Students enrolled in the applied version of Soc 403 will complete two elements–service in a field setting, and research (related to the field setting). This will generally require students to begin the process in the term before enrolling in 403, in order to work with the faculty member to develop a research design and prepare to carry out a modest project, analyze data and report out the results in the paper. Hence the need to have completed a research methods course first (Soc 327, also a required course for the major). Elements include:

• Working with faculty to identify interesting and do-able research questions and develop a design;
• Address the need for human subjects approval (beginning with understanding the institutional review process at EOU), and securing consent and assurances of confidentiality from the supervisory agency/entity (many of the populations you might work with are vulnerable, researchers and practitioners do everything they can to protect them);
• Identifying data sources–either primary or secondary–to be collected, developing methods for doing so, analyzing data and working with faculty in the process of writing up the results. The syllabus provides some guidance and background reading, but the most important step is working with a faculty member to develop the idea and research proposal.
• You will note the learning objectives, and your research can be organized around these, so choose them wisely and discuss how to translate them into a design that constitutes the research portion of the capstone.

The applied version of Soc 403 involves a more modest research component–as we want most of your time spent in the field. The learning objectives that were already embedded in the capstone experience can serve as the basis for research design and data collection. For instance, if you wanted to focus on the organization of an office, its bureaucratic structure, interaction of professional and classified staff with clientele, etc., you can do that. It will simply be done systematically, with some guidelines you’ve created to ensure that people in the practicum setting have given their consent to be involved in your research project, and that they are assured confidentiality (these are not public documents, they’re submitted for evaluation to faculty). You will need to have this all approved ahead of time. The learning objectives become the research objectives. The journal writing can become the data collection mechanism.

Human Subjects forms:

• MS Word
• fillable