Assignments

Examinations:

Midterm Exam:

There will be only one exam in this course. The midterm will focus exclusively on the theoretical contents. All the material you need to to prepare the exam will be available in the course’s Web-site.

There will be no make-up exams (except for well documented medical emergencies). All the assessments in this course will take place online, in the Blackboard Vista environment. Please, make sure that you are familiar with the system before the day scheduled for the exams.

The midterm exam is an online exam with 10 short essay questions, each worth 10 points. You have 3 hours to complete the exam and can answer each one of the questions in around 200 words.

General Considerations

The midterm exam will be available the whole day. Still, the time to complete it is limited (3 hours). Be aware that time starts running when you begin the assessment.

PLEASE, DO NOT USE ANY QUOTE IN YOUR ANSWERS. THE GOAL OF OPEN ENDED OR ESSAY QUESTIONS IS TO FIND OUT TO WHICH EXTENT YOU UNDERSTOOD THE IDEAS AND CONCEPTS DISCUSSED IN THE COURSE AND ARE ABLE TO EXPRESS/ARTICULATE THEM WITH YOUR OWN WORDS.

If you have any technical issue during the completion of the exam, please contact immediately the help desk to report the incident (860 832 1720).

Public Opinion Research Paper

In this assignment, you must select a topic the public may fell strong about. The stronger the feelings, the more likely you will find interesting material in your research. Then, you have to find actual data from surveys about that topic. You should structure your project addressing the following points – and in the same order.

  1. Introduction of the topic. Describe the issue you are going to talk about, why it may be controversial, and why is interesting for you.
  2. Show raw/general data of the public’s feelings and opinions about the issue.
  3. Break down the general data using demographic characteristics (gender, income, ideology, education) to better explain the distribution of the public opinion.
  4. Finally, make you own interpretation of the data.

Follow the APA guideline for the writing and layout style. You can either write a paper (10-12 pages, double-spaced, Times font 12).

Papers are delivered online through the particular assignment’s page in Blackboard Learn. I will not accept papers sent through any e-mail system. Make sure that you attach you paper as a PDF or Microsoft WORD document. If you send the assignment in any other format, I may not be able to open it.

In this page, you can find some online resources to search for data for your projects:

Resources Page

Public Opinion Research Project

The Public Opinion Research Projects should be structured as follows:

  1. Statement of the research question/s (15%)
  2. Description of the sampling method (15%)
  3. Questionnaire design (20%)
  4. Data (descriptive, inferential) (20%)
  5. Interpretation of data (30%)

Addendum (a copy of the actual questionnaire used in the project, including the statement of consent)

You must also follow APA style guidelines for this paper.