meeting, at which time groups take turns administering their surveys.
3. After the surveys have been administered, have each group meet to come up with their findings.  These should be presented to the class.