college coursework help on Welfare System

1. Your paper should be no less than two typed double spaced pages long. The paper does not have to be typed, but it MUST be legible. I will reward hard work and sociology, so in general : the longer the paper the larger the number of points; and the more sociology in the paper, the larger the number of points. Your first page must have your name, title, subject , AND the TIME the class meets.
2. Write a research paper in which you try to ?solve? a problem of the welfare system. You should begin by specifying and explaining a problem that exists with the welfare system. This explanation is the most important part of your paper, and should involve EVIDENCE (statistics, other studies, statements by prominent sociologists, criminologists, psychologists, etc.). This evidence should always be footnoted (i.e. you should provide the source of the evidence), though I do not care what style this foot noting takes.
3. You should also discuss whether there is any controversy. (i.e. is there a debate about it). How about other societies? Other periods of time? Please label this section so I can easily find it.
4. What do you think should be done about this problem. You must come up with THREE inter-related proposals to reform the welfare system. You must support these reforms with evidence, footnote your sources, etc. Your proposals should reflect your knowledge of sociology, and NOT merely things you have heard in the mass media or believed previous to taking this class. This is not an opinion essay, but an attempt to use your knowledge of sociology to analyze.

5. You need to discuss whether your proposals are practical. They do not have to be practical, but you must admit this fact, and discuss the circumstances which would make them practical. Again, label this section.
HIGHER EXPECTATIONS:
It is easy to receive a base of three extra-credit points if you do what I have asked, and write at least three pages. For points above these base 3, I will be looking at the following factors.
1. The length of the paper. In general, the longer the paper the better (within limits). Do not, however, just pad the paper.
2.The quality of the evidence presented. I am concerned that the evidence comes from high quality sources, and that it is reasonably recent (depending on the topic). In general, the highest quality sources are (in order of importance):
1. scientific journals?particularly sociological journals;

2. responsible news magazines and newspapers (e.g. Time, Newsweek, New York Times,
L.A. Times, etc.);
3. major political journals (National Review, Nation, etc.);
4. the tabloids (National Inquirer, People magazine, Oprah, MSNBC, Fox News, etc.).
Here are some web sources that should be helpful in finding information about welfare.
a. The Bureau of the Census
b. Institute for Research on Poverty (University of Wisconsin)
c. Brookings Institute
d. Bureau of Labor Statistics
e. Urban Institute
f. Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
g. Welfare Research (University of California Berkeley)
h. RAND
i. Russell Sage
3. The relationship between evidence and proposals. The evidence presented should support the proposals made. There should be, therefore, no sweeping claims on the basis of limited evidence.
4. The logical organization of the paper. The discussion should be logical and well thought out. The proposals should be laid out so that a convincing case is made that they are based in evidence.
5. Coherence of the paper: the discussion should hang together as a whole. Make sure your discussion is not disjointed or your proposals poorly integrated.
6. Bibliography. I will check the bibliography to see if it would provide a good basis for the paper (Are the references current?
7. Creativity. The paper should be creative and insightful (at least a little). That is, you should bring something new (no matter how small) to the discussion or combine familiar material in a creative way. You should avoid merely regurgitating things heard in class or read in the book. You need to do some of this “regurgitation” (it demonstrates that you did the reading and understand the points made in class), but it should not be the entire paper. On the other hand, I discourage wild speculation. That is, I prefer to see a paper that puts forward reasonable suggestions rather than highly improbable (how ever original) alternatives.

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