Memo Guidelines – To get full credit on your memo assignment, you must follow the format, summary, and analysis guidelines.
Format
1)Follow the memo example exactly! To do this, simply just download the template and fill it in.
2) All three readings should be addressed in one document in one file, not three separate documents.
3) Your memos will be 800 words maximum. I want one giant block of text that totals 400 words for the summary, not three separate paragraphs. This block of text should address all three readings at once. Similarly, one giant block of text that totals 400 words for the analysis, not three separate paragraphs. This block of text should address all three readings at once. To clarify, you are not doing three separate summaries and analysis. For example, you are not going to write 400 words on Reading 1, 400 words on Reading 2, 400 words on Reading 3. It is acceptable to write ten words over or under the 800 word maximum.
4) Do not put the titles of articles into the memo. Just simply discuss the articles by using the last name of the author and delving into the content. For example, you are discussing the article, “Memo Instructions” by Name, you will start the memo by saying “ Name (citation date) discusses….”. Do not put the article title in the memo.
5) The memos must be turned in via a word document. If you do not have word, you need to google search, and download, a program called “open office” that lets you save documents as word documents. It’s a nifty online program that serves as a free word processor. Save each file as (Last Name Memo #). For example, I would turn in the file: Name Memo1.
6) The word count needs to be at the bottom of the page.
7) Do not use direct quotes rather you should paraphrase the reading.
Ex: “Do not use direct quotes” is an example of a direct quote. Just paraphrase (which is an example of a paraphrase).
8) Use appropriate citations. When citing the author’s name, follow it with the year written in parenthesis. To cite a specific idea, place the page number in parenthesis at the end of the sentence.
Ex: Name (2011) says to cite your information. Name (2011) specifically tells you to do this by citing the page number at the end of the sentence (1).
Note: You can cite two authors like this: Name & Harris (date).
To cite more than two authors, use: Name et al. (date).
The lecture can be cited with the title of the lecture: (Social Theory Lecture) or (Race Lecture).
When writing your summary, you might run into a situation where the author is citing a piece of information you think is important. For example, pretend you are reading a study by Singer. In Singer’s article, he might say “according to Rivera (1996), the sky is blue” or “the sky is blue (Rivera, 1996).” In other words, the author is citing a piece of information from another source. One way to handle this is that this piece of information is a small detail and it is not necessarily relevant to include this in your summary. Ideally, you should not include this piece of information in the summary (go to the Summary Guidelines below for more info). If you must include this piece of information, you primarily cite the author. The way you would handle that is: Singer (date) cites Rivera’s findings about sky color. So if you must cite this piece of information (which I would rather you not do) you are always citing the main source and never something the author is citing.
9) Use third person perspective.
Ex: The author notes that . . . .
10) Your summary should “sum up” the main points of your readings of that week.
Ex: On this sheet, Name (2011) says that his students should use a template, not quote authors directly on their assignments, and cite the authors a certain way. He also says that you should write your memos in third person. Below, you will have some guidelines on how to write a good summary.
11) Your analysis should analyze and connect readings with the lecture and other class readings. Sometimes, I might provide other questions that will guide this portion of your assignment for that week.
Ex: In his syllabus, Professor Name talked about what his expectations were for the class; likewise, in his memo instructions, he talked about what his expectations were for his memos. This could mean that he wanted his instructions to be clear so that students will not get mad at him when he grades their papers. Analyze and synthesize. Don’t summarize. Please see analysis guidelines below.
Summary Guidelines
Your summary should sum up the main points of each reading. In this section, you are only talking about the readings posted online on the class website (LMS page), NOT the lecture notes. To help you perform this task, pretend you are telling a friend about a movie that you recently saw. How would you help this friend understand the general story line of the movie without them having to see the movie for themselves? What were the main points? For example, x happens at the beginning of Suicide Squad, in the middle of the movie y happens, at the end of the movie, z happens. Similarly, when talking about what happened in the reading, your job is to articulate the main points of the reading.
All of the articles you will be reading in this class are empirical articles. That means they will be structured in the same way: Introduction (Intro), Literature Review, Methods, Data/Data Analysis, and Conclusion. So here is a brief guide to show you what each piece generally does in a research project. This will hopefully give you a guide on how to read the articles so that you are able to understand what the researchers are doing and how they work.
Let’s break this down:
Intro – the job of the introduction in an empirical article is to primarily set up the context for a study. This context can be: theoretical: meaning the researchers are working with a particular set theoretical framework (things we talk about in class), a social problem or a problem in the real world, or it could be an empirical problem or missing gaps in the literature. The introduction will also pose a question that the researchers will be looking at.
So ask yourself – what is the framework being used here? What is the problem?
Literature Review: the job of the literature review is to go over literature or the research that has already been done about the study. The researcher will usually expose gaps or limitations in previous research so that they can proceed to study the problem at hand. For example, if the study is on gender and poverty rates, a researcher hypothetically might say “Researcher A looks at race and poverty. Researcher B looks at education and poverty, but no one studied gender, and this is why I am going to look at gender.” Sometimes, a study might not have a literature review because they already reviewed the literature in the introduction, but generally, this is not the rule. Here, you will find not only research that has been done, but also, definitions to important concepts in the study.
So ask yourself – what research has been done to address this framework/problem?
Methods: These essentially guide the execution of the study. It tells you the kinds of methods that the researchers used to study the phenomena. So essentially, this will tell you the steps the researchers took in order to answer their question. In the class, we talk about social research methods in depth to give you a strong foundational understanding of research methods in sociology/social sciences.
So ask yourself – how did the researchers set up their study to look at said framework/problem?
Data/Data Analysis: Here you will find what the researchers found and how they interpreted their findings. In quant pieces, data usually takes the form of statistics and numbers. In qual pieces, you will usually have your typologies (or empirical categories) or you will have observations of some kind. We discuss this during the methods lectures.
So ask yourself – what are the key findings?
Conclusion: This will answer the research question. The conclusion usually serves as a brief summary of how the study answered the question. It will sum up major findings and will provide directions for future research.
So in your summary, you are going to give the reader a couple bits of information: What was the study about? How did the researchers go about executing the study? What did the researchers find?
Analysis Guidelines
The analysis is very different from the summary portion. Here, you’re not asking “what happened in the readings?” You are asking, “what do these readings mean?” Similarly, you are asking, “what are the implications?” In other words, when you are talking about what the movie means, you are analyzing the movie. So in the movie Suicide Squad, we talk about how the characters represent certain things. That’s an example of an analysis. In other words, I expect you to extrapolate from the readings. Ideally, you should be citing the lecture also when you do this as well, but you should be primarily looking at the readings. Please DO NOT use first person!
For the analysis portion, follow this particular template:
Answer the question “How does (reading) relate/is similar to/different from (insert Topic B or concept from the notes or reading B or reading C)? Then explain.
