Sociology 219: Institutional Theories: Cultural and Phenomenological Approaches

Winter 2009

Short Assignment #4: Research Design

Due: Start of class (9:00am) Monday March 9

Length: Approx. 3.5 pages, double-spaced.

Develop a research design to test one or more theoretical predictions of phenomenological neo-institutionalism. You may choose any topic that you wish.

The goal is to link institutional theory to important empirical outcomes… Don’t let feasibility issues (e.g,. data that might be extremely hard or expensive to collect) prevent you from coming up with a plan that speaks to big issues. To facilitate your creativity, you may imagine that you have a very large grant budget, allowing you to pursue an ambitious project. This is about coming up with a “thought experiment” that provocatively addresses theory – not planning a doable dissertation. (Though it is great if the project is in fact feasible.)

Many of the best research designs involve competing theories. In other words, you may wish to choose a topic that allows you to contrast the predictions of institutional theory with that of another major theoretical perspective. (This is not a requirement – it is possible to come up with a good project that does not involve competing theories. But, I recommend it.)

Your research design need not be wholly original. You can draw upon the strategies used in prior studies in the literature. (We haven’t read many empirical studies in class. If you need recommendations, let me know.)

You may write things up however you wish… but I suggest an outline to aid your thinking:

I. Introduction: Explain your topic (~.5 page)

II. Theory/Arguments: Briefly summarize the relevant theoretical perspectives and develop empirically testable arguments. Be sure to state at least one clear empirical proposition or hypothesis; many of you will end up having several hypotheses (often deriving from competing perspectives). Given space constraints, you probably won’t have time to go into detail about competing perspectives. That is OK. After all, this is a class on institutional theory. But, be sure to identify the competing perspectives and include a couple of sentences justifying related hypotheses. (~1.5-2 pages)

III. Data & Methods: Discuss the empirical evidence that you need to test your arguments, and the type of investigation or methodological approach to answer your questions. (~1-1.5 pages)

IV. Conclusion: You may add a short paragraph to discuss implications. (not required)

I encourage you to bounce ideas off of your peers or me. To that end, I will provide comments via email if you send me some preliminary notes on your project (or an early draft) by Monday March 2. That gives you a week to choose a topic and start developing your ideas.