Assignment:
How do people in America today define poverty?
The Unit 8 Assignment gives you an opportunity to synthesize and apply your learning so far in this course to investigate the public perception of what it means to be poor in America today. Using survey research methodology, you will develop and administer a three (3) item questionnaire to gather data from just two respondents. You will summarize the data gathered, and offer a tentative statement about the way that people in Americans define poverty.
Assignment Directions
There are two deliverables for this assignment. The first deliverable is a 3-item questionnaire that you will administer to two people to gather information that will help you formulate a tentative answer the research question of how people today define poverty in America. The other deliverable is a brief (300 to 500 word) essay that explains the survey methodology and results of your study
Deliverable 1
Design a three (3) item questionnaire to be used to interview two respondents to find out how they define poverty in America. The questionnaire should have a one or two sentence statement introduction that explains the purpose of the interview (i.e. I am conducting this research for my Purdue Global sociology class. I am collecting data to understand how people today define poverty in America). Under the purpose statement, list the three questions you will ask to determine how people today define poverty in America.
Note: The questionnaire copy that you turn in should not have any information from your respondents on it. It should be a blank questionnaire.
Deliverable 2
Brief Essay (300 to 500 words) The essay should contain the following labeled elements.
Introduction: State the research question to be answered. Explain how survey research methodology will be used to answer the research question. Specify whether you will use structured or unstructured interviews, and sure to give a referenced definition for each of these two types of survey research. List the three questions that were asked of each respondent.
Research Methods: Describe who was interviewed (i.e. sex, approximate socio-economic status, and age). Explain the conditions under which the respondents were interviewed (i.e. at work on break, by phone, over dinner at home, while exercising at the gym, on the way to work in the car pool). State the approximate time that it took to administer each questionnaire.
Results: In a couple of sentences, summarize the findings from the data that you collected from the two respondents. In a few more sentences, discuss the similarities and differences in their answers to each question. End the Results section with a definitive statement of what your research suggests about the way people today define poverty in America.
Conclusion: Restate the main points of your paper, including the research question asked, the methodology used and the tentative results. End with one question for further study on the issue of how people today define poverty in America.