Sociology

Majoring

Declaring a Major
Requirements of a Sociology Major
Junior Qualifying Exam
    Some Useful Advice
    Preparation of Papers

Declaring a Major

Students must declare a major by the end of the sophomore year. Students are granted upperclass status once they have declared a major and completed at least thirteen units of course work at Reed or elsewhere. The Declaration of Major form is available from the Registrar (Eliot 311). This must be signed by a faculty member in sociology and promptly returned to the Registrar.

Requirements of a Sociology Major

The department's requirements begin with an introductory course, and proceed through the Junior qualifying examination, a research methods course, a year long thesis course, and a total of five additional units of sociology. Students have long been encouraged to supplement their coursework with additional work in statistical techniques. According to the Catalogue, majors must fulfill the following requirements, exclusive of work needed to meet general college and divisional requirements:

  1. Sociology 211.
  2. Sociology 311.
  3. Sociology 470.
  4. Any five additional units of sociology.
  5. Junior qualifying examination.

Recommended: Further work in mathematics and in other fields in the Division of History and Social Sciences is strongly recommended for students planning to continue their studies at the graduate level or in professional schools.

back to top

Junior Qualifying Exam

The Qualifying examination is normally undertaken over the course of a student's second term of his or her Junior year, following Sociology 311 - Research Methods. This requirement is satisfied by submitting a paper analyzing two research monographs in an area of substantive interest, preparatory to senior thesis work. It may be undertaken independently, or in conjunction with a course. If appropriate and directly linked to the anticipated senior thesis, this paper may also be undertaken as part of Sociology 481- Special Topics.

For several years, the department's Junior Qualifying examination has taken the form of a scholarly literature review, usually 20-35 pages in length, reviewing two research monographs chosen by the student. Students are directed to select any two monographs in one of the fields of sociology by scanning articles and bibliographies in the American Journal of Sociology, the American Sociological Review, the Annual Review of Sociology, and Contemporary Sociology for titles. Furthermore, they are instructed to avoid selecting purely descriptive, atheoretic studies and to peruse several titles in their area of general topical interest before making a final choice. They are also told to search the College's Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) library of databases (in "catalog" in the ICPSR folder on the Courses Server and ICPSR web pages) for pertinent data. Throughout, they are expected to consult with their probable thesis advisor in order to obtain departmental approval of their final selection.

back to top

Junior Qualifying Examination: Some Useful Advice

This "junior qual" is not a "test" of rote memory or of your technical-mechanical skills. It is anticipatory of senior B.A. thesis work; use it as an opportunity to explore the literature in one of the thirty fields comprising sociology in order to become familiar with the continuity of theory-motivated empirical research in that scholarly community. In sum, the qualifying examination is a test of your ability to motivate yourself and to organize your time to do academic work without direct supervision over an extended period of time, e.g., the time it takes to write a senior thesis.

Select any two monographic studies in one of the fields of sociology (scan articles and bibliographies in the American Journal of Sociology, the American Sociological Review, the Annual Review of Sociology, and Contemporary Sociology for titles). Avoid selecting purely descriptive, atheoretic studies. Peruse several titles in your area of general topical interest before making the final choices. Our ICPSR library of datasets should also be searched (in "catalog" in the ICPSR folder on the Courses Server and ICPSR web pages at http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/) for pertinent data. Consult with your probable thesis advisor and obtain departmental approval of your final selection.

Following the outline given below, write either: (1) a separate review essay on each of the monographs you selected, or (2) a single comparative, analytic essay on both. The latter is preferred. Model your own essay(s) after the specially designated "Review Essay" or "Review of the Literature" papers published in the professional journals, especially Contemporary Sociology and the Annual Review of Sociology.

  1. Summarize the major themes developed by the author(s). What basic theoretic and sociological issues being examined in this work(s)? Describe the thesis of these works, the research design, findings, and main interpretive conclusions. (Note: Consult Sociological Abstracts, Annual Review of Sociology, Borgatta, E. and M. Borgatta, eds. 1992. Encyclopedia of Sociology, and the International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences for a background and context of major issues. See also, Neil Smelser, ed. 1988. The Handbook of Sociology. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications).
     
  2. Describe and assess the authors' methodological strategies, including the use of evidence to substantiate or illustrate their interpretations. Evaluate the adequacy of the overall research design, how the conceptual variables were operationalized, and the relationship between the findings and the interpretive conclusions. Pay particular attention to how the authors dealt with disconfirming evidence or data that contradicted the main argument. Are there any data known to you that the author ignored or were not available when this book was written (this requires you to become familiar with recent publications in this area of research; search the Social Sciences Citation Index, journals, and the Annual Review of Sociology). This section of your paper could include your own analysis or re-analysis of relevant ICPSR datasets.
     
  3. Find reviews of this book in both professional and (sometimes) in popular periodicals. Identify the reviewers and summarize and evaluate their reviews in the light of your own readings. Do you agree/disagree (why?) with these appraisals? A note on finding book reviews: you should make maximal use of the Social Sciences Citation Index for this and the next section of your paper; also, search (a) lists of "books reviewed" published in the last issue of each vol-ume year of the professional journals, and (b) Contemporary Sociology, Contemporary Psychology, Book Review Digest, etc.
     
  4. How, if at all, does this work contribute to contemporary sociological theory and research? Is it limited to a specific subfield of the discipline, or does it have broader, more general significance? How has this work been cited and used in recent sociological literature?1 This section of your paper requires maximal effective use of theSocial Sciences Citation Index.
     
  5. Describe the problems these studies have suggested to you as worthy of future research. Outline a research design, including the thesis, hypotheses, procedures, and datasets one would use to examine this problem(s). Include some illustrative and preliminary data analysis. This section of the paper is, in effect, a draft of the thesis proposal that must be submitted to the Division of History and the Social Sciences in October of your senior year.

Essays must be text-processed and 1 1/2-spaced, using the official American Sociological Association manuscript and reference format (see instructions on the next page and "Microsoft Word and Formatting Your Thesis"). Prepare three copies of your essay and distribute them to members of the department anytime before May 1 of any year.

back to top

Preparation of Papers

1. Prepare a cover page, giving the title of your paper, your name and box number. The next page should be an abstract of no more than 150 words.

2. Papers must be text processed using Times, 12-pt. font, 1¡-spaced (except indented material, notes, and references). Margins must be one (1) inch (Word default). Right-hand margins should be neither justified nor have any hyphenated words.

3. Use endnotes instead of footnotes, i.e., select "Document" in the Format menu and set footnotes to "End of Document." Notes should be sequentially numbered in all text with superscript arabic numerals and all appear, single-spaced, as a separate appendix entitled, "Notes." Notes are to be used only for substantive explanations or amplifications of the text. Source citations are made in text, not in the notes.

4. All source references are to be identified at the appropriate point in the text by the last name of the author, year of publication, and pagination where needed. Identify subsequent citations of the same author in the same way as the first. If the author's name is in the text, follow it with year in parenthesis ["...Marini (1981)..."]; if it is not in the text, insert in parentheses the last name and year ["...(Marini 1981)..."]. Pagination follows year of publication after a colon ["...Turner (1988:34)..."]. Distinguish multiple references by the same author and year by the letters a, b, etc., added to the year ["...Alexander 1987a:104..."]. Give both last names for dual authors; do not use the ampersand (&). Give all last names on first citation in text for more than two authors ["...Aldrich, Jones and McEvoy (1984:193)..."]; thereafter use "et al." in the text. For institutional authorship, supply minimum identification from the beginning of the complete citation ["...U.S. Bureau of the Census 1989:143..."]. Separate a series of references with semicolons and enclose them within a single pair of parentheses.

5. List (single-spaced) all items alphabetically by author in an appendix entitled "References." The reference appendix must be complete (including machine-readable data files (MRDF), and include only the references actually cited in the text. The use of "et al." is not acceptable in the appendix; list the names of all authors using full first names. For titles of articles, the first letter of each word (except articles such as "an," "in, "the," etc.) should be capitalized. Titles of books and journals should be italicized. When appropriate, include the original year of publication, e.g., "Durkheim, Emile. [1893] 1933. The Division of Labor in Society. Translated by George Simpson. Glencoe, IL: Free Press." Examples follow:

Books:

Turner, Jonathan H. 1988. A Theory of Social Interaction. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Periodicals:

Zimmer, Catherine and Howard Aldrich. 1987. "Resource Mobilization Through Ethnic Networks: Kinship and Friendship Ties of Shopkeepers in England." Sociological Perspectives 30:422-446.

Camic, Charles. 1979. "The Utilitarians Revisited." American Journal of Sociology 85:515-50.

___________. 1987. "The Making of a Method." American Sociological Review 52:421-39.

Collections:

Skocpol, Theda and Edwin Amenta. 1986. "States and Social Policies." Pp. 3-43 in Bringing the State Back In, edited by P.B Evans, T. Skocpol, and D. Rueschemeyer. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Computer Files:

Davis, James and Tom W. Smith. 1994. General Social Survey Cumulative File, 1972-1994. (MRDF) Roper Center for Public Opinion Research (producer). Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (distributor).

6. Spelling and usage should conform to Webster's Third International Dictionary, its abridgment, Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary, and Webster's Dictionary of English Usage. On all matters of form not specified here, consult the University of Chicago Press's Chicago Manual of Style, 14th edition (1993).

back to top