26 Mar 2010 [ Prev
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Research Skills Workshop
This assignment asks you to test your research question, by bringing in two academic sources that offer different answers (or at least, different approaches) to your question.
A research question differs from a thesis statement.
You write the (final) thesis statement after you have finished all your research. You ask yourself, "Based on the research I was able to find, what can I prove about my topic?"
You write the research question before you start your serious research. You ask yourself, "What do I not know at this moment, that I need to know in order to choose a stance in the issue?"
If you already know what your thesis will be, before you even start writing, then chances are you will write a normative thesis -- something that expresses your opinion about they way things ought to be, rather than an analytical thesis -- something that explores the reasons why things are they way they are.
Preliminary Research Question:
How does TV advertising affect women?
Once you have established that advertisers are free to publish whatever images of women they want because the First Amendment guarantees that Congress will not pass a law restricting what publishers choose to publish, you'll see that "Advertisers should stop degrading women" is a vague claim. But If you study what happens to a small country that had TV introduced to it for the first time, and you track health statistics from that country, 10 and 20 years after the introduction of TV, you might note an increase in suicide attempts, or an increase in eating disorders. But how do you know it was the TV advertising that caused these problems? Maybe it was the TV programs, or maybe at the same time TV came to this country, large numbers of youths went overseas to college, and that was where they picked up their bad habits.
Note the difference between:
What recent academic studies have been conducted on (detailed subject)?
A research question differs from a thesis statement.
You write the (final) thesis statement after you have finished all your research. You ask yourself, "Based on the research I was able to find, what can I prove about my topic?"
You write the research question before you start your serious research. You ask yourself, "What do I not know at this moment, that I need to know in order to choose a stance in the issue?"
If you already know what your thesis will be, before you even start writing, then chances are you will write a normative thesis -- something that expresses your opinion about they way things ought to be, rather than an analytical thesis -- something that explores the reasons why things are they way they are.
Preliminary Research Question:
How does TV advertising affect women?
Once you have established that advertisers are free to publish whatever images of women they want because the First Amendment guarantees that Congress will not pass a law restricting what publishers choose to publish, you'll see that "Advertisers should stop degrading women" is a vague claim. But If you study what happens to a small country that had TV introduced to it for the first time, and you track health statistics from that country, 10 and 20 years after the introduction of TV, you might note an increase in suicide attempts, or an increase in eating disorders. But how do you know it was the TV advertising that caused these problems? Maybe it was the TV programs, or maybe at the same time TV came to this country, large numbers of youths went overseas to college, and that was where they picked up their bad habits.
Note the difference between:
- "Advertisers should stop harming women" (which is a normative claim that presumes, but does not prove, that advertisers are harming women)
- "Advertisers lower women's self-esteem by displaying false images of unhealthy models, whose hair and make-up and even body fat are digitally altered." (that's analytical, but how do we measure self-esteem?)
- "Advertising directed at women presents an unattainable image of female beauty, by using underweight models, professional hair and makeup staff, and digital photo manipulation." (That's an uncontroversial observation. Who can argue against that, and it is necessarily bad that photographers want their photos to look better than real?)
- "What academic studies have investigated the effects of advertising on women's health?" (This last one IS a research question.)
