Students! I want you to know that this is not a requirement for the class but I think it will really help you in preparation for your final paper. What you post below will be on a public website. So, just please understand that it is an outside web page (managed by Professor Girdwood) and it is not required. Having said that, I encourage you to post an outline of your abstract here! This is what follows below: I will post my own “Outline for Abstract” right here. Then, what I want you all to do (and you can view my sample) is I want you to post your ABSTRACT OUTLINE ONLY in the “reply” section of this web page. In other words, turn your “Initial Interest” into an abstract outline and post your abstract outline as a “reply” on this web page. If you have questions, just email me! Thanks! Here is my sample “Outline for Abstract” that I will eventually turn into an abstract:

Sample ABSTRACT OUTLINE

My main interest is capital as it is conveyed from generation to generation. I will present a wealth transfer model as a representation of other social capital that could potentially be passed down from parent to child. For example, there are many college athletes right now whose parents were also high-level athletes. This trend is propagated somehow, either the athletic parents are natural athletes (DNA) or they are teaching their children how to perform better (nurture) or maybe the children just have better access to the things necessary to become great athletes (like open gym time and training).

Using the material we will cover in class during the American Dream, Parenthood, and Family Wealth sections, I will focus on obtaining resources, references, and tools to help me discover why “the rich get richer and the poor are getting poorer.” I will focus on things like:

  • Transfer of wealth from parents to children
  • Opportunities for wealthy children like access to college
  • Barriers for poor children like no money for higher education
  • Attitudes about wealth
  • Social networks of the wealthy that enable them to accumulate more wealth for their children
  • Social networks of the poor that disable them from showing their children how to get out of poverty

With all of these possible subjects in mind, I will make sure to refine my final paper to answer the following research question:

How do children of wealthy parents have more opportunities than poor children to becoming wealthy in America?

IDEAS for RESEARCH QUESTIONS (Intro to Anthropology)

Students, please remember that I teach Anthropology based upon the four pillars conveyed by the American Anthropological Association. It is essential that your research question falls within one of these four categories:

  1. Socio-Cultural
    1. “examine social patterns and practices across cultures, with a special interest in how people live in particular places and how they organize, govern, and create meaning”
    2. “concern[ed] with similarities and differences, both within and among societies, and its attention to race, sexuality, class, gender, and nationality”
  2. Linguistics
    1. “study of ways in which language reflects and influences social life”
    2. “explores the many ways in which language practices define patterns of communication, formulate categories of social identity and group membership, organize large-scale cultural beliefs and ideologies, and, in conjunction with other forms of meaning-making, equip people with common cultural representations of their natural and social worlds”
  3. Archaeology
    1. “study past peoples and cultures, from the deepest prehistory to the recent past, through the analysis of material remains, ranging from artifacts and evidence of past environments to architecture and landscapes”
    2. “material evidence, such as pottery, stone tools, animal bone, and remains of structures, is examined within the context of theoretical paradigms, to address such topics as the formation of social groupings, ideologies, subsistence patterns, and interaction with the environment”
  4. Bio-Physical
    1. “how humans adapt to diverse environments, how biological and cultural processes work together to shape growth, development and behavior, and what causes disease and early death”
    2. “interested in human biological origins, evolution and variation”

Remember, Anthropology is a comparative discipline and not simply narrative journalism!

IDEAS for RESEARCH QUESTIONS (Intro to Sociology)

Education

  • What can the poor schools do to achieve the same amount of success as the rich schools? What can they do to produce the same amount of highly educated individuals? – be careful on having two research questions
  • How could agriculture education benefit intercity [sp: inner city] school districts compared to rural school districts?
  • Why do athletics that get college scholarships want to get good grades in high school and why pro basketball and football players go back to college and how sports and education come hand in hand in life? – grammar, wording, and run-on sentence issues
  • What level of discipline best controls the level of deviance among high school students? – well said: “best controls the level of deviance” really worded extremely well

Families

  • Does parental involvement in a child’s education directly affect the child’s performance in the classroom, or is it simply the child’s drive that makes them strive to do well? – good use of either/or style; might what to rephrase asking “to what extent does… versus?” which prevents a yes/no analysis
  • How do eating habits propagate from childhood through adulthood between low class and upper class families?
  • Does parent’s beliefs and who they raise the child play a greater, equal or less role in how a child’s character develops than biology? – grammar issues
  • How does praise effect children, and how can it be altered to create a more motivated child? – good use of “how” question(s)
  • How has cohabitation become an increasing incidence in young adults in building a bridge between dating and marriage?

Divorce

  • How are children of divorced parents affected by divorce throughout their lives in America?
  • How do children, with divorced parents, mindset and emotions differ from the children with their parents still married? – also, variable/elements not as questions; make sure to upload subsequent assignments as Google Docs, Word documents, Open Office, blog, etc.
  • Why have the divorce rates in the U.S. decreased in the past 50 years?
  • How do children of divorced parents have less opportunities and lower abilities to develop secure relationships than children of non-divorced parents?
  • How does divorce and remarriage negatively affect children? – make sure to upload subsequent assignments as Google Docs, Word documents, Open Office, blog, etc.

Government, Crime, and Health Care (rights and freedom)

  • Does race and gender play a role in the crimes committed across America?
  • What is the leading cause for health care inefficiency and how does it affect the health care system?
  • Should Euthanasia be legalized? – this question really needs to be more specific (this is not an ethics class) and the paper did not follow the format required for assignment; no name on paper
  • Should people be able to just receive the unemployment benefits even though many may abuse it or if they actually need it to survive? – avoid yes/no research question
  • The health field and why there are a numerous amount of females in this business than males – no research question at end of assignment
  • Do genetic factors or lifestyle choices play a bigger role as risk factors for developing melanoma cancer?
  • Is giving elderly women fertility drugs to become pregnant safe and moral for mother and baby? – does not follow assignment format/requirement; no name on submission

Culture (includes stereotypes)

  • Hip Hop – there was no research question
  • How do people raised in sheltered or non sheltered households become charismatic or shy? – make sure to define “sheltered” as well as refine “people”
  • Does where you live in the world, affect your ability to get into the winner circle in tournaments? – we talked about how this could be improved individually (place defined and wording)
  • How can today’s society improve politically, technically, scholastically, religiously and socially through the simple practice of time management? – be careful not to go too broad; maybe choose one way of improvement (and define “improvement”)
  • How people see truckers and why they see them in that way? – we talked individually on this one (variable/elements not as questions)
  • How do stereotypes effect everyday life and why are they continued to be used? – grammar (affect)

Race and Gender

  • Why do boy get treated differently than girls when it comes to who influences them in life? – watch grammar
  • Is the color of one’s skin still a major factor that plays a role in being picked for a job or sport?
  • How are women stereotyped and unequally treated in the workplace, home and publically? (spelling) you may want to choose just one area
  • Many women are in poverty – does not follow assignment requirements
  • How are gender roles changing in present generations compared to the gender roles of past generations? – also, variable/elements not as questions; make sure to upload subsequent assignments as Google Docs, Word documents, Open Office, blog, etc.
  • Women rights and how they have changed over the years – grammar and formatting issues (no research question)
  • Why do White men make more than any other category of people, whether gender or race, doing the same jobs?

Power, Status, and Class (includes poverty)

  • How do teams that have more money have a better likelihood to win more than teams that have less money in America?
  • When you have money things can go in your favor more likely than a person without money? – poorly phrased question
  • How bad is the poverty problem in America? – really refine this question and tell me how you will define “bad”
  • What makes one person more able to be more successful and accomplish their goals, in terms of whether it is their environment, their DNA, or their outlook or others outlook on the result of their goals?
  • How do Americans interact with one another in their own social statuses; and how do they interact with those from other social statuses?