Project Assignment Guidelines

Overview

Professionals in the social sciences investigate human behavior and society for the purpose of understanding why people act the way they do. This investigation can help address a wide variety of social issues, such as the role of social media in the Arab Spring protests, the impact of social skills on future success, racial factors in police violence, and how partitioned grocery carts can help shoppers purchase healthier foods. Social scientists can help address issues such as these through research and investigation.

For the second project in this course, you will build on the work completed in Project One and develop a presentation for the audience you identified in Project One. In your presentation, you will explain how social scientific thinking has affected you and discuss the impact of the issue on your audience, supporting your claims with evidence.

Project Two addresses the following course outcomes:

• Illustrate the impact of social scientific thinking on personal and professional experiences
• Communicate effectively to specific audiences in examining fundamental aspects of human behavior
• Utilize evidence-based approaches in drawing conclusions about the impact of contemporary issues on individuals and society

Prompt

In Project Two, you will use the research investigation you wrote for Project One to create a presentation that explains how social scientific thinking has affected you and discusses the impact of your selected issue on your audience.

Specifically, the following critical elements must be addressed:

I. Provide a brief overview of the social scientific background of your issue and research question. How is the issue situated within the social sciences?

II. Explain how the issue impacts the audience. In other words, how is the issue relevant to members of the audience? Why should the audience care about the response to your question or the outcome of your investigation? Support your response with specific examples from your research investigation.

III. Describe the evidence you have to support your conclusions about the impact of the issue on you personally and on your audience. Support your response with specific examples from your research investigation.

IV. Explain why this issue is important to you personally. In other words, why did you select this issue to investigate?

V. Illustrate how your investigation of the issue impacted the way you thought about the issue. In other words, how did thinking like a scientist to research and develop a question affect what you thought about the issue you selected? How did social scientific thinking change the lens through which you viewed the issue? Support your response with specific examples from your research investigation.

VI. Explain why using evidence-supported research can give you both a personal and professional advantage. In other words, what is the value of supporting your work with evidence?

VII. Communicate your message in a way that is tailored to your specific audience. For instance, you could consider your vocabulary, your audience's potential current social science knowledge or lack thereof, and what is specifically important to the audience.