today’s line-up

• Status reports• Research article analysis – recap• View sample project from previous class• Project teams + project plan [due Tues Mar 4]• Finding background information

tues feb 18, 2014

[Open up example file…]

The theoretical perspectives were explained well. The general idea that larger family size led to less trust due to the fact people trusted the family members and had less need to go outside the family was well explained. Conversely people with one or no siblings needed to go outside the family for a social network.

I believe the author used sound logic and I thought that common sense was also used to form the argument that smaller family sizes would force people to expand their social network outside the family boundaries but I still have trouble understanding the relevance of the findings? What practical use could this research be used for and why was it done? These are the questions I feel the paper does not answer. Yes it is interesting but of what importance?

-Sammy Jo

The author reminds the reader that "generalized trust is one of the most important attitudinal elements of social capital and social cohesion in general," and it is therefore important to better understand how certain factors may increase or decrease an individual's ability to trust.

-Dayton

Yucel makes the case that the question he is asking is important and nontrivial. He doesn’t really convince me of the perceived importance of the research question. The author does bring attention to an interesting connection between sibship size and trust, but I’m not sure what the larger implications of such a conclusion would be. Why does their level of generalized trust matter? Does it lead to other consequences/benefits? Still, the introduction makes sense logically.

-Kelsey

The author does an excellent job in convincing the reader of the importance of this study by making sure the reader understands that previous studies have only measured the differences in self-rated health among races at two point in time, which may be misleading. This study demonstrates that the racial gap still exists and that the differences in self-rated health between black the white individuals are not decreasing steadily in a linear fashion.

-Jill

I liked this table better then the first one, as they went through the data for me and displayed it in an easier way to read then the first. It would’ve been nice if the first table had an additional way of reading it and a way to compare the data without just looking at the “raw data”. The second table in the results section isn’t just a “floating table” and the author writes about it in the following paragraphs

-Kristian

Why do you rarely want to restrict findings to specific units or cases you happened to study; what is the benefit of expanding them to broader categories? Couldn't broadening it cause information overload and make the study unclear?

-Alyssa

The discussion on spuriousness in this reading reminded me of the shark attack and ice cream example that we talked about in class recently. This reading mentions that it can be very hard to rule out alternative causal factors. The shark attack and ice cream example, of course, is pretty simple.

How might you go about ruling out alternative causes in a more complex situation/study? Do you think it's even possible for a researcher to do that, or are these misleading "causes" only discovered later on by other researchers?

-Kelsey

*handout*

Resource What you’ll find

http://www.lib.unc.edu/ >> E-Research by Discipline >> Public Issues

CQ Researcher[Congressional Quarterly]

Each single-themed, 12,000-word report is researched and written by a seasoned journalist.Quality source for in-depth, analytical reporting on the most current and controversial issues of the day

Issues and Controversies on File contains full text articles on current topics of interest, arranged in opposing points of view

http://www.lib.unc.edu/ >> E-Research by Discipline >> Reference

Gale Virtual Reference Library Articles on all subjects from subject encyclopedias, almanacs, etc.

Oxford Reference Online Entries from dictionaries, encyclopedias, and other reference works in most subject area