Method Of Research example essay topic

In Lisa J. McIntyre's case study titled "Hernando Washington" we learn about a young man named Hernando Washington who kidnaps, rapes, and murders a 29 year old woman named Sarah Gould. Using common sense the answer to the question "why did Hernando do this?" is "because he is a horrible person". Using the sociological imagination we ask questions such as, "What was the social milieu in which the event takes place?" and "what effects did the social system have on the individual?" . Asking the right questions, we find that Hernando Washington lived in an area where police activity was almost non existent.

Hernando's brother had been shot and sister had been raped with absolutely no police action ever taking place. This explains why Hernando thought he could get away with his actions. We also see that Hernando viewed the rape he committed as sex. He thought that since Sarah was alone and unprotected by another male, it was ok for him to have sex with (rape) her. The sociologists way of looking at this case doesn't make what Hernando did ok, but it does explain why he did it. In the next article of Lisa J. McIntyre's "The practical Skeptic" we read the research essay "Men as Success Objects and Women as Sex Objects; A Study of Personal Advertisements" written by Simon Davis.

In this article Davis uses a method of research called the "unobtrusive method" where he is totally removed from the experiment and takes down statistics from personal ads placed by the public. In his research Davis found that typically men tend to look more at a woman's physical characteristics and that women typically tend to look at a man's social institutions. Social institutions include economic status, education, religion, family, and politics. The reason why men and women look at these different characteristics is because the cultural belief that men should work and provide for women while women should be physically attractive to satisfy men. This basic cultural belief in European society is completely different or even non existent in other world cultures. Article 5 of "Practical Skeptic" is a research essay titled "Hate in the Suburbs; The Rise of the Skinhead Counterculture" written by Randy Blazak.

For this essay Blazak used a different method of research, participant observation. In this method he was required to be a part of the skinhead group to really understand what type of people they are and why they are that way. His goal was to understand what drove people to join the skinhead organization and what effect this organization had on society. He found that people have a need to socialize with others like them.

This need to be apart of a group can apply to any type of people. In his case these people were alienated white youths looking for someone or something to blame their falling economic / social status on. In any context a group is a congregation of people who have a similar belief system. Groups have a powerful function in society which is the ability to make change.

The three articles above are all examples of events that have taken place in a society. It is easy to look at these events and say " that's just the way things are", but if one wants to understand why "that's just the way things are", they must use their sociological imagination. As Dr. Robert H easley put it "to not think, is to be dead.".